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  THE PRESENT MOMENT

  Marjorie Oludhe Macgoye

  Afterword by Valerie Kibera

  Historical Context by Jean Hay

  THE WOMEN WRITING AFRICA SERIES

  WOMEN WRITING AFRICA

  A Project of The Feminist Press at The City University of New York Funded by the Ford Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation

  Women Writing Africa is a project of cultural reconstruction that aims to restore African women’s voices to the public sphere. Through the collection of written and oral narratives to be published in six regional anthologies, the project will document the history of self-conscious literary expression by African women throughout the continent. In bringing together women’s voices, Women Writing Africa will illuminate for a broad public the neglected history and culture of African women, who have shaped and been shaped by their families, societies, and nations.

  The Women Writing Africa Series, which supports the publication of individual books, is part of the Women Writing Africa project.

  THE WOMEN WRITING AFRICA SERIES

  ACROSS BOUNDARIES

  The Journey of a South African Woman Leader

  A Memoir by Mamphela Ramphele

  AND THEY DIDN’T DIE

  A Novel by Lauretta Ngcobo

  CHANGES

  A Love Story

  A Novel by Ama Ata Aidoo

  COMING TO BIRTH

  A Novel by Marjorie Oludhe Macgoye

  DAVID’S STORY

  A Novel by Zoë Wicomb

  HAREM YEARS

  The Memoirs of an Egyptian Feminist, 1879–1924

  by Huda Shaarawi

  Translated and introduced by Margot Badran

  NO SWEETNESS HERE

  And Other Stories

  by Ama Ata Aidoo

  TEACHING AFRICAN LITERATURES IN A GLOBAL LITERARY ECONOMY

  Women’s Studies Quarterly 25, nos. 3 & 4 (fall/winter 1998)

  Edited by Tuzyline Jita Allan

  YOU CAN’T GET LOST IN CAPE TOWN

  A Novel by Zoë Wicomb

  ZULU WOMAN

  The Life Story of Christina Sibiya

  by Rebecca Hourwich Reyher

  Published by The Feminist Press

  at The City University of New York

  The Graduate Center

  365 Fifth Avenue

  New York, NY 10016

  feministpress.org

  First ebook edition, 2015

  First Feminist Press edition, 2000

  Originally published in 1987 by East African Educational

  Publishers/Heinemann Kenya, Nairobi.

  Copyright © 1987 by Marjorie Oludhe Macgoye

  Afterword copyright © 2000 by Valerie Kibera

  Historical Context copyright © 2000 by Jean Hay

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or used, stored in any information retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission of The Feminist Press at The City University of New York, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical essays or reviews.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Macgoye, Marjorie Oludhe.

  The present moment / Marjorie Oludhe ; afterword by Valerie Kibera ; historical context by Jean Hay.

  p. cm. — (Women writing Africa series)

  eISBN: 978-1-55861-896-1 (ebook)

  ISBN: 978-1-55861-248-8 (paperback)

  1. Women—Kenya—Fiction. 2. Old age homes—Fiction. 3. Aged women—Fiction. 4. Kenya—Fiction.

  I. Title. II. Series.

  PR9381.9.M19P74 2000

  This publication is made possible, in part, by grants from the Ford Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation in support of The Feminist Press’s Women Writing Africa Series, and by the Nathan Cummings Foundation, with the support and encouragement of Sonia Simon-Cummings. Publication of this book is supported by public funds from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York State Council on the Arts, a State Agency. The Feminist Press would also like to thank Joanne Markell and Genevieve Vaughan for their generosity in supporting this book.

  The digitization of this project is supported, in part, by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Copyright

  Cast of Characters

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Afterword

  Notes

  Works Cited

  Historical Context

  About the Author

  About the Press

  Also Available from The Feminist Press

  Back Cover

  CAST OF CHARACTERS

  Women in the Refuge

  BESSIE: Kikuyu. Does not remember her full name or age, or most of her lost family. Her last son, Leonard (Lucky), was born in detention.

