People swarmed about. Roads were wider than she had ever seen. It was like a dream, but a dream without anyone to direct you where to go or what to do. And, like a dream, without edges to it – bare and patchy as it seemed in memory, everywhere you looked (even across the race course, even to the roads you had traversed the other side of the swampy river bed, even to the wide plains south of the railway workshops) it was still Nairobi.
All the same, she was getting tired. There was some money hidden away inside the kiondo but she did not know how to buy anything to eat from these strange buildings filled with men, or how to ask her way to a market. She did not understand most of what was being said around her, and began to see why people had said it would be hard to find anyone you knew in Nairobi (but in any case she did not know anyone). She had seen Indian shopkeepers in Nyeri, and an engineer or two coming to do repairs in the factory, but here there seemed to be Indians everywhere.
One of them pulled up a car near her and out of it stepped not another Indian, as she had at first thought, but a young Kikuyu man dressed in a suit such as the master would wear only on Sundays or for attending baraza in town, with a wide-brimmed hat and shiny European shoes. He shook hands with the driver of the car and started to walk away.
‘Thuku,’ a whisper went round the crowd, ‘Harry Thuku.’
Thuku! She had not seen him before but she knew he had been to Nyeri and they had all sung songs in praise of him because he had protested against the women’s road work and was going to free the people from forced labour and European taxes. This was seeing life indeed, and she felt an urgent need to participate, to make herself also known. She was about seventeen years old and she too was part of a new world. So she began to sing one of the praise songs, swaying in time with the music. Some people laughed, others clapped their hands out of beat, for which she did not see the reason. Thuku himself stopped and turned round.
‘So you know me?’ he asked with a smile.
‘Everyone knows you, sir, even if we did not see you when you came to Nyeri.’
‘But I do not know you. Who are you?’
‘My name is Wairimu wa Gichuru, sir.’
‘And what are you doing in Nairobi, Wairimu, if you come from Nyeri? Are your parents here, or do you have a husband?’
‘I came alone, sir, to see the city and find work.’
Some of the men laughed. A woman in European dress was about to take her arm.
‘Leave her,’ Thuku ordered. Then he spoke in another language to a man in the crowd.
‘Wairimu, you are brave, but you do not know how hard a thing you have undertaken. Your people ought to have explained to you. This friend of mine will take you to some Kiambu people who will teach you what you need to know. Perhaps they will give you some work for a while. Will you trust us to arrange that?’
‘Yes indeed, sir. Thank you, sir.’
He smiled again.
‘It is good to be brave and wise. People have said that I am brave. But sometimes it is wise to be a little afraid.’
The group dispersed as he walked away and the man he had pointed out signalled to Wairimu to follow. She went with him to a narrow, dirtier street and in it to a small corrugated iron building where men were eating and drinking tea. The foremen and clerks at the estate sometimes had tea and bread but she had never tasted any herself. The man indicated a bench she should sit on and a young boy brought her uji to drink and pieces of bread, at his command. The friend of Thuku – she later learned that he was called Tairara – went to talk to the man and wife, Samson and Nduta, who ran the tea room. Then he went away and left them to talk to her in Kikuyu.
First they asked whether she had run away from home, whether she had ever been married, if she had a baby or was expecting one. Well, they said, it was not according to their custom that she should be alone, but the world was changing and Nyeri was perhaps less strict than Kiambu. She could help them serve and wash the utensils: they would give her food and a corner to sleep in and, if she stayed, some money at the end of the month. They supposed she must know what Nairobi was like and how men were bound to pester her. That was her own affair but they did not want any trouble in the tea shop. Outside, they had no way to protect her, women being as few as they were and all the old rules set aside. Straight away she had better learn numbers in Swahili and the names of the main foodstuffs. This did not take long and she revelled in her own ability to learn.
She was amazed by her luck. Although supposed to be working most daylight hours, she was soon able to find pretexts for going out to buy provisions or help someone with a load to the station. She was fascinated by the streets, where ox-carts still mingled with the motor cars and at night big lights (just as the turn-boy had told her at Ruiru) shone from poles along the wayside.
In shop windows there were white people standing and sitting to display the clothes – it took her some time to realise they were not alive – and some of the buildings were higher than the tallest tree. Inside, people said, you walked up stair after stair, like the four that led up to master’s bungalow at the coffee. Water came out of pipes – not many of them: you had to queue for a turn to fill your bucket. Some people preferred to go down to the river, but Nduta refused to use river water for tea or cooking. When you slopped through the marsh and reeds to get to the bank (for there was nowhere else you could decently have a bath, and even so there would be men prowling about) you could see why. For this was not like the river that came down from the mountain and people had not respected it. Sewage and hospital waste poured into it, rubbish and dead cats floated in it, rats invaded the garbage heaps left beside it, the only natural life connected with it was the loud croaking of the frogs at night. It was only after heavy rain, which could fall even out of season in Nairobi, that its pace would increase and the water might seem clean as it gurgled along, but then it would overflow its banks and still more refuse would be carried into the stream when the water subsided again.
She learned in a rough and ready way to recognise the different kinds of people. There were arrogant Somali, with their elaborate headscarves and bony features: some of them condescended to oversee labour on the estates, demanding enamel dishes, tea and special times to pray, but now she saw their women for the first time and learned a new concept of elegance. There were big, black Luos, Uganda people with white robes and commanding eyes, Kamba porters and woodworkers with their pointed teeth – good mechanics, they were reckoned up country – Goans, like brown Europeans, deft, jerky, decorative, and Hindu and Muslim Indians in every kind of dress and every walk of life. Arabs and coast people came often to the tea room, speaking in a way the inland people seemed to understand but did not imitate: Nduta said they avoided bars because of their religion. The men were very clean; there were only a few women, but Wairimu was studying them carefully. Then there were the Europeans, hundreds of them, it seemed, in the middle of town, because many of them had work there instead of being hidden away in kitchens and workshops like the other races. By complexion, tilt of the head, clothing, tools carried and, most especially, by the state of their boots,