Petals of Blood (50 page)

For a few seconds she and Karega looked at one another. She stood still, very still, otherwise she did not show any surprise. Karega on his part did not expect this stranger . . . this lady. Munira had not prepared him for this. As for Munira, he seemed to enjoy the whole scene . . . the discomfiture which he knew both were trying to hide. She sat down on a sofa, facing them all, and her first words were addressed to Munira.

‘Mwalimu . . . you could . . . at least have warned me.’

‘He came about six.’

‘It’s my fault,’ Karega explained . . . ‘I . . . I thought . . . it was not so very late.’

‘Of course it isn’t . . . How are you? I must say this is a pleasant surprise. A ghost from the past.’

‘I thought him a ghost too . . . the way he looked . . . so grown . . . changed.’

‘Where have you been? But you must be hungry: did Mwalimu give you anything?’

Without waiting for an answer, she leaned back and rang a bell, and another girl suddenly appeared.

‘Lucy . . .’

‘Yes, Mama.’

‘Make some food . . . and be quick about it.’

It was a dream-fairy world and Karega did not know what to make of it . . . she repeated her question.

‘Places . . . All over the republic . . . I worked with the lawyer . . . for some time . . .’ His voice was rough, rugged.

‘He is a famous politician now . . .’ said Wanja.

‘In fact, that’s how I came to work with him. I had wandered in the city for some time doing odd jobs here and there. Then I joined his election campaign. People in the slum areas remembered him for all the help he rendered to the poor. I think his rescue of the ill-fated journey to the city long ago had made him quite famous even among those who had not met him in person. He won despite the whole KCO machinery working against him.’

‘Champion of the poor . . .’ added Munira. ‘He should be careful . . . all that talk about land ceilings . . . all those contributions to Harambee projects . . . don’t always make everybody happy.’

‘Charity . . . charity . . .’ Karega suddenly thrust in his voice rather aggressively. ‘I kept on reminding him about these same words because it was he who first used them that time we found him in the city. We disagreed a great deal. When he talked I could see that he saw all the wrong. He could capture it all in an image. He had the gift of the tongue. You should read his speeches in Parliament. He could see the wrongs so well, so clearly, that it pained him that others could
not see. But after a time . . . I thought . . . he was putting too much faith in trying to make people see the wrong and repent . . . he was very sincere, you understand . . . but he had too much faith in the very shrines created by what he called the monster. He argued that his contributions . . . well . . . they were only a gesture . . . I said to myself: “There must be another way . . . there must be another force that can be a match for the monster and its angels. Ng’enda thi ndiagaga mutegi: that which is created by men can also be changed by men . . . but which men?” In the end I left him. He could not understand me and I could not understand him. But he had opened my eyes and I was grateful . . . I moved to Mombasa . . . Dockworkers . . .’

‘Mombasa? Do those ships still come? And the sailors? Coconuts . . . sandy beaches . . . Fort Jesus . . . I would like . . . It’s such a long time . . .’ Wanja enthused.

‘We loaded and unloaded the ships . . . handled all that wealth . . . with our naked bodies sweating in the steamy sun.’

‘But they pay well . . . the dockworkers are the best paid workers . . . They have had a tradition of good responsible union leaders . . .’

‘Responsible union leaders? I don’t know. The trouble with our trade unions is that too often they are led by businessmen . . . Employers. How can an employer lead that which is fighting against employers? You cannot serve the interests of capital and of labour at the same time. You cannot serve two opposed masters . . . one master loses . . . in this case labour . . . the work . . . the heat . . . crumbs from the table . . . I left . . . I walked from Mombasa . . . on foot . . . looked for jobs amongst agricultural plantation workers . . . But I could never stay more than two months . . . slaves . . . slavery . . . they are paid one hundred shillings a month . . . and for that they sell their whole family labour . . . man, wife, and children . . . living in one hut . . . condemned to picking sisal and tea-leaves and coffee . . . Many times I would sit and think: we people . . . we built Kenya. Before 1895 it was Arab slavers disrupting our agriculture. After 1895 it was the European colonist: first stealing our land; then our labour and then our own wealth in the way of cows and goats and later our capital by way of taxation . . . so we built Kenya, and what were we getting out of the Kenya we had built on our sweat?

