Dreams in a Time of War Read Online Free PDF Page B

about these episodes as if they were part of their everyday life. How did these young men and women, some of them just workers in the nearby Limuru Bata Shoe Company, know such stories and the goings-on in times past and places far away? The young dancers who sang of the bad Hitler marching down to Kenya to put yokes around African people’s necks reinforced the image of a dread beast let loose in the world. But pitted against this beast and its deadly intentions were brave characters, part of the British army of saviors, and among them were Cousin Mwangi and Brother Kabae. We heard of their exploits in Abyssinia in the campaign against Mussolini’s Italian East Africa, and a lot ofnew names of places, such as Addis Ababa, Eritrea, Mogadishu, Italian and British Somaliland, entered the conversation. Of course the complexities of warfare eluded me. Bits and pieces of stories coalesced into whispers of Mussolini’s soldiers’ surrender. To me it was quite simple. Heroes had defeated ogres, at least those marching toward us, and our brother and our cousin had played a part in the victory. In my mind, Joseph Kabae, whom I had not met, was the most heroic and Mussolini’s soldiers had really surrendered to him. He and I were connected by blood, our father’s blood, but he was still a character in a fairyland far away.
    But evidence of war was not to be found simply in stories; it was all around us. Peasant farmers could sell their food only through the government marketing board. Movement of food across regions was not permitted without a license, creating shortages and famine in some areas. Though I did not know the reasons at the time, this system of food production and distribution was actually the colony’s contribution to the British war economy. In Limuru, the prohibition produced a famous smuggler, Karugo, who drove his truck so fast that he often eluded the pursuing police. He was finally arrested and jailed, but he became a legend in the popular imagination, giving rise to the expression “Karugo’s speedometer.”
Tura na cia Karugo
meant “speed away,” or “don’t worry about any speed limit.”
    There was also the visual evidence in the soldiers that passed through Limuru, who at times would get stuck in the country dirt tracks that passed for roads. To make the tracks more passable, the government turned them into wider murramroads. In digging up the murram, the government works left a deep rectangular quarry the size of a soccer field near the Manguo marshes around Kimunya’s corner, just below the Kahahu estate. With the improvement, the soldiers would sometimes stop and park their vehicles by the roadside and have their lunches in any open space in the forest bushes around. They would give cookies and canned meat to herd boys. One of my half brothers, Njinjũ wa Njeri, then the main assistant herd boy to my father, would often bring some home, and talk about the military, but he never mentioned having seen our Joseph Kabae among them. Did he, wherever he was, also park vehicles by the roadside and eat cookies and canned meat and give some to herd boys?
    One day, two of a convoy of trucks full of military men fell off the road into the cavernous murram quarry. The rest of the convoy stopped and parked by the roadside. There was mayhem of movement among the rescuers and the rescued. News spread quickly. Practically the whole village was there to see the wounded and the dead being carried away. The sounds of mourning were terrible, especially for us children. But worse for the Thiong’o family was the rumor that began to circulate that Kabae may have been part of the military convoy. There was nobody to ask. Stories of his having been far away in Abyssinia did not allay our concerns. The silence of the government exacerbated our fears. I felt deprived of a war hero, a half brother I would now never see.
    But one night he came home in an army truck, two headlights splitting the darkness. There was not