Dreams in a Time of War

“But, somehow, in time, I began to connect a few threads, and things became clearer as if I was emerging from a mist. I learned that our land was not quite our land; that our compound was part of a property owned by an African landlord, Lord Reverend Stanley Kahahu, or Bwana Stanley, as we called him; that we were now the ahoi, tenants at will. How did we come to be ahoi on our own land? Had we lost our traditional land to Europeans? The mist had not cleared entirely.” 

Ngũgĩ devotes a substantial portion of the book to understanding how Europeans colonial powers dispossessed Africans of their land and right to self-sovereignty. This passage refers to the loss of his father’s purchase of land, which he secured through an oral agreement. This same property, unbeknownst to him, was resold in a written agreement to Lord Kahahu. Ultimately, the court decrees that Lord Kahahu is the rightful owner to the land because he has a title deed. The case illustrates the primacy of written documents over oral agreements, a scenario that repeatedly plays out in colonial Kenya, shifting the balance of power to those who know how to read and write.

“The four women forged a strong alliance vis-à-vis the outside world, their husband, and even their children. Any of them could rebuke and discipline any one of us kids, the culprit likely to get additional punishment if she complained to the biological mother. We could feed from any of the mothers. They resolved serious tensions through discussion, one of them, usually the eldest, acting as the arbiter. There were also subtle, shifting alliances among them, but these were kept in check by their general solidarity as my father’s brides.” 

Ngũgĩ’s father is in a polygamous marital arrangement with four wives, and the quotation describes how this domestic unit functions. While Ngũgĩ acknowledges the potential conflicts and shifting alliances between the wives, he also highlights their relative harmony and the stability of the domestic unit as a whole. The passage presents a fairly positive portrayal of polygamy from Ngũgĩ’s perspective and presents a cross-cultural view of marriage and motherhood in Gĩkũyũ society.

“More than her mother or other narrators, Wabia was possessed of imaginative power that took me to worlds unknown, worlds that I was later able to glimpse only through reading fiction. Whenever I think of that phase of my childhood, it is in terms of the stories of Wangarĩ’s hut at night and their rebirth in her daughter’s voice in daytime.” 

Wadia is the fifth child of Wangarĩ, Thiong’o’s first wife. As a child she is struck by lightning and loses her sight and ability to walk. However, like her mother, Wabia is a masterful storyteller, and this quotation describes her oratorical skill. From Wadia, Ngũgĩ gains a deep love for storytelling that shapes his career as a writer.

“I don’t know if it was voluntary or forced—he went to fight for King George VI, in the second World War, as a member of the King’s African Rifles. The KAR, as it was known, was formed in 1902, an outgrowth of two earlier units, the East African Rifles and the Central African Regiment, the brainchild of Captain Lugard. He was famous as the author of the British Indirect Rule, the strategy of using the natives of one region to fight the natives of another region, and in each community, to use the chiefs, traditional or created, to suppress their own people on behalf of the British Crown.” 

This passage describes the military participation of Ngũgĩ’s half-brother, Joseph Kabae, in World War II. Ngũgĩ views Kabae as a hero, a perspective that later changes in the book when Ngũgĩ realizes Kabae works for the colonial state and could harm Good Wallace. The passage also details the effects of Indirect Rule in Africa, a strategy the British used to govern throughout their colonies, especially in rural areas. Colonial officials relied on local leaders to work as agents for the state. If these leaders did not comply with colonial policy, the British replaced them with men who would follow their orders. This strategy of “divide and conquer” often pitted Africans against one another, even within the same family, as seen in Ngũgĩ’s case. The quotation also is an example of Ngũgĩ using historical evidence to frame his life story.

“‘Promise me that you’ll not bring shame to me by one day refusing to go to school because of hunger or other hardships?’

‘Yes, yes!’

‘And that you will always try your best?’

I would have promised anything at that moment. But when I looked at her and said yes, I knew deep inside me that she and I had made a pact: I would always try my best whatever the hardship, whatever the barrier.”

This conversation is between Ngũgĩ and his mother, Wanjikũ. She offers him the opportunity to attend school, and he eagerly accepts, promising that he always will try his best and not complain about hardships. Ngũgĩ refers to this pact several times in the book, as it is a motivating force in his determination to receive an education despite immense obstacles.