‘The lawyer was right about the monster demanding more and more sweat and giving only very little of that which it had demanded. I would talk my thoughts with the other workers on the plantation. They would say: suppose we are kicked out . . . and I said . . . unity in labour . . . unity of sweat . . . sweat power . . . word would get to the African owners of the plantations . . . I would be dismissed and I would move on my way . . . And so I kept on moving, working here and there, on this or that farm, tracing, as it were, my father’s footsteps until I found myself in West Kenya. I was lucky. I got a job with a sugar milling company. I worked as a store-keeper – something between a messenger and a store issue clerk.

‘My work was simple, supplying the fitters, the turners, the welders and other mechanics with spare parts for the farm machinery. Pumps and motors kept on breaking. They needed constant repair and maintenance. The store also supplied Europeans and top Africans with household needs, toilet paper, gas, things like that. But there were times when the machines would go for a long time without breaking. Anyway I had time to look, to see, to think. This particular sugar mill was owned by a British company McMillan sugar works with extensive interests in South Africa . . . Sudan . . . Nigeria . . . Guyana. The company’s sugar plantation was started soon after Independence . . . to develop the area . . . to raise the standard of living. A number of peasants were driven off their land to make room for the company’s nuclear estates. The peasants who were not driven off the land were encouraged to grow sugar on their plots instead of food. But the company buys the sugar at whatever price they deem fit! The peasant growers are not organized to protest and to bargain. So they lead miserable lives. Some cannot even send their children to school . . .

‘Oh, yes . . . the company has an African manager . . . Mr Owuora Wuod Omuony . . . in fact, a few locals own shares in the company. The transportation of the company’s goods – sugar, rollers – was for instance in the hands of a very important person in authority – I think half Masai and half Kalenjin . . . he had a long name . . . Mr Innocent Lengoshoke Ole Loongamulak . . . so you see African participation was extensive. The middle-level managerial positions were in the hands of Africans. Otherwise all the top jobs on the technical side
were held by European expatriate experts – mere schoolboys, I would say, lording it over African graduates training to be sugar technologists.

‘The workers were in two categories. There were those who worked inside the factory. And there were the others who worked in the nuclear estates. Among them were immigrant labour from Uganda. They all had very stinking pay, considering the work they did. But those in the fields had the worst. Often they were beaten by their European and even their African overseers. They could not organize because the management had managed to divide them into tribal cliques and religious cliques and even according to the place of work. Those who worked in the factory felt they were more privileged than those in the fields. But those in the factory seemed better organized. They did not seem to care if the management was African, or if the directors came from their own region or tribe, they protested all the same and stood up for their rights.

‘Anyway I watched everything – I saw how the European expatriate experts carried themselves. I said to myself, no European or any boss in free Kenya will be rude to me and I keep silent. So this European expert technician comes when I am attending an African trainee technologist. He demands to be served immediately. He wants a roll of toilet paper. I told him to wait his turn. He said
SHENZI
. I took a bearing and threw it at him and it hit him full in the face. I was called before the African manager and a few of the white foreign bosses. The technologist was a truthful witness. But instead of the Kaburu being reprimanded I was dismissed from my job . . . no appeal . . . so I said to myself; let me go back to Ilmorog and see what’s happening there!’

‘That’s a real life of a wanderer . . .’ They were all speaking politely, avoiding the present, avoiding the past they shared, putting off questions and answers. Munira and Wanja could see that Karega had changed, but they could not tell in what way. All they could see was that he was different from them. Lucy brought meat on another tray and they ate quietly.

‘What are you going to do in Ilmorog? Or are you only passing
through?’ Wanja asked. What he had described about the sugar mills in western Kenya had the familiar ring of a recent happening.

‘A worker has no particular home . . . He belongs everywhere and nowhere. I get a job here, I do it . . . I carry my only property – my labour power, my hands – everywhere with me. Willing buyer . . . a seller who must sell . . . It is the life under this system.’

‘Yes . . . it’s life,’ echoed Munira, without realizing the full import of the words.