  MAMA CHUNGU (MOTHER PAIN): Seychelloise. Born Mimi Paul c. 1925. Brought to Mombasa by her father, a ship’s steward. Works as a servant for “Mr. Robert.”

  MATRON: Kikuyu. A widow. In charge of the Refuge. Has four adult children.

  NEKESA: Luyia. Born c. 1920 in Nairobi. Has lost touch with her family, except one brother. Friends and members of the Revival Fellowship, Keziah and Mama Victor, offer her help and support.

  PRISCILLA NJUGNA: Kikuyu. Born c. 1923 in the “settled area,” where her father works as a cook in a European house. Marries Evans Njugna, and both work for the Bateson family.

  RAHEL APUDO: Luo. Born c. 1915, daughter of a soldier. Marries a soldier with whom she has a son and two daughters, Vitalis, Margaret, and Florence. Her husband and her co-wife also have several children.

  SOPHIA MWAMBA: Swahili. Born c. 1912 in Mombasa Old Town and named Fatuma. With her husband, Ali, has three children, Hassan, Mariam, and Hawa. Hawa has married Solomon Wau and has several children, including Joseph Baraka Wau. After Ali’s death, Fatuma marries a Taita Christian, Henry Mwamba, and been baptisted Sophia. Henry has a daughter, Emma, from his previous marriage.

  WAIRIMU: Kikuyu. Born c. 1905, daughter of Gichuru with several sisters and a brother. As a young woman, is seduced by Waitito.

  Nurses

  GERTRUDE: Friend of Mary Kamau. Engaged to Sam Kamau.

  JANE: Engaged to John, who is in the Kenya Air Force.

  MARY KAMAU: Friendly with Jose Baraka Wau, and has a brother, Sam Kamau.

  Other characters

  “LADY FROM THE CATHEDRAL”: Escorts Mrs. Reinhold, and has known Priscilla and Mama Chungu.

  MRS. REINHOLD: An employee of a donor agency, observing projects in different parts of Africa.

  THE SOLDIER: A vagrant, and subject to delusions.

  REV. ANDREW WAITITO: Son of Nellie, brought up in an Ugandan orphanage.

  Historical figures mentioned

  ARCHBISHOP ALEXANDER: South African church leader who helped inspire the independent church movements.

  JAMES BEAUTTAH: Kikuyu activist.

  ARCHDEACON LEONARD BEECHER: Representative of African interests in the British Legislative Council and later Anglican archbishop of East Africa.

  CHARLES BOWRING: Colonial secretary.

  ARTHUR CREECH-JONES: Colonial secretary.

  MR. DOORLY: Nairobi magistrate.

  SHEIKH HYDER: Head of a prominent Mombasa family.

  JOMO KENYATTA: Activist and later, first president of Kenya.

  MARGARET WAMBUI KENYA
TTA: daughter of President Kenyatta and mayor of Nairobi

  CHEGE KIBACHIA: trade unionist.

  MBIYU KOINANGE: Founder of the Kenya Teacher Training College, minister of state under Kenyatta.

  FRED KUBAI: Trade unionist.

  ELIUD MATHU: Representative of African interests after Beecher.

  MARY NYANJIRU: Protestor in the “Harry Thuku riots” of 1922.

  MAKHAN SINGH: Trade unionist.

  ABDULLA TAIRARA: Colleague of Thuku.

  HARRY THUKU: Kikuyu political activist, 1895–1970.

  REV. MR. WRIGHT: Anglican chaplain.

  NOTE: In Kikuyu custom, the first son is named after the paternal grandfather, so there will be a recurring sequence of names.

  CHAPTER ONE

  It was a beautiful morning. Wairimu could hear the birds singing behind the higher trees and the sun was already promising to warm the path before it got much higher. She would be hot in her goatskin from shoulder to knee, but since being circumcised she wore it always modestly, mindful of her grown-up status. The water-container bounced empty on her back, hardly enough weight to keep the leather thong steady round her forehead. Her bare arms and legs felt smooth and luxuriously conscious of the mild air: on the left arm was a metal bangle her brother had brought back from Nairobi when he went there to see the train and conduct some mysterious business with rupees and skins.