“Even when not reading it, I can hear the music. The choice and arrangements of the words, the cadence, I can’t pick any one thing that makes it so beautiful and long-lived in my memory. I realize that even written words can carry the music I loved in stories, particularly the choric melody. And yet this is not a story; it is a descriptive statement. It does not carry an illustration. It is a picture in itself and yet more than a picture and a description. It is music. Written words can also sing.”

This passage illustrates a turning point in Ngũgĩ’s education when he realizes that written words can carry the same kind of lyrical quality that he values so much in oral stories and songs. Ngũgĩ’s love for stories is a constant throughout the book, and the passage shows the continuity of the childhood stories and songs that he hears from his family and the stories that he later reads in school, all of which shape his career as a novelist and playwright.

“The problem I came to realize, was not in my brother or the other boys but in me. It was inside me. I had lost touch with who I was and where I came from. Belief in yourself is more important than endless worries of what others think of you. Value yourself and others will value you. Validation is best that comes from within. In later tribulations, this thought always helped me to endure and overcome challenges by relying on my own will and resolve even when others were skeptical of me. More important, it made me realize that education and lifestyle could influence judgment in a negative way and separate people.”

The passage refers to an incident when Ngũgĩ feels embarrassed about his younger brother’s clothes and pretends not to know him in front of school friends. Ngũgĩ feels ashamed about his behavior afterwards and realizes that his sense of self-worth should not be tied to other people’s perceptions. The incident also helps Ngũgĩ recognize that education can cause negative stratifications within societies, making some people feel superior to others. He vows not to fall into this mindset again.

“The railway line, which was started in 1896 in Kilindini, Mombasa, and reached Kisumu in December 1901 through the Kenyan heartland, had brought in its wake not only European settlers but also Indian workers, some of whom opened shops at the major construction camps that later bloomed into railroad towns. It also created the native African worker out of the peasant who, having lost his land, had only the power of his limbs that he hired out to the white settler, when his labor was not taken by force, and to the Indian dukawallah, or shopkeeper, for a pittance. The land over which he had been the sovereign became divided into White Highlands for Europeans only, the Crown lands owned by the colonial state on behalf of the British king, and the African reservations for the natives. The Indians, not allowed to own land, became merchant dwellers in the big and smaller railroad towns between Mombasa and Kisumu.”

The railway line symbolizes the inequalities of colonial rule and capitalism. Ngũgĩ describes how the railroads made it easier for Europeans to penetrate the interior of Kenya, claiming fertile lands as their own and forcing Africans into impoverished reservations. No longer able to sustain their own livelihoods, Africans turned to menial wage labor for work. Ngũgĩ also discusses the presence of people from India, many of whom came to Kenya as indentured servants to build the railways. Without the option to own land, many turned to merchant professions, inhabiting the small towns along the railway lines. Throughout the book, Ngũgĩ touches on the separate worlds that Europeans, Africans, and Indians inhabit while also noting the relations of power and domination that structure their social and interpersonal relations.

“From Lord Reverend Kahahu I myself learned to revere modernity; from Baba Mũkũrũ, the values of tradition; and from my father, a healthy skepticism of both. But the performance aspects of both Christianity and tradition always appealed to me.”

The quotation refers to a common theme in Ngũgĩ’s book in which he contrasts tradition with modernity. For him, Lord Kahahu epitomizes the values of modernity, as he is educated, Christian, wears Westernized clothes, owns plantations, and adopts modern technologies. Baba Mũkũrũ meanwhile eschews everything Kahahu stands for and orients himself towards traditional practices by following the customs and rituals of his ancestors. Ngũgĩ respects both ways of living as he sees value in adopting modern ways and upholding traditional practices. In this way, he is a bit like his father, Thiong’o, who also inhabits both worlds, although Thiong’o is more dismissive of these values while Ngũgĩ enjoys the performative aspects of tradition and modernity.

“And so new life begins: From a polygamous community we become a single-parent family. I continue playing my role as scribe and bird of good omen for my grandfather. But I will now be going to Manguo and back, from my new home with a lone pear tree just outside the courtyard.” 