They ate in silence. Karega and Wanja avoided each other’s eyes. She urged them to have yet another drink. She poured them out what they chose: Theng’eta and whisky. After drinking, Karega suggested it was time they went away. Munira agreed. Wanja did not say anything. She kept on turning over the story Karega had told and it seemed that some of the features were part and parcel of what had happened in Ilmorog. They rose to go. She stood up to see them off. Then her eyes met Karega’s: and there was a flicker . . . a naked moment of recognition.

‘Sit down,’ she asked them. ‘Please . . .’ They resumed their seats. She poured them yet another drink. She poured herself a gin and tonic.

‘I don’t drink . . .’ she started, slowly, a little hesitant. ‘But I’ll keep you company. Well, I also need company . . . Truly I am glad to see you . . . I have thought about you a great deal. At one point I thought you must be dead, or something. My grandmother . . . she was always sure you would return. I suppose she never knew you would find me, well, all of us under these circumstances. You have told us a little about yourself . . . your journeys. No doubt you are wondering what has become of us. I’ll tell you, partly, I must confess for your sake. I can see that . . . well . . . that concern for others has never really died in you. There is a fire in your eyes . . . A spark . . . illusions. You may blame me . . . I ask neither pity nor forgiveness nor any understanding excuse. This world . . . this Kenya . . . this Africa knows only one law. You eat somebody or you are eaten. You sit on somebody or somebody sits on you. Like you, I have wandered, I don’t know in search of what: but I looked for two things in vain: I have desperately looked
for a child . . . a child of my own . . . Do you know how it feels for a woman not to have a child? When Mwathi was here, I went to him. His voice behind the partition said . . . woman, you have sinned: confess! I could not tell him. I could not quite tell him that I was once pregnant, that I did have a child . . . that the world had suddenly loomed so large and menacing and that, for a girl who had just left school and had run away from home . . . that . . . that . . . that I did throw it, my newly born, into a latrine . . . There! I have said it . . . I have never said that to another person.’

Both Munira and Karega started a little. It was shocking precisely because the disclosure was totally unexpected. There was an awkward silence. They both avoided her eyes. But she went on in the same voice.

‘I was young then. I am not saying that I was right. It was only that this seemed the only thing to do: for how, I asked myself, was I going to look after it? Where would I get food and clothes for the child? Later I felt this guilt sit on me. Every night . . . sometimes even today I hear the delicate cry of that child . . . I have tried to atone for it . . . I’ve prayed to God for one more chance . . . one more chance . . . it has never been possible . . . I have even tried to get out of this life . . . God knows I have tried . . . Every time something has happened to thwart me in my desire to escape.

‘I have searched for love, too . . . it has escaped me . . . except . . . except . . . I will say it . . . but don’t think I am begging or asking for anything . . . except with you. That time I felt my womanhood come back . . . I felt accepted as I was . . . For the first time I could make love without the burden of guilt or the burden of a search . . . Then you went away . . . I kept myself to myself . . . God knows I am speaking the truth . . . I wanted to live honestly, an honest trade, an honest profit if that’s possible. Theng’eta . . . there was memory to it too . . .

‘And then something happened . . . My grandmother died . . . I had to redeem this land . . . I felt it the right thing to do . . . I sold the house . . . I continued making Theng’eta . . . and then one day I went to the site where they have built this utamaduni village. Have you been there? You should go. Women go there to sing native songs and
dance for white tourists . . . they are paid . . . well . . . that’s another story . . . anyway, I went there and found Nderi wa Riera . . . and the German I once met in Nairobi. I relived the fear and the trembling of that night . . . I almost screamed . . . until I realized that he did not recognize me. He is one of the owners of this tourist village, with huts built as they imagine our huts used to be before the Europeans came. Our utamaduni . . . a museum . . . for them to look at. I went away, thinking about this strange encounter. Later I went to see Mzigo. A by-law had been decreed that all brewers must get a licence. I thought Mzigo would help me since we had sold our building to him. After all Ilmorog could cater for two brewers. He was very uncomfortable . . . very evasive. Then he gave me a piece of paper to read . . . my English is not very good . . . but I could get the general drift of the writing on the wall.