Chapter 1 The River
Mama Muriuki shuddered as she dipped her toe into the muddy
water on the river's edge. It seemed like the best place to cross, but with the
rains the night before, she did not know how deep it would be just past the
middle where the water was moving its fastest. She glanced back the way that
they had come. She did not see anyone,
but she would not feel safe until the river was between her and the
village. She glanced down at her oldest
daughter Wangai, who looked back down the trail and then into her mother’s
eyes. The unasked question and flicker
of fear showed briefly in the young girl’s face.
“Wait here, child. I
will be back for you,” she called to Wangai.
She wrapped the long ngoi
binding tighter around her youngest child, Maathai, on her back. He whimpered,
sensing his mother’s concern. “Wangai, child, answer me when I call to you, do
you understand?”
“Yes, mama,” Wangai said. “I will wait for you.” Wangai’s
eyes darted between her mother and the trail behind her. “Hurry, Mama.”
“Good, child,” Mama said. She picked up her second daughter,
Makena and placed the wiggling little girl on her hip. “Still, child.” Mama
slapped the little girl's thigh sharply.
Makena settled down immediately.
Mama could see that the river had swollen from the overnight’s downpour.
She hoped to find shelter before nightfall in a home of a clan that lived
across the river.
Across the river there would be no one left to guide
her. She had only her understanding of
the Gikuyu, distant memories of the Maasai, and Ngai to help her. She stepped
into the cold water and her world changed forever. But Mama’s world had changed
before when she was a young girl. Ngai
had changed the despair she felt as a child into peace. It was her memories of
that time that drove her on and gave her hope.
She shuddered again in the cold water and then ignored
it. She found stable footholds on jagged
rocks, working toward the rolling middle, where the rocks were smoother and
slippery. She fought against the water urging her downstream. Makena squealed suddenly as her foot hit the
cold water, startling Mama Muriuki for a few precarious moments as she
struggled to regain her balance. “Still child,” she warned, muted by the
rushing water. She shifted Makena higher
on her hip and plunged to her waist with the next step. Makena shuttered quietly against the shock
of cold water. Maathai whimpered as his
tiny legs plunged in the water.
Mama Muriuki took a step but could not find the bottom. She slipped and sent them tumbling under the
brown froth. The panicked moment stretched on forever. She slammed her hip against a large rock and
braced against it, struggling to her feet. The heads of her children broke out
of the water, rigid with panic. They
gasped for air and wailed above the water's roar.
Mama pulled them to calmer waters and dry land. She set her children on the grass and briskly
rubbed warmth into their nearly naked bodies. She took off her surka and laid it out in the afternoon
sun, wincing at the pain in her hip. She looked down at the bloody gash on her
side.
“Mama!” Makena screamed.
Mama whirled around. Makena pointed
to the river, to Wangai swept around the corner downstream.
“Hold Maathai, my daughter, but do not follow me!” Mama
screamed. She ran naked down the side of the river. She breathed a prayer to Ngai, fighting the
creeping doubt that Ngai would even listen to her now. She leapt over a patch of whistling thorn
bushes without a second thought and landed hard on her heels. A sharp pain shot
through her foot as she sped around the corners, trying to catch a glimpse of
her daughter.
A dark form bobbed in the middle of the river. Mama first thought it was a branch caught in
the rocks and then realized it was Wangai.
The young girl’s listless body surfaced briefly and plunged back under
the water. Mama plunged after her, three feet from her daughter, screaming for
her child as the girl surfaced again briefly before Mama was pulled under by
the current. But Mama was more
determined than the water’s rage. She
caught a boulder and pulled herself to the surface again. Leaning into the
current, she grabbed the limp body and felt down to her foot caught between two
rocks. She wrapped her arms around her
daughter and pushed her back against the river’s flow until the foot broke
loose. They were hurled together down
the river another twenty feet until Mama grabbed a branch of a tree that had
fallen into the river and pulled the two of them out.
Mama Muriuki, terrified, lifted Wangai into her arms and ran
back to her other children. With one
step she begged Ngai to give her child back to her, and with the next, she
begged Wangai to come back.
She laid her daughter next to Maathai and Makena, both
shivering on the spot where she had left them.
She laid them on top of Wangai and wrapped her still wet shurka around
the three of them in the hope that the body warmth would revive her daughter.
