Just a kid
St Teresa’s Boys’ and the Girls’ schools were located on the northern ridge of Mathare Valley, which was several kilometers long. Mathare Mental Hospital stood on the southern ridge. By 1954 the whole valley was a wall-to-wall squatter camp of mud huts and corrugated iron sheet lean-tos, a complete shanty town represented by several tribes, the majority being the Kikuyu. It was a hovel of the worst kind possible with no sanitation, no running water, no medical facilities or sewerage. At the bottom of the valley there was once a river of sorts and in my earliest childhood I could remember seeing little fishes regularly. Lately it was mostly a cesspit. Somehow thousands of people called it home and lived generally peacefully. Mathare Valley had an economy all of its own, yet no one paid any taxes, not a cent. Illegally brewed local beer was plentiful as were bicycle mechanics and a whole generation who were the pioneers of recycling motor car parts. There were barbers, charcoal makers, hut builders, thatch roof repairers, tailors, karanis (Swahili for clerks who could read and write in English) and the other significant occupations.
Everyone, it seemed, was a businessmen. The women told me that they, the women, were the best at it. That they made the money and their men spent it. In later life, this was very true. The largest commodity, and it was free, were those brilliant smiles that Kenyans wore on their faces no matter what the situation. My single most unforgettable memory of Kenya was driving through any African village in Central Kenya (Kikuyuland), Nyanza (Luo), Western Province (Abaluhyia), Rift Valley (Kalenjin) or any village in Kenya and seeing that welcoming smile from everyone, especially the women and children. That smile lives in my heart. I got to know several tribal families and learnt their traditions, their taboos and their customs. I would delight in sitting with groups of elders as they spoke of the past (the good old days when they were free, without the white man) and life under the State of Emergency fears for what tomorrow might bring.
This was my university of the streets and the playground of my childhood where I think I spent the happiest time of my life. It was here that I learnt of the Kikuyus’ unshakeable faith in Jomo Kenyatta, the Kikuyu leader who was later to be accused of leading the Mau Mau rebellion as well as other political leaders. The various tribes were always suspicious of each other. I sympathised with their many frustrations and was outraged all the justices that white rule had robbed them of, especially their human dignity. I did not know it then but I supported the fight for freedom, if only to remove the yoke of enslavement.
The Mau Mau rebellion, which, according to official figures resulted in deaths of 12,000 Africans (other estimates put this figure more at 90,000) and 32 Europeans, especially white farmer families, forced the State of Emergency (1952-1956). It resulted in a protracted guerrilla war fought mainly in Central Kenya, which included the Aberdares forests, the towns Nyeri, Nanyuki, Embu, Meru, Mount Kenya, the Rift Valley, White Highlands (choice farming lands usurped by the colonialists throughout the country) and various other parts of Kenya by Kikuyu freedom fighters. The Mau Mau consisted mainly of African veterans who had returned after World War II and peasants, a larger number being forced to join through powerful oathing ceremonies. The Mau Mau did not kill only the whites, they also slaughtered askaris (African policemen), collaborators of the colonial government including village chiefs and others who resisted the Mau Mau. In the valley, there were many who spoke brilliant English, though each tribe had its own accent. One of the men could quote Shakespeare by heart. Another taught me bits of philosophy, yet another gave me insights into pre-colonial history. Though many of the shanty town dwellers were pretty well educated the government restricted them to menial labour such as house boys, cleaners, sweepers, etc. Only a few worked in the civil service, the home guard or the police.
I must confess, bar the injustices done to the Africans and their lack of freedom, many of my kind (Goans) thought well of the British as they had of their colonial masters, the Portuguese, in Goa. The Goans must be the only race of its kind to have loved its colonial oppressors and thought them close to God. Unlike the South Asians, Goans had made no substantial bid for freedom from Goa’s colonial masters, the Portuguese in the 20th century. In colonial Kenya, for everyone else but the African, life was orderly and safe. You could walk around at night with no problems. As a child I did not actually experience anything of the colonial yoke, nor did most South Asians. Most Goans and other South Asians went about their lives as if they lived in some kind of paradise, seemingly oblivious, unable or unwilling to react to the all the death and destruction around them.
Yet the colonial prejudice preyed on all non-Europeans. So I sobbed for my African friends and later when I mingled with colonial folk I did not hate them for it, but I never forgot that cry for freedom of the men, women and children of Mathare Valley that resounded in almost every part of Kenya as thousands upon thousands were squashed into open air detention camps. My fight for true freedom and justice would come many years later, I hoped. Most South Asians figured that they had it pretty good under the British. They were slightly favoured above the Africans, and were most loyal subjects and considered themselves more civilised than most Africans. South Asians – Catholic Goans, Ismailis, Sikhs, Punjabi Sikhs, Hindu Gujaratis, etc. -- kept to themselves except in sport. The Goans (who were looked on kindly by the British), on the other hand, lived a lifestyle somewhat closer to the Europeans: drinking, wining, dining, all the social events came alive in their three main clubs: The Goan Institute, Goan Gymkhana and the Railway Goan Institute as well as the low-caste and low class Tailors Society Club. There were similar clubs in Mombasa, Kisumu, Nakuru, Tanga, Dar es Salaam, Entebbe, and Kampala … almost everywhere there was a small Goan community in East Africa. And they had one other thing in common with the European: they were Christian, in fact mostly Catholic and deeply religious.
If the Goans were the British favourites, the Indians (Goans did not consider themselves politically or culturally as Indians, rather as Portuguese citizens), Pakistanis, Ismailis and other non-Anglo Saxons quietly went about amassing fortunes over the next few decades to the point that it was once said the “Indian” traders, shopkeepers and industrialists owned Kenya and the Kenyan leadership. Assimilation within the South Asian community was not openly allowed. Consorting with someone outside the community often resulted in death or being shipped off. Sikhs and Muslims were said to enforce this with menacing and fatal brutality. Marriage with an African was not even an idea. It was the one true impossible thing in Kenya. Africans were dismissed as being on a par with the magnificent wildlife. A small handful of South Asians joined the fight for freedom even though the British gave Asians six seats in the Legislative Assembly many years before an African entered the hallowed halls of government.