This passage describes a new phase in Ngũgĩ’s life. After his father banishes him and his siblings from their homestead, they go to live with their mother, Wanjikũ, who is staying at her father’s homestead. He eventually allows her to build a new home on his property. Wanjikũ plants a pear tree outside her new home, and her children laugh at her because they think it will not survive. However, her pear tree prospers while their plantings die. The pear tree symbolizes Wanjikũ perseverance and her success running a single-parent household.

“The terms ‘Kĩrore’ and ‘Karĩng’a’ became a way of characterizing the schools. Kĩrore as applied to missionary schools, connoted schools that were deliberately depriving Africans of knowledge, in favor of training them to support the colonial state, which initially limited African education to carpentry, agriculture, and basic literacy only. Command of English was seen as unnecessary. The white settler community wanted ‘skilled’ African labor, not learned African minds. Karĩng’a and KISA schools sought to break all limits to knowledge. The English language, seen as the key to modernity, also sparked contention. In government and missionary schools, the teaching of English started in grade four or later; in Karĩng’a and KISA schools, in grade three or even earlier, depending on the teachers.”

This passage distinguishes Kĩrore (i.e. government and missionary schools) from Karĩng’a and KISA schools (i.e. African independent schools). Kamandũra is a Kĩrore school and Manguo is a Karĩng’a school. For Ngũgĩ, this distinction is important since he associates Kĩrore schools with the inculcation of colonial values that cast Africans in subservient roles. Karĩng’a and KISA schools, on the other hand, promote values of self-reliance and pride in African achievements. In other parts of the book, Ngũgĩ delineates the differences in the two types of education through his experiences attending Kamandũra and Manguo school.

“Great love I saw there

Among women and children

When a morsel was picked from the ground

It was shared equally among us

Pray to him fervently

Beseech him fervently

He is the God eternal.” 

Ngũgĩ first hears this song in 1948 from a group of men and women held in cages in the back of trucks. The song elicits sorrow and fear in him. Two years later he hears the song again at Manguo school, and he asks his friend, Ngandi, what it means. Ngandi explains that the song originates from a settlement known as Ole Ngurueni, which Europeans created when they forcibly removed Africans from their lands. After World War II, the government wanted this land and tried to remove the occupants from Ole Ngurueni, but they resisted. Eventually the government forced them into trucks and relocated them to another desolate area to live. As Ngũgĩ writes, “According to Ngandi, Ole Ngurueni, a tale of displacement, exile, and loss, was really a story of Kenya; people’s resistance was a harbinger of things to come” (128).

“When you get to Gĩthũngũri

You’ll find an African people’s college

It’s a four-story building

The builders are Kenyans

The overseer is a Kenyan

The committee is made up of Kenyans”

Ngũgĩ refers to another popular song to convey the history of Kenya and the accomplishments of its people. This one refers to the Kenya Teachers’ College at Gĩthũngũri, which opened in 1939 and was modeled after the Hampton Institute and the Tuskegee Institute in the United States. As an independent African school, Kenya Teachers’ College followed Garveyite concepts of self-reliance and was funded, built, and run by Kenyans. Open to all Kenyan Africans, Ngũgĩ notes that the college “was an institution committed to producing teachers who would provide African children with unlimited, unbiased knowledge, enabling them to compete with the best that the government and missionary schools offered” (132). A source of great pride for Kenyans, the college was desecrated by the colonial state when they later converted it into a concentration camp to execute African dissidents.

“It was then that I realized my mother had all along been scared that, in her bitterness against life, my grandmother might leave a curse behind. A parent’s curse, even if not directly voiced, could take effect as a result of any bad words that may have spoken in their last days on earth. A curse could also follow failure to meet their wishes expressed before their passing on. A last wish is a final command.

‘She said that Ndũng’ũ cannot leave you behind,’ my mother said, turning toward me, in a manner that brooked no demur.”

This passage describes Wanjikũ’s decision for Ngũgĩ to participate in the Gĩkũyũ ritual of circumcision, where boys, grouped by, become socially recognized men. Ngũgĩ’s grandmother is the first to broach the topic when she says that she does not want Ndũng’ũ to leave Ngũgĩ behind (i.e. be circumcised without him). The death of Ngũgĩ’s grandmother makes her wishes concrete, as Ngũgĩ’s mother does not want to risk angering her ancestors and causing misfortune to fall on her family. The passage highlights the respect accorded to elders in Gĩkũyũ society.