Mama glanced briefly at the tip of the four-inch thorn that
had pierced through her foot and broken the skin near the toes. She had unknown days of walking ahead and
needed to remove the thorn soon.
She felt the early shadows of approaching darkness and
realized that it was too late to look for a house; they would spend the night
there. She set about making a fire to
survive the night. She walked on the side of her foot to avoid stepping on the
thorn but the pain was beginning to distract her. Hobbling along, she quickly found some dry
moss, leaves, and sticks and looked around for a thin hardwood branch to make a
fire stick. They are never far from a
river. She broke off a branch and picked
up two large flat river rocks and three small round stones, and ran back to her
children. With each step, her stride gave way to the pain in her foot.
“Mama!” At the call, Mama picked up her pace and found Wangai
up on one elbow, embraced by her sister, as Maathai lay sleeping next to them.
“Ngai has returned you to us my
child, we will offer thanks to him,” Mama said. Wangai offered a faint smile with ashen lips and bloodshot
eyes. “Don’t speak, child. Rest
and I will make a fire. My thoroko and njahi have become wet. I will cook them for you so they will not
spoil.”
She took the small wet bag of mixed peas and beans that had been around
her neck and laid them on the ground. She hit a bigger rock along the edge of
the smaller rock with all her might, leaving a sharp jagged edge to sharpen a
point on the fire stick and dig out a small indention on a log. She placed pieces of dried moss over the
indention and pierced the moss with the fire stick until it fit neatly inside. She rubbed her hands rigorously back and
forth over the stick, slowly working her hands to the bottom and returning to
the top and starting again. There was a
wisp of smoke and then another and then Mama leaned over, still rotating the
sticks, and blew on the moss. At the
first flair of fire, she added more moss and dried leaves, blowing steadily at
the base of the flames. She added sticks
and grunted her satisfaction, dropping the three small stones into the hottest
part of the fire. It was time to tend to
her foot.
She winced at the pain as she wiggled the thorn. She could not risk breaking the thorn inside
her foot, so she wiggled and twisted it methodically. When she could not endure the pain any
longer, she stood and hobbled to the river with her small gourd and sat with
her foot in the cold water until it was numb.
She worked on the thorn until she could stand it no longer and quickly plunged
her foot back into the water. Finally,
she felt the thorn give a little. She soaked
her foot once more then grabbed the bottom of the thorn and pulled it straight
out in one swift jerk. She could not
prevent the cry that escaped her lips but she hoped the noisy water prevented
her children from hearing her agony.
She soaked her throbbing foot a few more moments, untying a
cooking gourd from around her waist and filling it with water. Relieved at last to have removed the thorn,
she walked quickly back to her children.
Darkness had fallen, and she could see their flickering faces looking
for her as she emerged from the shadows.
Wangai was sitting up by then. Mama could see the tracks of
tears on her face in the firelight.
“Mama, I am sorry I did not wait for you on the other side like you told
me. I watched you, Maathai and Makena
fall beneath the water and when I did not see you come up again, I decided if I
did not come for you, there would be no one left. I am foolish for not
listening to you. I beg you to forgive me, Mama!”
“My child, you are a child still, and the foolishness of a child will end with childhood. It is not yet time for you to carry the
burdens of this world on your back.
What you did was brave but foolish and children do foolish things. There is nothing to forgive. Ngai has given
you back to me, and when one receives such a gift from the one who creates all
things, there is no room left for anger at the loving foolishness of a
child. Now wait for me and I will
prepare some food.
Mama Muriuki stood up. “Now children, learn from this. Ngai is not to be bothered by small things
but rather to be praised for it is true that there is no one who forgets Ngai in their troubles.” She emptied half the water from the gourd
onto the ground. She lifted her hands and began to pray. “Ngai, creator of all
things, my child Wangai was with you in your place before she was born, but in
your mercy and kindness to me, you blessed me by giving her to my care for her
time on earth. You can take her to be
with you at anytime, for she belongs to you.
But you listened to a mother’s tears and you have given her back to me
again. For this, my heart is
grateful. I beg that when the evening of
life will come to me before it comes for the children you have blessed me
with. It is always a mother’s desire to
close her eyes before the eyes of her children are closed. But you alone are
the creator.”
