Burn My Heart Read online

  By 1957, there were no more fighters in the forests. The Mau Mau had been defeated, but the settlers wanted the Emergency laws to continue. In 1959, eleven detainees at Hola Detention Camp were clubbed to death by black guards while white warders watched. Officials tried to cover up the killings. But the truth came out and it led to a public scandal in Britain.

  The Emergency was finally ended in January 1960. The British government prepared to hand over control to a government elected by all Kenyans. In 1963, barely ten years after my story ends, Jomo Kenyatta became the first prime minister of Kenya. A year later, he became President of the independent Republic of Kenya. A British governor had called him the ‘leader to darkness and death’ and he had been imprisoned for seven years during the Emergency. But, to help bring peace to his shattered country, Kenyatta declared, ‘Let there be forgiveness… The hatred of the past should be forgotten… Let us build together in unity, not revenge.’

  Although stories were passed on within families, and teachers taught Kenyan children an approved history of the struggle for independence, the Mau Mau remained a banned organization for forty more years until 2003. Even in 2005, I found that the National Museum in Nairobi had no displays of this painful past. I went in search of the Peace Museum in Nyeri. I had heard that it was a small room filled with objects, old documents and photographs donated by both rebels and loyalists. I especially wanted to see this memorial in which the stories from each side had been brought together under the same roof. However, the brave little museum no longer existed. There had been no money to keep it going.

  Yet the ghosts of the past have a way of rising. In October 2006, lawyers in London launched a test case for compensation from the British government for a group of elderly Mau Mau detainees. Their claim is that torture and illegal abuse were part of the colonial policy to destroy their rebellion for independence. People are talking and writing more than ever. For years, stories have been hidden in hundreds of places… in forests and gullies, caves and homesteads, villages and towns. Many are now emerging from the undergrowth of memory, breaking the silence.

  In all this, I am only the storyteller who has to believe that for Mathew, as for Mugo…

  kĩrĩ ngoro kĩrutagwo na mĩario …

  the word in the heart is drawn out by talking.

  Glossary

  asante (sana)

  thank you (very much)

  Swahili

  ayah

  nursemaid

  from Hindi

  boma

  cattle enclosure

  Swahili

  bwana

  master

  Swahili

  bwana kidogo

  little master

  Swahili

  fez

  a pot-shaped hat

  Turkish

  habari?

  how are you?

  Swahili

  hapana

  no

  Swahili

  haraka

  hurry

  Swahili

  irio

  potato, greens, maize and beans dish

  Swahili

  ithaka na wiyathi

  land and freedom

  Kikuyu

  jambo (short for hujambo)

  hello

  Swahili

  kiboko

  hippopotamus

  Swahili

  memsahib

  madam, mistress

  from Hindi/Arabic

  mgunga

  umbrella thorn tree

  Swahili

  mugumo

  fig tree

  Kikuyu

  mzungu

  white person

  Swahili

  ndio

  yes

  Swahili

  ndovu

  elephant

  Swahili

  panga

  machete with a broad blade

  Swahili

  shamba

  field, plantation

  Swahili

  syce

  groom

  from Arabic

  toto (short for mtoto)

  child

  Swahili

  ugali

  stiff porridge made from maize meal

  Swahili

  wazungu

  white people

  Swahili

  wĩ mwega?

  how are you?

  Kikuyu

  KIKUYU AND SWAHILI NAMES

  Baba

  Father

  Kikuyu/Swahili

  Duma

  cheetah

  Swahili

  Gitau

  (no special meaning but

  identifies an age group)

  Kikuyu

  Husani

  handsome

  Swahili

  Jafari

  dignified

  Swahili

  Juma

  born on a Friday

  Swahili

  Kamau

  quiet warrior

  Kikuyu

  Karanja

  (no special meaning)

  Kikuyu

  Kenyatta

  from ‘tao ya kenya’ or

  ‘light of Kenya’;

  Jomo (‘burning spear’)

  Kenyatta became Kenya’s

  first African premier

  Swahili

  Kikuyu

  a people of central/southern Kenya

  Kipsigi

  a people of the Rift Valley

  Kirinyaga

  mountain of mystery

  (mispronounced by

  Europeans as Kenya,

  hence Mount Kenya)

  Kikuyu

  Maina

  (no special meaning but

  identifies an age group)

  Kikuyu

  Mau Mau

  underground Kikuyu

  movement of resistance

  against colonial rule

  Mami

  Mother

  Kikuyu

  Mugo

  seer or wise man

  Kikuyu

  Mugo wa Kibiru

  a Kikuyu prophet

  Kikuyu

  Muhimu

  young militant activists

  opposed to colonial rule

  Kikuyu

  Mzee

  term of respect for an old man

  Swahili

  Ngai

  God

  Kikuyu

  Njeri

  daughter of a warrier

  Kikuyu

  Turkana

  a people of northern Kenya

  Wamai

  someone who loves water

  Kikuyu

  Acknowledgements

  In 2004 I was invited to read my work and run writing workshops in Kenya as part of the UKenya celebrations for the fortieth anniversary of Independence from Britain. My thanks for the very diverse programme go especially to librarian activist Anne Moore and to Mark Norton, Information Officer at the British High Commission. It was during this visit, with its great contrasts, that I decided I would set a novel in Kenya. I knew it would be a challenge, remembering the extraordinary power of the novels of Ngugi wa Thi’ongo that I had first experienced some forty years ago. They were novels that took me beyond myself, into a world that I had not previously imagined.

  I am most grateful to all those who have spoken to me about their memories of Kenya before Independence. In addition, my special thanks go to Fred Kiranjui for his assistance on my second journey into the central Highlands. His conversations also made vivid the extreme dangers of being a Kikuyu child at that time. I am indebted to the work of many authors, including Mau Mau from Within by Donald L. Barnett and Karari Njama, ‘Mau Mau’ Detainee by Josiah Mwangi Kariuki, and Britain’ Gulag by Caroline Elkins. Space prevents me naming all the authors whose works have enlarged my understanding but my particular thanks go to David Anderson for his wide-ranging, insightful research in Histories of the Hanged.

  I owe special thanks to Grace Gikonyo Kahende for her patient a
nswers to my questions and her comments on my draft. I should also like to thank Maren Bodenstein, Jill Burger, Maya Naidoo, Madeleine Lake, the Maharasingham family, Praveen Naidoo, Olusola Oyeleye and offer particular thanks to Dr Fírinne NíChréacháin and members of OYA! in North London who shared their responses with me: Winifred Opoku, Adeoba Okekunle, Nancy Khanu, Jacinta Namataka, Joldin Olympio, Uju Nicola Ufomadu.

  Finally, my warmest thanks as ever go to: my editor, Jane Nissen; my agent, Hilary Delamere; and to Nandha for his constant support.