Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o's new memoir highlights role of African mothers in education
ON Saturday night I was in Hayward, California, dancing to East African rumba and twist with the man who inspired me to become a writer. My hero is renowned Kenyan writer and scholar Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, a professor at the University of California, Irvine.
Signing "Dreams in a Time of War." Photo: GG Printers
The maestro was in Hayward to hang out with members of Harambee Foundation, a Bay Area organization of Kenyans, and to promote his new book, Dreams in a Time of War, a memoir of his childhood (Patheon Book, 2010). This in my opinion may be his best work, so far. Not that his previous works were mediocre, but this comes straight from the soul. You really see Ngũgĩ the child, different from the grown up writer we are used to.
Most African writers — from wa Thiong’o's age group born in the 1930s like Chinua Achebe and and Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka, to contemporary ones like Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie — have showcased Africa through fiction. Those who have written non-fiction often tell tales of survival in times of turmoil, or to talk about their success.
In wa Thiong’o's memoir we see a child going through unimaginable pain to attain education during a time when it was rare for a black African to do so. His tales about walking six miles one way to school make me feel like a crybaby. (When I was growing up in southwestern Kenya in the 1980s I thought walking a quarter of a mile home to warm my own lunch and get back to school within an hour was comparable to 1,000 years in hell).
Ever the modest one, wa Thiong’o reminds us that as tough as walking 12 miles to and from school sounds, it wasn’t a thing compared to what some of his school mates had to go through.
“On the way home, except for those from Ndeiya and Ngeca who had to cover ten or more miles, the walk [home] was more leisurely,” he writes.
If you love wa Thiong’o for his ability to write fearlessly and candidly about totalitarianism and colonial oppression, you will not be disappointed. There is plenty of that in the book. But he make every effort to keep this his childhood story.
The most important person in the story is wa Thiong’o's mother Wanjikũ. He is who he is today because of her. It is Wanjikũ who in 1947 asks him if he’d like to go to school. Despite the constant shortage of food that the family experiences, Wanjikũ makes her son sign a verbal contract: “Promise me you’ll not bring shame to me one day refusing to go to school because of hunger or other hardships.”
This is the point in the book where I cry — not for him, but for my mother and the mothers of the children I grew up with. Dreams in a Time of War reminds us that as much as our fathers take credit for the successful men and women we’ve become, we wouldn’t have gotten there if not for our mothers. Many like my mother had been pulled out for school as soon as they could read and write to marry our fathers. (Where I come they used to say you only needed to educate a girl enough to distinguish between her husband’s important documents and the waste paper she might use to kindle fire).
Yet these overworked, poorly educated women were — and still are — the forefront of the struggle to educate African children. They were the ones who went to our drunk fathers’ pockets and took whatever money was left, not to buy themselves dresses, but school supplies for us.
Men like my father went to unbelievable lengths to hide money from their wives. One of my village’s favorite tales is about a relative who saw his father hide money in a stump. The man proceeded to hand his wife what he claimed was all he earned. The son told his mother that he had seen him tuck away something. Mother and son walked there to find several bills, which they took away.
The man has got some moves. Photo: GG Printers
On the next day the father went to get the money, hoping to go entertain his friends afterwards, but found it missing. He took an axe and began to split the stump, thinking that the money had fallen through a crack. Mother and son watched him sweat as he labored, claiming to be chopping firewood, a task a man would normally delegate to his grown sons. He chopped it down, stopping only to eat lunch that he demanded be brought to him on site. After leveling it to the ground, he asked his son for a hoe to dig up the stump as if it had swallowed his money and hidden it beneath its roots.
It was then that his wife told him, “Thank you for the firewood. We found what you hid there.” She did not give the money back to him. Her relentless efforts to prevent her husband from wasting money on alcohol paid off, making hers one of the most educated families in the village.
Whether or not wa Thiong’o's intended to use the story of his mother to underscore the importance of our mothers, he help us realize that even 60 years ago, mothers bore the burden of Africa on their shoulders. Imagine what could have become of our continent if women had been given the same educational opportunities our fathers had.
*****
To honor wa Thiong’o for being not only my inspiration, but my teacher and mentor (he advised me on my graduate school thesis) I wrote Nightmares in a Time of Peace, which I read at his book signing. See how many titles of wa Thiong’o's works can you spot? (The answer is embedded in the review above).
Nightmares in a time of peace
Unlike my age mates, I did not marry immediately after crossing the line from boyhood to manhood. Mama began to worry that I was going to end up like my 35-year-old uncle, Captain, who never married.
“Boy, when are you getting married? You’re 18 years old already,” Mama said.
“Mama, how do I get married when I don’t have even a grain of wheat to feed my children?” I asked.
She asked, “Boy, what has gotten into you? Is it the devil on the cross? Should I call the wizard of the crow?”
“Mama, leave me alone,” I shot back. “There is nothing wrong with me. I will marry when I want.”
My father, who I didn’t know was listening, ran out of the hut.
“Don’t talk to your mother like that, boy,” he barked.
I was now a man. I wasn’t going to let him treat me like the little boy I was last year.
“No one is going to tell me when to marry,” I screamed at him.
You never talk like that to an African father. The old man picked up a cane and began to chase me downhill. I was a good distance from him. But he caught up with me at the river between our village and Keroka. He beat me until petals of blood spattered on the ground. By the time I got home that evening all my brothers and sisters had eaten.
“For talking back to me, you will not get a meal until this time tomorrow” Mama said, as she wiped blood off my nose.
I began to cry. “Weep not, child,” my mother said.
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