Dreams in a Time of War

With his return to Manguo, Ngũgĩ discusses the importance placed on English language learning and the severe punishment met out to students who speak African languages. As a small child, Ngũgĩ liked to learn different languages to converse with non-Gĩkũyũ speakers. He views English similarly and describes the excitement he feels when reading English magazines. The government-sponsored publications, however, offer only a partial account of what is happening in Kenya.

For Ngũgĩ, this realization occurs when he receives a news report in 1953 entitled “Lari Massacre” (181). The publication describes the killing of a colonial-propped chief, Luka wa Kahangara, and his family by Mau Mau fighters. Ngũgĩ shows the publication to Ngandi who dismisses it as government propaganda. Ngandi then provides a history about the roots of the violence. He explains the importance of the Devonshire Declaration in 1923 which states that “in a conflict between Africans and other races over land, African rights were paramount” (182). In 1927, Luka “broke ranks” and “agreed to move to alternative lands in Lari” (183), providing the British with legal justification to take lands from everyone who stayed. The Mau Mau fighters enacted their revenge decades later. Ngandi also tells of how the colonial government retaliated in the days afterwards, executing hundreds of innocent people and blaming it on the Mau Mau fighters.

Ngũgĩ provides more detail to the state of the emergency in Kenya and the increasingly oppressive tactics of colonial rule. He describes the formation of the Home Guards, comprised of Africans loyal to the government, and their terrifying use of detainment. With the backing of the Home Guards, chiefs and village leaders impose communal labor assignments, forcing people to close shops and stop work in their fields, contributing to mass hunger in the countryside. Ngũgĩ also describes the forced barazas, or government meetings, meant to instill fear and obedience in Africans, including school children. Ngũgĩ attends one meeting where a chief mocks Kenyatta and claims he will be executed after his trial.

To better understand Kenyatta’s trial, Ngũgĩ turns to Ngandi who explains the key players in Kenyatta’s arrest, persecution, and defense. The court finds Kenyatta guilty of participating in the Mau Mau movement (with which he had little involvement), and he is sentenced to seven years hard labor. Ngũgĩ is devastated, but Ngandi notes that during the trial Kenyatta relays an important message of justice, equality, and perseverance for all oppressed peoples. Ngandi also describes the philosophical and political connections between Kenyatta and other leaders advocating for self-determination, like Muhammad Gandhi and Marcus Garvey.

Ngũgĩ describes his rite of passage to adulthood through his participation in a circumcision ceremony. In precolonial times, circumcision was a communal event that provided balance and continuity in Gĩkũyũ society. This changes though with the reorganization of societal power during colonial rule. As Ngũgĩ writes, “Circumcision in my time no longer played the political, economic, and legal role in the community that it once did. It neither conferred special communally sanctioned rights nor demanded special communally set obligations and expectations” (197). Even so, Ngũgĩ finds it important to partake in the ceremony to gain a better sense of his connection to his community.

Ngũgĩ describes what happens before, during, and after circumcision. He feels proud that he does not shame himself or his family by crying during the actual cutting, especially as many people in his community view school youth as “soft and weak” (201). Nonetheless, while Ngũgĩ concludes that circumcision is a significant rite to adulthood, he is more convinced that “education and learning, not a mark on the flesh, are the way to empower men and women” (203).

Ngũgĩ’s preparation for the Kenya African Preliminary Exams signals another rite of passage, which he discusses in greater depth in later parts of the book. Ngũgĩ hopes passing the exam will admit him to high school. The threat of violence however preoccupies his mind. Increasingly, Ngũgĩ hears about colonial policies that dislocate thousands of people from their communities. He describes the perpetual state of fear that people live in as they experience daytime raids from the colonial government and nighttime raids from the Mau Mau fighters. He writes: “While the guerrillas were fighting for land and freedom, the colonial state was fighting to sustain foreign occupation and protect the prerogatives and wealth of European settlers” (206).

One day, Ngũgĩ hears gunfire on his way to school after lunch. He quickly hides in his mother’s house. A few days later the police round up young men in the Limuru marketplace. Ngũgĩ’s half-brother Gĩtogo runs away from them. The police yell for him to stop, but he does not hear them because he is deaf. They shoot Gĩtogo in the back, and he dies. These kinds of events become commonplace enough that Ngũgĩ normalizes the violence and does not notice them as much by the time he attends middle school at Kĩnyogori.

