The Mzungu Boy

MEJA MWANGI

THE
MZUNGU
BOY

GROUNDWOOD BOOKS

HOUSE OF ANANSI PRESS

TORONTO BERKELEY

Copyright © 1990, 2005 by Meja Mwangi
Published in Canada and the USA in 2011 by Groundwood Books

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We acknowledge for their financial support of our publishing
program the Canada Council for the Arts, the Government of Canada through
the Canada Book Fund (CBF) and the Ontario Arts Council.

LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION
Mwangi, Meja
The Mzungu Boy / Meja Mwangi.
Previously published under title: Little white man.
eISBN 978-0-55498-218-9
I. Mwangi, Meja. Little white man. II. Title.
PZ7.M974Mz 2005 j823'.914 C2004-906454-1

We acknowledge for their financial support of our publishing program the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund (CBF).

One

I AM NOT CERTAIN
when I first heard the word mau-mau. It may have been during the first round-up, after Bwana Ruin's gun disappeared and was said to have been stolen by the mau-mau.

That fateful morning we had woken up to find our village surrounded by soldiers. Hundreds upon hundreds of heavily armed white soldiers. They rounded us all up — every man, woman and child — and herded us into the cattle auction pen outside the village. There they made us sit on fresh cow dung to wait for Bwana Ruin.

Meanwhile, they searched the village. They searched every single hut. They searched every nook and cranny. The villagers had received their monthly pay the night before. Many of them had hidden their money, but the soldiers unearthed it all. Later we learned that the soldiers had also stolen watches and jewelry.

They kept us in the cattle enclosure until the sun came up, bright and hot, and the children started to complain of hunger. Even then the soldiers would not let us go home or tell us what they wanted with us.

Then an angry soldier came and called out my father's name. My father rose, bowed his head and waited to be shot.

“Come,” the angry soldier ordered.

Father said a quick farewell to us and stepped forward. They hurried him away in the direction of Bwana Ruin's house, and we waited to hear the gunshots. We waited a long time. He told us later that he too thought that the day of his death had come.

But that was not the reason the soldiers wanted him. Bwana Ruin was angry that his trusted cook had been rounded up along with the rest of his watu, his people. He had no hot water and no breakfast, and he was very angry.

By the time my father had lit the woodstove, heated the water and cooked breakfast for him, we in the cattle enclosure were cooking under the mid-morning sun. The children cried from hunger. The parents grumbled. No one had the courage to complain to the soldiers guarding us. They stood with their guns pointed at our heads while they smoked cigarettes, ate chocolate and drank Coca-Cola.

Bwana Ruin came at noon. He was a big man, bigger than any man in our village. He was dressed in his usual light green khaki and riding boots. He carried his riding whip wherever he went, even when he did not have the horse, and would sometimes use it to beat up workers who did not take off their hats when he passed by them.

He climbed on the auctioneer's platform and addressed the workers. His voice was loud and more frightening than his whip when he was angry.

“
Watu
,” he said, tapping on the side of his boot with the riding crop. “You know me well. I'm a reasonable bwana,
aye
?
Kweli
ama
rongo?
True or false,
aye
?”

“
Kweli
,” the people said. We knew that other bwanas' watu lived much harder lives.

“When you steal milk from my dairy, do I send you to jail as they would,
aye
?” he asked us. “No, I do not.
Kweli
rongo?
”

“
Kweli
,” the people said. Bwana Ruin whipped the hide off the culprits instead, and made them pay for the milk.

“When you stole my wheat last year, did I call the police on you,
aye
?” he asked.

He had whipped the thieves senseless and let them go. Everyone knew the men would never steal from him again after the beating they had received.

“When your
totos
steal fruit from my
shamba
,” he said, tapping at his boot. “When your children break into my orchard and take my fruit, do I set my dogs on them any more as other bwanas would,
aye
? No, I never do that. I send them to you to discipline yourselves.
Kweli
rongo?
”

“
Kweli
,” the parents agreed.

He had set his dogs loose on us only once, with tragic results. Now he contented himself with whipping our bare buttocks raw with his riding crop, and then sending us to be properly thrashed by our parents. That did not stop us going back to his orchard. It was the only fruit garden around.

“You know me well,
aye
?” he said. “I am the fairest bwana in the whole of Nanyuki,
aye
? But this time you have gone too far.”

He struck at his boot so loud that those children who had fallen asleep woke up, startled.

Bwana Jack Ruin was a big man. He was taller than anyone I knew. Even taller than our headmaster, Lesson One, who we feared like death. Lesson One was so tall that he had to bend forward to enter our classrooms. But Bwana Ruin was taller and stronger. They said that he had once lifted the foreman, the largest worker on the farm, and thrown him right through the dairy — in at one door and out at the other — without touching the floor.

Bwana Ruin was from England. His hair was the color of wheat just before the harvest. He had dark brown spots on his fierce face and on his big hairy arms right down to his fingers. He had a thick wild moustache and hard eyes as green as a cat's. When he was angry, as he was now, his eyes glinted and sparkled and made everyone afraid.