  She rubbed possessively at the bangle. Even since she had started fetching water as a little girl the forest had thinned. The path was not so chilly and dank as it used to be. One was hardly afraid – as the mothers always had been in their girlhood – of hyenas or human raiders. On this path she had never heard the wailing of a baby abandoned or put out to perish beside its dying mother. There was too much light among the trees now, and too many of the white men’s agents were on the watch. Beyond the ridges, it was said, the Roman Catholics would even pick up the babies if they were in time, and somehow nurture them without a mother’s milk, not caring to find out whether they were survivors of twins or to examine the tooth order, let alone speculating what evil had brought death upon the mother of a perfectly formed child.

  Wairimu quickened her pace. She was not really afraid of the forest, but she would need to catch up with the group of girls ahead to get help in hoisting the heavy skin once it was filled with water. It was strange that Nyambura had not caught up with her by now. This was the first time she had ever seemed reluctant to take her friend with her to deliver a message to her second grandmother, and Wairimu would have waited for her nearer the homestead if she had not been confident she would follow soon. It was strange, but as people grew up you had to expect them to change.

  Wairimu turned a bend in the path which brought the morning sun almost to dazzle her eyes, and there the young man was standing. Her head was not bent because her load was so light, and his eyes seemed to catch hers as she paused in the middle of a step, conscious of the weight on her forward foot pressing down the valley path, the yellow haze of morning light, the air caressing her braceleted arm, the bird-song overhead and the rustle of some small animal making for the river.

  She turned, and the turning was slow and painful, stretched her left arm and found the bracelet gone, the wrist bony and the fingers hard with old burns and scars. Her eyes were still dazzled a bit and sore from the forward heat.

  ‘Ee, Wairimu,’ one of the other old ladies chided, ‘you sit too near the charcoal fire. Your head gets heavy and you could hurt yourself when you fall asleep.’

  ‘I was not going to sleep, Priscilla,’ she replied primly. ‘I was just resting my eyes from the glare and thinking of the next thing I had to do.’

  ‘And I was just doing the next thing and stirring the thin porridge for both of us. Where is your mug, now, Wairimu?’

  It was difficult to think that Priscilla had ever been young. She was all bones and corners. Her voice was sharp and her ears sharp, and though her eyes were a bit blurred she never seemed to forget which day it was, or whose turn it was, or what everyone was called, the baptismal name and the birth-given name and the mother-of name for those who had been lucky and the place names they were attached to. Priscilla, Wairimu thought, had never grown: there was no place where her skin was too big for her, where breasts or features spilt out over the bone structure, no hidden interior self. But Wairimu still enclosed within herself the springy footstep and the ancient ornaments, the gleaming rounded skin and the halo of sunlight encircling the young man with his shirt and shorts, his wide-brimmed hat and sandals, his knowledge of the world and other ways and women. That had been the start of it all, of her going away, because after this revelation of what he shared with her she could not face either the shameful disclosure of the wedding day or the cloying sameness of all the days that would follow. The forest was no longer thick enough to hide divergence. She had to go away.

  Rahel had gone from them in all but name. She had not spoken for two weeks now and could not hold a cup to her lips. She lay there, long and black and gaunt, her eyes sometimes following the others about. It was not her first withdrawal, but her longest. They mostly left Matron to feed her, for they were blamed if they made a mess, spilling things or letting her play with the food forgotten in her mouth. But Rahel too was wandering in the woods, gathering firewood with her friends, and as they found themselves far away from the homestead they sang louder and more wildly, practising among themselves the marriage songs and other forbidden chants, which they would not dare to utter within the elders’ hearing and yet were expected to know and perform when the occasion arrived. One of the older girls had even seen the fearful twin dance performed and demonstrated, as far as she could remember, the women’s part, until far from the usual path they came upon the dead tree and were struck suddenly quiet, alarmed by the silvery replica of living branches and the vivid green of moss. They turned away quickly, breaking no branch, but these days the image of the dead tree lay before Rahel’s eyes and she clung to it for its symmetry, its detachment and its total recall.

