A Short Mau Mau War Story

There was a deathly silence. The dust had long settled. No newcomer could have told of the bloodshed that had just occurred a few moments ago. The Johnnies had long crossed to the other side of the valley and out of sight thumping their boots and chanting war songs as they went. The shrieks from the local women working in the bush up the hill had died down as they ran to scream out the bad news to the village camp. Loud wailing would soon be reported from the camp.

Only 2 pairs of eyes remained in that grisly scene.Nduru was the acclaimed King of Humour in his Mau Mau cell. He was engaged in his favourite pastime, diving, when the guards came. They called them Johnnies because that was what they seemed to all call each other. He had invented a sort of straw from the famous and sacred mugumo tree.

The straw was mediocre but he owed his current escape to it. It was hallowed using a thin metal 'borrowed' from the camp at Fort Hall where the Governor's representative was based. It was painstaking work but it did the trick. It enabled the user to stay underwater for at least 5 minutes. He had learned, actually bumped into this technology when listening to a fellow Mau Mau soldier who was a Burmese War veteran. He in turn had seen this ingenious technology used by British soldier traversing the Burmese rivers.

He was diving today under the arrow root leaves in a bid to replenish the group's supplies. It was the African high summer and bush meat was hard to come by. This was especially so far the Mau Mau since they could not use their home-made guns to hunt for food without attracting the Johnnies attention. Their ammunition supply was also very limited and hence the 'scaling' as they called it.

The leaf structure of the arrow root plant was an advantage in itself. It was wide enough to block the sun rays and, if the plant was old enough, covered a sufficient height. When the shots pierced the air, Nduru was conveniently hidden under the leaves .His skeleton attire was barely noticeable behind the brush.

His colleagues were not very fortunate. They thought they were safe so far from the guard post in the village camp. Each of them had at least 3 shots piercing through them, as if to make sure there was no life remaining in them. There were 7 bodies strewn around in a semi-circle on the river bed; none of them had tried to escape.

Nduru had to think fast .If he stayed underwater, the straw would give and he would drown. That was if there were spies around and his position would be jeopardized if he got out of there. If he jumped out of the water he might be noticed and immediately snuffed out.

He chose to get out of the water before any onlookers begun arriving. But he soon found out that he just didn't have the energy to run. He immediately felt nauseous from seeing the bullet-riddled bodies of his colleagues. He kneeled and started to crawl up the hillside; where to, he knew not. The bush would hide him from the guards, he reckoned.

The other surviving pair of eyes belonged to Grelis.You would never have guessed her nationality bearing in mind the geopolitical dynamics of the time. She was American and this was 1952.What was a 22 year-old, Johns Hopkins University educated doctor doing deep in the interior of Africa?Afterall, weren't there post-war opportunities to be had in America and an economy that now needed all the skilled personnel it could have.

She had met the great Jamaican human rights activist, Marcus Garvey, while he was on a speaking tour of American universities. Her father was a minister and had instilled in the family a deep sense of attachment to causes for the general improvement of less fortunate members of society.

The American media, being bipartisan in the Mau Mau war, widely reported about the want for basic health facilities in the Dark Continent.Grelis instantly knew what she had to do after Marcus Garvey had confirmed these reports. She had to set out to Africa to use her skills and knowledge for the betterment of a part of humanity that was in dire need of them.

Her house was set far apart from the village camp at her own request. She figured this would win the trust and confidence of the locals and she even went out of her way to explain to them that she was American, not at all attached to the British. To the locals, a white person was always a white person. Whether they understood her position concerning the current conflict or not was always in question.

When she heard the gunshots, she went to her window and she was just in time to see the guards walking out of the scene and the dust settling in the newly calm valley. As she made her way down the valley to where the bodies lay, she stopped to see a figure moving up in the opposite direction, the only movement for miles around. With a stiffened upper lip, concealing her fears, she made her way towards it.

After crawling for what looked like ages, Nduru stopped when he realized there was a shadow bearing down on his path. He started to lift his face slowly and stopped when he realized that the person in front of him was a white person. Only a white person could have those clean, crisp safari boots. He mustered all English he could and muttered that his last request was to have 1 dish of arrow roots.Actually, he knew that it was a cinch he would have a shower of bullets in his belly instead. He wanted to furnish his last breath with some humour.

Grelis just smiled at his broken English but said she had understood. It was then that he realized who it was.

Her presence of mind made her take him in and in 2 hours had nursed his bleeding knees, extracted a bullet from his body and cut off his locks. The locks were especially important to the Mau Mau as they were the symbol of recognition. When she cut them down, she figured he wouldn't then be an easy target for the guards. She had made such a clean work of it that she could just make out her figure from Nduru's bald head.

Next, she set him a warm dish of arrow roots and that he cleared in a few moments during which they got to know each other. His name was still on the guards' list of Mau Mau suspects. If the guards asked her what he was doing in her compound, she would say that he was her helper and had brought from Nairobi a few months before. This would get him struck out from the list.

Sure enough, the guards came along a few days later.Fortunately, Nduru's wounds were sufficiently healed by then and Grelis' explanation was quickly believed by the guards. But Nduru was still to be taken in for allegedly escaping from the village camp without the necessary documentation-a pass. This was punishable by 3 months detention during the State of Emergency.Both Nduru and Grelis silently agreed that this was a better option than being shot by firing squad which was the mandatory punishment for Mau Mau convicts.