The police arrest Good Wallace and his Uncle Gĩcini. Ngũgĩ tells the story of their capture: Good Wallace and Uncle Gĩcini were part of the resistance movement, providing supplies to the Kenya Land and Freedom Army. One day they arrange a drop-off with a “friendly source” (211). They meet him on a road near a plot of land where Ngũgĩ’s mother is cultivating her crops. They do not realize the source is a police informant. The source provides them with twelve bullets. Uncle Gĩcini puts six bullets in his trouser pocket and Good Wallace puts six bullets in his inner coat pocket. After the source leaves, the police arrive to search the two men. They find Uncle Gĩcini’s six bullets but not the bullets in Good Wallace’s coat pocket. When the police are not looking, he throws the bullets into his mother’s plot of land and tells her to cover them, using a term, mbembe, which has two meanings. Typically, mbembe means corn, but in the Mau Mau resistance movement, it also means bullets—a capital offense punished by hanging for any African caught with them.

The police arrest Uncle Gĩcini and Good Wallace but put Good Wallace in the back of the truck without handcuffs. He jumps out, escapes the gun fire, and joins the guerilla fighters in the mountains. That night, Ngũgĩ’s mother makes Ngũgĩ, his younger brother, and Good Wallace’s wife promise never to speak about him. They are in danger of being labeled as collaborators. Ngũgĩ describes the split in his father’s home, where some of his half-siblings, like Tumbo and Kabae, work as agents for the colonial state while others, like Good Wallace, are in the resistance movement.

This division mirrors wider Kenyan society where close friends fight each other. For instance, Kahanya—Good Wallace’s best friend—joins the Home Guards. These divided loyalties complicate Ngũgĩ’s understanding of the world. As he writes, “What is now emerging around me is murky” (216). His sense of alienation from his extended family and community grows when his grandfather stops asking him to read and write letters for him. Ngũgĩ’s association with Good Wallace complicates his status as a good omen.

Despite these losses, Ngũgĩ continues to devote himself to his studies. He describes his close relationship with a teacher, Mr. Kĩbicho, who teaches English at Manguo and Kĩnyogori. From Mr. Kĩbicho, Ngũgĩ learns how to build complex sentences. Mr. Kĩbicho also has a personal library with books like Treasure Island that he lets Ngũgĩ and Kenneth borrow. These stories fuel Ngũgĩ’s desire to write books. He thinks he needs a special license to write, though, and debates this with Kenneth—an idea that comes from growing up in a political milieu where African-language publications are banned and nationalist writers are imprisoned or exiled.

To continue on to high school or a teacher’s training college, students must pass the Kenyan African Preliminary Exams. The passing rate, however, is only five percent. The difficulties students face preparing for the exam are numerous, such as not having textbooks or sufficient light to study. Getting to the exam site also is a hurdle, but Ngũgĩ is lucky because his year the state administers the exam at Loreto Convent School in Limuru. Ngũgĩ provides a brief history of the mission school, noting that the church sits on the same disputed land that led to the Lari massacre. The week before the exam, Ngũgĩ receives a visit in the middle of the night from Good Wallace who wishes him luck and asks him to try his best. Later, Joseph Kabae also visits Ngũgĩ to wish him well on the exam. Ngũgĩ is terrified that Kabae, a colonial agent, knows of Good Wallace’s visit, but Kabae does not say anything. The night before the exam, Ngũgĩ feels extremely nervous and compares it to the way he felt prior to his circumcision ceremony.

When Ngũgĩ enters Loreto Convent School, he is amazed by its beauty and wealth. It has well-manicured gardens and pastures and flushing toilets and showers. He also admires the school uniforms and the proud girls wearing them. The exam takes four days and covers subjects in math, English, Swahili history, geography, and civics. One question is based off the book Treasure Island, which Ngũgĩ recognizes from his extracurricular readings. The completion of the exam indicates the end of Ngũgĩ’s education at Kĩnyogori Intermediate School.

Ngũgĩ describes his anxiety while waiting for the exam results. He spends his time worrying about his mother, who is questioned by the Home Guards, and Good Wallace. Ngũgĩ wants to know more about political events around him, but Ngandi has disappeared. As he writes:

All I want is to connect things the way Ngandi used to link local, national, and world events. The stories of Mau Mau as atavistic, anti-progress, antireligion, antimodernity are deeply at odds with what I know of my brother, attested by his last daring act of coming home to wish me well (230).

It is difficult for Ngũgĩ to piece together current news events, as most of it derives from government publications, but he does note the continuing displacement of thousands of people, this time from the city of Nairobi. Making sense of these fragmented pieces provides Ngũgĩ with some sense of control and independence.

