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CAST OF CHARACTERS
Women in the Refuge
BESSIE: Kikuyu. Does not remember her full name or age, or most of her lost family. Her last son, Leonard (Lucky), was born in detention.
MAMA CHUNGU (MOTHER PAIN): Seychelloise. Born Mimi Paul c. 1925. Brought to Mombasa by her father, a ship’s steward. Works as a servant for “Mr. Robert.”
MATRON: Kikuyu. A widow. In charge of the Refuge. Has four adult children.
NEKESA: Luyia. Born c. 1920 in Nairobi. Has lost touch with her family, except one brother. Friends and members of the Revival Fellowship, Keziah and Mama Victor, offer her help and support.
PRISCILLA NJUGNA: Kikuyu. Born c. 1923 in the “settled area,” where her father works as a cook in a European house. Marries Evans Njugna, and both work for the Bateson family.
RAHEL APUDO: Luo. Born c. 1915, daughter of a soldier. Marries a soldier with whom she has a son and two daughters, Vitalis, Margaret, and Florence. Her husband and her co-wife also have several children.
SOPHIA MWAMBA: Swahili. Born c. 1912 in Mombasa Old Town and named Fatuma. With her husband, Ali, has three children, Hassan, Mariam, and Hawa. Hawa has married Solomon Wau and has several children, including Joseph Baraka Wau. After Ali’s death, Fatuma marries a Taita Christian, Henry Mwamba, and been baptisted Sophia. Henry has a daughter, Emma, from his previous marriage.
WAIRIMU: Kikuyu. Born c. 1905, daughter of Gichuru with several sisters and a brother. As a young woman, is seduced by Waitito.
Nurses
GERTRUDE: Friend of Mary Kamau. Engaged to Sam Kamau.
JANE: Engaged to John, who is in the Kenya Air Force.
MARY KAMAU: Friendly with Jose Baraka Wau, and has a brother, Sam Kamau.
Other characters
“LADY FROM THE CATHEDRAL”: Escorts Mrs. Reinhold, and has known Priscilla and Mama Chungu.
MRS. REINHOLD: An employee of a donor agency, observing projects in different parts of Africa.
THE SOLDIER: A vagrant, and subject to delusions.
REV. ANDREW WAITITO: Son of Nellie, brought up in an Ugandan orphanage.
Historical figures mentioned
ARCHBISHOP ALEXANDER: South African church leader who helped inspire the independent church movements.
JAMES BEAUTTAH: Kikuyu activist.
ARCHDEACON LEONARD BEECHER: Representative of African interests in the British Legislative Council and later Anglican archbishop of East Africa.
CHARLES BOWRING: Colonial secretary.
ARTHUR CREECH-JONES: Colonial secretary.
MR. DOORLY: Nairobi magistrate.
SHEIKH HYDER: Head of a prominent Mombasa family.
JOMO KENYATTA: Activist and later, first president of Kenya.
MARGARET WAMBUI KENYATTA: daughter of President Kenyatta and mayor of Nairobi
CHEGE KIBACHIA: trade unionist.
MBIYU KOINANGE: Founder of the Kenya Teacher Training College, minister of state under Kenyatta.
FRED KUBAI: Trade unionist.
ELIUD MATHU: Representative of African interests after Beecher.
MARY NYANJIRU: Protestor in the “Harry Thuku riots” of 1922.
MAKHAN SINGH: Trade unionist.
ABDULLA TAIRARA: Colleague of Thuku.
HARRY THUKU: Kikuyu political activist, 1895–1970.
REV. MR. WRIGHT: Anglican chaplain.
NOTE: In Kikuyu custom, the first son is named after the paternal grandfather, so there will be a recurring sequence of names.
CHAPTER ONE
It was a beautiful morning. Wairimu could hear the birds singing behind the higher trees and the sun was already promising to warm the path before it got much higher. She would be hot in her goatskin from shoulder to knee, but since being circumcised she wore it always modestly, mindful of her grown-up status. The water-container bounced empty on her back, hardly enough weight to keep the leather thong steady round her forehead. Her bare arms and legs felt smooth and luxuriously conscious of the mild air: on the left arm was a metal bangle her brother had brought back from Nairobi when he went there to see the train and conduct some mysterious business with rupees and skins.
She rubbed possessively at the bangle. Even since she had started fetching water as a little girl the forest had thinned. The path was not so chilly and dank as it used to be. One was hardly afraid – as the mothers always had been in their girlhood – of hyenas or human raiders. On this path she had never heard the wailing of a baby abandoned or put out to perish beside its dying mother. There was too much light among the trees now, and too many of the white men’s agents were on the watch. Beyond the ridges, it was said, the Roman Catholics would even pick up the babies if they were in time, and somehow nurture them without a mother’s milk, not caring to find out whether they were survivors of twins or to examine the tooth order, let alone speculating what evil had brought death upon the mother of a perfectly formed child.
Wairimu quickened her pace. She was not really afraid of the forest, but she would need to catch up with the group of girls ahead to get help in hoisting the heavy skin once it was filled with water. It was strange that Nyambura had not caught up with her by now. This was the first time she had ever seemed reluctant to take her friend with her to deliver a message to her second grandmother, and Wairimu would have waited for her nearer the homestead if she had not been confident she would follow soon. It was strange, but as people grew up you had to expect them to change.
Wairimu turned a bend in the path which brought the morning sun almost to dazzle her eyes, and there the young man was standing. Her head was not bent because her load was so light, and his eyes seemed to catch hers as she paused in the middle of a step, conscious of the weight on her forward foot pressing down the valley path, the yellow haze of morning light, the air caressing her braceleted arm, the bird-song overhead and the rustle of some small animal making for the river.
She turned, and the turning was slow and painful, stretched her left arm and found the bracelet gone, the wrist bony and the fingers hard with old burns and scars. Her eyes were still dazzled a bit and sore from the forward heat.
‘Ee, Wairimu,’ one of the other old ladies chided, ‘you sit too near the charcoal fire. Your head gets heavy and you could hurt yourself when you fall asleep.’
‘I was not going to sleep, Priscilla,’ she replied primly. ‘I was just resting my eyes from the glare and thinking of the next thing I had to do.’
‘And