“I cannot believe my ears. Does she know how desperately we need this money at home? No, she cannot be serious. But she is. No one, not even the adults among us, protests. The unfairness of it all cuts deeply into me. I step forward. I raise my voice. All eyes turn to me! You cannot do this: It is not right, I find myself telling her. She recovers from the shock. Yes, I shall, unless the culprits give themselves up, she says coolly. And you call yourself a Christian? I ask. All mouths fall open. Lillian, the wife of Lord Reverend Stanley Kahahu, the manager of the estate, has never been challenged by any of her workers. She hires and fires at will. But I know that everyone present knows that I am right. Still no other voice joins in expressing discontent. Your Christianity is without meaning, I say and leave the scene, tears of anger and frustration streaming down my face.”

Ngũgĩ’s is incredulous when Lillian Kahahu, the wife of Lord Kahahu and manager of his plantation estate, refuses to pay her workers unless they tell her who ate plums from her trees. The workers do not protest the unfair treatment, except for Ngũgĩ who tells Lillian that she is not acting like a Christian—a severe reproach since she is Christian and married to a reverend. Lillian eventually pays her workers but keeps Ngũgĩ’s wages because of his rudeness. Ngũgĩ explains that this forfeiture is one of the lessons that he learns about resistance. He may not benefit directly from standing up for what is right, but he doesn’t mind because he feels free.

“I have always been conscious of the irony of my situation. After narrowly escaping becoming a Roman Catholic, I had joined a Church of Scotland Mission congregation while attending a government school, formerly a Karĩng’a that had been linked to the African Orthodox Church, now also banned. By this time the CSM had changed its name to the Presbyterian Church of East Africa.

I extended the irony: On Sundays I went to Kamandũra for worship and spiritual communion; on weekdays to Manguo for a life of the mind.” 

Initially Ngũgĩ finds Catholicism attractive because of its relative tolerance towards African customs. A friend’s mother, however, persuades him to attend the Church of Scotland Mission (later renamed the Presbyterian Church of East Africa), which is associated with his first school, Kamandũra. Ngũgĩ’s second school, Manguo, originally was an independent school affiliated with the African Orthodox Church until the colonial state took over and turned it into a government school. Ngũgĩ’ notes the irony of his situation where he goes to Kamandũra, a Kĩrore school, for religious services while attending Manguo, formerly a Karĩng’a school, for secular education.

“With the banning of Mũmenyereri, the English-language East African Standard had taken its place in the outer pockets of [Ngandi’s] jacket. He said, You find the same in this settler newspaper, the headlines, the pictures, the story. Every event has more than one side to it. What you are seeing and reading is the colonial view. The freedom fighters have no newspaper or radio in which to voice their own side. So don’t believe everything that you read in these documents. It is propaganda.” 

Ngandi cautions Ngũgĩ to not believe everything he reads in the newspapers and hears on the radio because they are government-sponsored news sources. He also notes that the resistance fighters do not have a similar outlet to narrate their point of view, as the government controls all media outlets. Ngũgĩ takes this advice to heart and in several parts of the book, he notes the power differentials of who gets to tell their story while other stories are silenced or overlooked.

“Listen carefully to Kenyatta’s words in the court: ‘Our activities have been against the injustices suffered by the African people… What we have done, and what we shall continue to do, is to demand the rights of the African people as human beings that they may enjoy the facilities and privileges in the same way as other people.’ Do you think he was just talking to Prosecutor Somerhough and Judge Thacker? What would be the point? His words are a signal to Mbiyũ and Kĩmathi to continue and intensify the struggle. He will be free for greater glory.” 

Ngũgĩ is devastated when he learns that the British sentenced Jomo Kenyatta, an anticolonial activist, to seven years of hard labor for participating in the resistance movement. In this passage Ngandi tells Ngũgĩ not to lose heart, for Kenyatta’s words in court show he is not defeated. Rather, he uses the opportunity to speak directly to his supporters, encouraging them to continue with the struggle to overturn colonial rule so that all people can be free and treated equally. Kenyatta later became the first president of Kenya, serving from 1964 until his death in 1978.

