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IN 1977, James Ngugi learned just how much the government appreciated his writing. It was the same year he legally changed his name to Ngugi wa Thiong’o, following his decision to write only in Kikuyu, the language of his people. Dropping the European name meant dropping ties to the pretensions of colonialism. Why should he carry around a name that alienated him from his own body? He joined the Kamirithu Community Education and Cultural Center, based in the town where he was born 39 years earlier. The Cultural Center embarked on a program to uplift and bring change to lives of the villagers in Kamirithu, and to do so in Kikuyu. The community wanted plays, and with this agenda, Ngugi and Ngugi wa Mirii took on the task of producing a script. A final script of Ngaahika Ndeenda, (I Will Marry When I Want) was ready by June 1977. The performance date was set for October 2, the 25th anniversary of the Declaration of the State of Emergency by British officials which had marked the beginning of the Mau Mau struggle. What work they had gone through to prepare! How Ngugi had learned his language all over again! The villagers came together and constructed the open-air theater where they would perform. The play was a success, but the government thought otherwise. On December 16, citing public security, the license for further performances of Ngaahika Ndeenda was withdrawn. To Ngugi it seemed like it was public insecurity; government officials who felt threatened by the community’s new-found confidence. But the government also felt threatened by Ngugi’s increasing critical stance. His books pointed more and more to corruption and lies in the current government rather than focusing on the old colonial system. A university professor working with peasants, saying he was learning from them? What was he really up to? Kenyatta’s government, the Kenya African National Union (KANU) dared not wait to find out. In the midnight hours between December 30th and 31st, they came with a standard-issue detention order signed by Vice President Moi. They were able to wrest him from his home, five children and pregnant wife, Nyambura, who remembered to call out for the car keys, instinctively knowing he would be gone for a long time. At the police station, Ngugi was forced to sign a statement:
That was all it took to be thrown in jail without trial or charge. All it took to spend a year in Cell 16 of the Kamiti Maximum-Security Prison. In his cell Ngugi wondered how it was that the same freedoms the Mau Mau had fought for were now disappearing. They told him he couldn’t write anymore, not without approval, but he had to, he had to write! On the prison’s rough toilet paper he composed what would become Caitaani Mutharaba-ini (Devil on the Cross), his first novel in Kikuyu, and Detained: A Prison Diary. As a fleeting gesture of goodwill, Moi – now president – released Ngugi and the other detainees, but the University of Nairobi refused to reinstate Ngugi. His family received threats and harassment; Ngugi was jailed twice more before embarking on a book promotion tour to London in 1982. He never came back. IN 1987, the Kenya Students Organization at Jersey City State College asked Ngugi, five years into his exile and teaching at Yale, to come speak to them. Njeeri, a member of the organization, coordinated his trip and travel arrangements. They met face-to-face when she picked him up at Grand Central Station with her daughter and a fellow group member. Ngugi was intrigued by this Kenyan woman who still spoke Kikuyu after living in the U.S. for so long. He felt magic when she, in desperate hurry, grabbed his hand and darted across the fields at Jersey City State because they were late for the lecture. She was freshly divorced and made clear that she didn’t plan on getting involved, but Ngugi waited her out. By 1989 they were living together in New Jersey. They both worked hard to bring his children to study in the United States. Though Nyambura, his first wife, was still alive in Kenya, their relationship had drifted after so many years apart. The children trickled in and filled their home, attending various universities. The kids, now grown, were slightly embarrassed by their father’s living arrangement and urged Njeeri and Ngugi to wed in a ceremony they organized. After they married in July 1992, Njeeri’s trips to Kenya radically changed. By custom, she could no longer be welcomed at the airport by her family, no longer stay at her mother or sister’s home. She was now to stay at Ngugi’s home. It was tricky and it took a little bit of doing on her part to accept being welcomed at the airport by a family she didn’t know. Since Ngugi’s exile had made the traditional Kikuyu wedding ceremony impossible, Kimunya, the one son Njeeri had not met, fulfilled his father’s duty and received Njeeri into Ngugi’s home. Nevertheless, and despite the fact that Nyambura had died, it remained Ngugi and Nyambura's home and not hers. Going home to Kenya was now something entirely different. (continued on page 3) |
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| UCI | School of Humanities | Literary Journalism |