He shook and roared with fury. He waved his fist and brandished his whip at us. Finally he stabbed an angry finger into our midst and swore that no one, not one of us, would leave the cattle pen before his rifle had been returned.

The people looked at one another and wondered who might have done this terrible deed. Bwana Ruin waited for someone to step forward and confess. Standing on the platform high above our heads, he appeared to be the voice and the power of God. No one could defy his might. His all-seeing eyes would show him who the thief was. Then there would be hell to pay. I was a little angry myself when no one came forward to return the stolen gun.

I was twelve years old. I no more understood the frightful things that were going on in the country at large than I understood the things Bwana Ruin said. But the manner in which he spoke and the presence of the angry white soldiers left no doubt in my mind that something more serious than the theft of a single rifle had happened.

The soldiers had set up a big interrogation tent on the other side of the dairy, where they now took the men one by one for questioning. They were gone for a long time. When the men came back, they looked older and crushed. One by one they went, and one by one they came back, all quiet and afraid and unwilling to talk to anyone about it.

We sat in the cattle pen until sunset. We were not allowed to eat or to go to the toilet. Children cried themselves hoarse from hunger and thirst. Women fainted and their men grumbled. They talked and wondered what they should do.

Who could have taken the white man's rifle? Was he going to let their wives and children die for the sake of a gun?

But no one knew anything of the disappeared rifle. Nor of the people called mau-mau, who he said were out to rob and murder and cause chaos throughout the land.

I turned to Hari and asked him in a whisper, “What is mau-mau?”

He kicked me into silence. I did not know it at the time, but mau-mau were the same people we quietly referred to, in whispers, as
andu a mutitu
, the people of the forest. They sometimes came to our house late at night to eat and to talk to Hari in whispers. But I was not allowed to tell anyone about it.

At six o'clock the soldiers allowed us to go back home. They took away nine young men for further questioning. We never saw them again. We heard later that they had been taken for detention to faraway Manda Island. Still later, we heard that they had all died from malaria.

Apart from my father the cook, the houseboy, the herdsmen and the milkmen, no one had done any work that day. No one would get any pay that month. We all missed school that day too. But we got our pay all right when we turned up the following day, in uniform and on time.

The headmaster called us to his office, lined us up against the wall just like the soldiers had lined up the nine young men they had taken away, and demanded to know why we had missed school.

We called the headmaster Lesson One behind his back. The rest of the time we called him sir. He was a famous terror with his cane and we dared not lie to him. We told him about the raid.

“So?” the headmaster said. “So the soldiers came to your village too?”

“Yes, sir!” we said in unison.

“Then?” he asked us. “Then what happened?”

We went through the whole terrible story once again, adding any little detail we considered sympathetic to our case, all of us talking at the same time. We told him how we had woken up in the night to find our doors broken down and angry white soldiers pointing their guns at our heads. How they had taken us out and threatened to shoot our fathers. We told him how we had spent the whole day in the cattle enclosure without food or water. We told him how the soldiers had taken away nine young men to shoot them dead. We told him everything.

When we had finished talking, the headmaster stopped nodding and asked us, “Then?”

That was when I realized we were in big trouble. The others realized it too, because they were suddenly all very quiet, holding their breath.

“Did the soldiers arrest you?” the headmaster asked.

“No, sir,” we answered.

“Then?” he said.

I seriously considered jumping through the window and never coming back to school ever again. But where would I go? My father would tie me up and send my body back to school as usual, in uniform and on time.

He had never been to school himself. He could neither read nor write. But he valued school in a way I would never understand. He often told me in his quiet, subdued way that he did not want me to grow up to be a farm donkey like himself.

Whack! The headmaster's cane came down on the desk so hard that we all jumped with fear.

“Lesson one!” he told us. “There was a raid here in Majengo too yesterday. But the Majengo boys came to school as usual, in uniform and on time.”

Whack! Down came the cane on the desk.

“There was a raid at Bwana Hooks' farm too yesterday,” the headmaster informed us. “Yet his boys came to school as usual, in uniform and on time.”

Whack! came the cane again. A frightened boy wet himself loudly.

“
Bado
,” the headmaster told him. “Not yet.”

“Lesson one,” he said to us. “There was a raid at Bwana Koro's farm yesterday as well. But his boys came to school as usual, in uniform and on time. Now then?”

He smiled at us and said, “Now, tell me again why you did not come to school yesterday.”

No one dared. We looked down at our bare feet and waited for doomsday. He gave us time to consider our sin.

“Now then,” he said finally. “Do I take it you had no real reason not to come to school yesterday?”

“Yes, sir,” we said.

“That you did not come to school yesterday as usual simply because you are lazy, stupid boys?”

“Yes, sir,” we agreed.

“Louder!” he ordered.

“Yes, sir,” we shouted.

“Now then,” he said, smiling in a fatherly way. “You have admitted that you are all sinners. Do you know the wages of sin?”

“Yes, sir.” We all knew it.

“What are the wages of sin?” he asked us.