It is during this time that Ngũgĩ experiences close encounters with death and violence. The first episode is a result of accidental carbon monoxide poisoning. Ngũgĩ spends the night with a friend, and they forget to turn off the charcoal burner. When Ngũgĩ does not return home the next morning, his mother looks for him, worried that the Home Guards detained him. She finds Ngũgĩ and his friend on the floor barely alive. Ngũgĩ learns that his mother’s first child, a girl, died of severe burns when she was a baby.

Ngũgĩ second close encounter with death happens when he is caught in a military dragnet. After attending a church service at Kamandũra, Ngũgĩ and Kenneth decide to go to another, open-air service. These kinds of services—as part of a larger revival movement—are “popular because they were among the very few public gatherings that did not need a license from the state” (236). On their way home, Ngũgĩ and Kenneth walk into a military dragnet. Officials force them to sit among other African men with hands behind their heads. They wait for their turn to be put into three groups: “the bad, the worse, and the worst” (237). Whereas Kenneth is put with “the bad” group, Ngũgĩ is put in the second group, “the worse.” He is shocked but submits to further interrogation. The officer demands to know more about Ngũgĩ’s activities, and when he forgets to say “effendi” (a title of respect) at the end of his answers, the officer hits him in the face. Ngũgĩ does not cry, which enrages the officer even more. The officer consults with a hooded man, a likely informant from Ngũgĩ’s community, and returns to ask Ngũgĩ about his family, pressing for details about Good Wallace. Ngũgĩ answers truthfully that he has a fugitive brother but does not know his whereabouts.

The official releases Ngũgĩ and Kenneth, and on their way home, they hear shots and screams. They do not look back or talk about what they just experienced. Ngũgĩ feels proud that he did not cry when the officer beat him. They decide to visit Mr. Kĩbicho, their teacher, instead of returning home directly. Mr. Kĩbicho tells Kenneth that he passed the exam and then turns to Ngũgĩ to let him know he has been accepted into Alliance High School.

Alliance High School is the best high school in Kenya. Mr. Kĩbicho applied on Ngũgĩ’s behalf without him knowing. Soon Ngũgĩ is the talk of his community, and many people, including Lord Kahahu, visit to congratulate him. When Ngũgĩ learns about the cost of tuition he is crestfallen because he cannot afford it. Rumors also circulate that the government will not let him attend Alliance High School because of his fugitive brother. But then Ngũgĩ receives help from an unexpected person, Njairũ, who is a tough government-appointed headman and squad leader of the Home Guards. He ends the rumor and compels Ngũgĩ’s half-brothers to contribute to his tuition. Still, it is not enough to pay for the uniform, particularly the shoes. Ngũgĩ’s sister, Njoki, comes to the rescue and pays for them with her earnings from working on the plantations.

Alliance High School is in the town of Kikuyu, and Ngũgĩ only will return home during the holidays. Before he leaves, he visits his grandfather who is extremely proud of him, blesses him, and gives him spending money. Ngũgĩ also visits his father’s compound. He has not been there since his banishment. His father’s wives and children greet him warmly. Thiong’o has nothing to give Ngũgĩ, but he blesses him. Ngũgĩ visits Thiong’o because he does “not want to start a new life with resentment in [his] heart” (249). Before Ngũgĩ leaves, Thiong’o takes him to the dump site, and they reflect on the landscape and their past. Thiong’o tells Ngũgĩ that despite his success, he will encounter life difficulties and not to give up. Ngũgĩ feels free from anger and resentment.

To reach Alliance High School, Ngũgĩ needs to take a train, which he is very excited about. The train is racially segregated, and before he boards, an official asks Ngũgĩ for his pass. He does not know that Gĩkũyũ, Embu, and Meru people now need a government pass to travel. Ngũgĩ is heartbroken and cries at the injustice. But then he receives help from an assistant station master who is African. He tells Ngũgĩ that he will help him get to Kikuyu and tells his to take the next cargo train. Ngũgĩ arrives at Kikuyu station but misses the bus. Someone tells him to walk through the Ondiri marshes, but he decides to stick to the road. Just as he is about to leave, a bus arrives for Alliance High School students who are arriving from Mombasa. Ngũgĩ boards the bus and sees a welcome sign to the high school. He ends the book by thinking about his pact with his mother and realizes that she really is asking him “to have dreams even in a time of war” (256).