Mama quietly sat down and put the peas and beans into the
gourd. She picked up one of the round
stones out of the fire with two sticks and placed it into the gourd. Steam rushed out of the top and quieted down. She picked up the second stone with the
sticks and then the third. The water
reached a boiling frenzy. She mashed the
peas into the water with a stick until it reached the consistency she wanted,
and she poured the contents over the flat surface of the larger river rock. She fed her children a small portion at a
time and took a portion for herself.
This was not enough for a regular meal, but it would hold them until the
next day. She was not far from the
trading route, where she would find more food.
“Mama.” Wangai seemed deep in thought.
“Yes, child.”
“Mama, I don’t remember being with Ngai before I was with
you." Mama smiled. Wangai was full
of questions about everything. She
reminded Mama of herself as a young girl.
“Ah, my child, none of us remember those times. Some of the medicine men do remember with
fleeting images, but Ngai will give us those memories again when we return to
be with the ancestors under the mugumo tree.”
“Will Ngai be under the mugumo tree too?”
“Ngai is everywhere, my child, but he gives our ancestors
rest under the mugumo tree and he visits them there often. We were made by Ngai to enjoy the earth we
were given to take care of and to have many feasts and celebrations. Ngai is a
father who owns the land and a mother who gives life. We are the children.”
“Mama, is our father with Ngai under the mugumo tree?”
Wangai asked.
Makena reached out and took her big sister’s hand. She rarely spoke but let Mama know when she
wanted to know the answer to Wangai’s question with this gesture.
“Yes, my children, Ngai brings us all to the roots of the
mugumo tree when it is time for us to leave this world and return to him.”
“Does our father see us from the underworld too?”
“There will be times when he visits us. It is good to follow the instructions of Ngai;
otherwise one of the ancestors may visit us with curses rather than
blessings.”
“Will our father put curses on those who harm us too?”
“Child, it is not the way of Ngai that we should wish harm
to others. We are instructed to obey him.
Leave curses for the ancestors and those who do not fear Ngai.”
“Mama,” Wangai continued, “is Ngai an ostrich?”
Mama laughed. “No child, God is not an ostrich.”
“But Mama, why do people say
that God is an ostrich?”
“Child, why do the Gikuyu call
the ostrich, the shining one?”
“Because of the white feathers that shine like a light in
the distance.”
“Yes, child,” Mama said. “Now tell me why we sometimes also
call the Kirinyaga where Ngai comes
to visit an ostrich, as well?”
“Because of the cold white powder on the mountain that also
shines white like a light in the distance.”
“Yes, child. Now tell me, what does shinning whiteness mean
to a Gikuyu?”
“It means pureness and holiness, Mama,” Wangai said. “That is what you have told us.”
“That, my child, is why we sometimes say the Ngai is an Ostrich and at other times we
call Kirinyaga the Mountain of Ngai. It
is not because Ngai is an Ostrich or a Mountain but because Ngai is pure and
holy.”
“But Mama … “
“Hush, child. It is time to sleep. Save your questions for
the sun.”
Mama smiled at her two girls as they lay down by the
sleeping Maathai. She looked at her
young son and wondered if he would ever see his big brother again. Thoughts of Muriuki sent a wave of sadness
over her heart. He was still too young
for circumcision but he was strong and took care of his mother and siblings as
best he could, though he could not join them on their journey. Her heart was
heavy.
Mama watched her children fall asleep. They had never slept
a night of their young lives outside the safety of their home, surrounded by
thick thorn fences and guarded by warriors.
They had never been in the woods except with the older boys on occasions
when they would help move livestock from one field to another. Her girls knew nothing other than cooking
food and cultivating the millet, peas, and beans in the shamba. It had been years since Mama had slept under
the stars. The stars were easier to see
when she was a child. There were not as many trees to block the view or so many
clouds down in the grasslands.
Mama Muriuki curled up behind her children, offering her
back as protection against the darkness.
She listened to the drone of insects and frogs and the sound of hyenas
in the distance. She did not fear the lion
in those thick woods but she knew the eyes of the leopard were never far
away. She was just a little older than
Wangai when she had slept outside of the protection of a Gikuyu family house
for the last time. She felt along the
dark ground for some sticks. She could
no longer remember which kind of stick it should be, but she hoped the hand of
Ngai would direct her. She broke the
sticks into small pieces and placed a small stick between each toe. Her first mother had told her that the sticks
provided a defense against animals and bad spirits. She tried to remember her first
mother’s prayer, her mother’s face.
Mama wondered if there would be other rivers to cross, then
Mama Muriuki fell asleep.