“But in colonial society the organization of power was based on different legal criteria, covering as it did a multiplicity of nations, each of which had ordered its precolonial life according to particular cultural traditions. So, even for Gĩkũyũ people, 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. In my time, only remnants of the rite’s communal past remained. Many males, even those not religiously affiliated, drifted to hospitals for the surgery. I would not be one of them. I wanted to go through it. I hoped it would contribute to my self-identity and the sense of belonging that I had always sought.”

Ngũgĩ details the significance of circumcision in Gĩkũyũ society in precolonial times, noting that it no longer holds the same relevance as it once did because of changes to structures of power directly related to colonialism and religious influences. Even so, Ngũgĩ wants to participate in the initiation rite to gain a better sense of his place in Gĩkũyũ society. Yet, while Ngũgĩ is glad he undergoes circumcision with his age-set, he believes education is key to empowering his people and not traditional rites of passage, like circumcision.

“And yet the split loyalties do not break the sense of us belonging to the same family. My mother’s co-wives don’t abandon her; they still find the time to see her at home or in the fields. But I assume that they don’t talk about Kabae or Tumbo or my brother. Or perhaps they know, deep inside, that these warring sons would always be their sons, and they hope that all of them will eventually come back home safely. The Gĩkũyũ have a saying that out of the same womb comes both a killer and a healer.”

This passage highlights the divisive tactics of colonial rule that pit community members, neighbors, and even brothers against one another. Many Africans support the government and work as colonial officials and informers, like Kabae and Tumbo, while others join the Mau Mau resistance movement, like Good Wallace. Yet, despite these divided loyalties, Ngũgĩ notes that his mother’s co-wives remain supportive of each other, looking to the future when their sons will return home safely. Ngũgĩ’s inclusion of the Gĩkũyũ proverb shows that reconciliation is always possible.

“I was shaken by the ordeal, but I felt a little pride at not having cried. Kenneth and I walked in silence, not daring to look back. Even when we heard shots and screams behind us, we did not look back. I never knew what happened to the ones who were left behind. We could only guess, but we kept our surmises to ourselves.”

On their way home from a religious revival, Ngũgĩ and his friend Kenneth are caught in a military dragnet, and Ngũgĩ is subject to intense questioning by a white colonial official. When Ngũgĩ does not respond appropriately, the official beats him. Eventually the official releases Ngũgĩ, and he walks away alive. The shots and screams in the background, however, serve as a reminder of the intense violence of colonial rule. For much of the book, this brutality is muted, but as Ngũgĩ matures, he becomes increasingly aware of the immediacy and arbitrariness of colonial violence and its direct impact on his family.

“I know that he has nothing material to give me and he does not even make a gesture. He is really down and out. But I am not here for money or gifts from him. I want to give myself a gift. I do not want to start a new life with resentment in my heart. My visit is my way of telling him that even though he has not asked for forgiveness, I still forgive him. Like my mother, I believe that anger and hatred corrode the heart. I want my actions to speak for me, positive deeds to be my only form of vengeance.” 

This passage shows Ngũgĩ’s commitment to starting a new life without anger or resentment towards people who have wronged him in the past. Ngũgĩ visits his father’s homestead to receive his blessing before he begins his journey to Alliance High School. The meeting is a positive one, and Ngũgĩ leaves feeling free and grateful. The passage also shows the influence that Ngũgĩ’s mother has on him, as he follows her example of forgiveness and reconciliation.

“I stand there on the platform with my luggage and watch the train move away with my dreams but without me, with my future but without me, till it disappears. I shed tears. I don't want to, I am a man, I am not supposed to cry, but I cannot help it. The white military officer who has floored me with blows could not make me cry; but this white officer, a railway official, who has denied me a ride in the train has done it. Those who would have commiserated with me are themselves in need of commiseration. I don't know how my mother will receive this, for mine was also her dream.”

After working hard to continue his education, Ngũgĩ is not allowed to board the train that will take him to high school because he does not have a special pass allowing him to travel. The pass is part of a new colonial policy meant to control and subdue African subjects. The extreme injustice of it makes Ngũgĩ cry. It is a massive blow to his dream and, as he notes, the dream of his mother who makes great sacrifices for her son to attend school. The incident underscores the racism of colonial rule and its dehumanizing effects on Africans.