  Some of the old ladies said they dreamed a lot. Perhaps this was what they meant. For Luo people, Rahel used patiently to explain to the others, a dream was no such flickering thing as they described, although there might be fancies that turned into dreams. When someone brought a message to you he came, not just seemed to come. He came to claim what was a dead person’s due – a chicken, a change of name, relationship with a child soon to be born – and even if you did not know him yourself, the elders would recognise who he was from your description and act on the message.

  Suppose it were a living person, Priscilla had asked. And then does he appear at the age when he died, or younger? Does he speak in known words? Do you see him in your bedroom or somewhere else? Do other people sleeping there see him too? Really, Priscilla should have been a European, asking so many questions. It was all on account of having gone to school so young and worked all those years in big, chilly houses, where the comfort of the cooking fire never penetrated to the upper air and chairs, shiny to the touch, kept you at a distance from other people.

  Rahel could no longer answer these questions. She knew what she saw – and this time she saw the girls, young and noisy and mischievous. Her tongue had somehow got out of control since that night she had seen her father’s eldest brother as she remembered him long ago, his thin shoulders bare, the little circles of gold gleaming in his ears (for he was a peaceable man and had bound himself to the self-restraint of the ear-rings as early as she remembered him). His fingers were pulling and working at the sisal rope. He had brought her no message, claimed no child – for her daughters had died long since and their daughters might, for all she knew, be married in distant places – only he had looked at her kindly, plaiting the rope, plaiting the rope, and from that time a chill had fallen upon her limbs and she moved with difficulty. Well, in Nairobi in June and July it could be chilly, but it was only when she saw the dead tree that she remembered the shadowed thickets that were always cold. It was many ye
ars since those places had been broken down for firewood and the land put under the hoe: nowadays, at home, you never wished for a heavier blanket unless in the midst of the rain. Of course now you were clothed. Yet in those days the stout calico petticoats the girls got from their own chickens, or as a present with the first instalment of dowry, seemed to their mothers finicky and quite unnecessary. A nice Luo girl was not expected to go in for these new-fangled fashions.

  Unable to rouse her, friends pulled the charcoal brazier nearer to her bed and crept away.

  The man clanked along the road and the old ladies called one another to come and see. After all, a fine figure of a man, crazy or not, is worth a second look at any age. This one was much more striking than those who appear on Sundays in the uniform of a three-piece suit, collar and tie, as like to one another as the more splendidly dressed waiters and ushers who would move you on outside the big hotels where tourists sometimes offered shillings if you could get close enough, looking pathetic and detached.

  He jangled as he walked. It was not in fact the row of medals – they were cut, actually, from the silver foil of cocoa tins and suspended by safety pins and laces from a length of cellulose packing tape – but pieces of metal suspended from the belt that made the noise and occasionally hit against a jerky knee, but most of the old ladies were not able to see that clearly. The man held his head erect and marched with exaggerated movements, his lips muttering directions to himself, ‘one, two, one, two’, when he was not speaking aloud. Coloured cords streamed from the shoulders of his khaki shirt and a piece of tinsel glinted bravely on top of the peaked cap adorned with red and green beads. The tatty trousers were tucked into well-shined ankle boots, and a small cane in his right hand emulated the movements of a newly commissioned officer, anxious lest he leave the baton behind.

  A crowd of small children shouted greetings all around but kept their distance after the man had wheeled about with a meaningful tap of the baton on the iron bars. As he got into his stride again, Wairimu minced to the roadside and broke into a dance step, tightening the wrapper girlishly round her hips.

  The man stopped and roared out a dozen obscenities in English. The children giggled. Younger women turned their backs and ostentatiously stooped to resume their washing. A young man stood still and saluted, then continued walking in the opposite direction. The words were too familiar to the older parts of eastern Nairobi to retain much of their original force. Some of them were untranslatable and therefore retained an aura of quaintness and sophistication. For some of the old ladies who were new to the town they had no literal meaning; for others they stirred memories which were better suppressed in their present, respected surroundings.