In the House of the Interpreter Read Free

African
(Phylon, 1960), vol. 31, no. 1970, p. 29.
    ‡ L. B. Greaves,
Carey Francis of Kenya
(London: Rex Collins, 1969), p. 6.

4
    Had I but died an hour before this chance, I had lived a blessed time; for, from this instant, there’s nothing serious in mortality
. It was about five, on Monday, my fourth morning in DormTwo. Why this talk of death? I thought as I sat up, looking apprehensively around me. The morning crier stood in the common yard, outside. The rest of us were in varying degrees of wakefulness. Arap Soi, second year, next to my bed, calmed me down: It’s Moses Gathere, the house prefect, his way of welcoming a new day. Or rather, his way of telling the prefects of the four Livingstone dorms to get us moving.
    Had I but died
, Moses started again. Another boy snorted loudly to nobody in particular, Nincompoop. That’s Stanley Njagi, Soi said. He doesn’t like to wake up, and he doesn’t like being woken up. He covers himself completely with a blanket and reads with a flashlight late into the night. He loves the word
nincompoop
.
    By the time Moses was set to crow a third time, like the biblical rooster, everybody had jumped out of their beds, gone out to the bathroom outside, and come back to change from their pajamas into their work clothes, the garments we were given on Saturday. Some boys said they looked like those worn by prisoners, but I didn’t mind them. It’s clean-up time, Moses was saying again loudly, adding, Cleanliness is second to godliness. This generated laughter that relaxed the morning tension, except in the case of one boy who mimicked the crier:
Had I but a dagger in my hands
, he mumbled,
I would …
    And that’s Stephen Mũrĩithi, Soi said. He resents authority. He’s always combative, as if trying to pick a fight, although he doesn’t let it get that far. But his I’m-ready-to-take-you-on stare can be intimidating.
    The dorm hived with activity immediately. Without any Shakespearean dramatics, Bethuel A. Kiplagat, the Dorm Two prefect, calmly, efficiently, but authoritatively divided up the morning chores, with the new boys spread out among the veterans: some to clean the dorm; others to cut the grass with scythes and clear the compound; others to clean the toilets and bathrooms outside.
    Stories about the toilets were passed on from the older boys, from long ago when they were first introduced. Some students had used the new seating toilets as if they were another version of the old pit latrines, squatting instead of sitting on them and thus often missing the bowl. Nobody would claim responsibility for the resulting mess, and no student volunteered to clean up. Threats of force were met with stony silence. No boy wanted to be thought of as a
chura
, a shit cleaner. Finally, in response, the white teachers took brooms and water and other material and did the work. The resistance was broken. Cleaning toilets became an accepted, normal part of the morning chores.
    After cleanup, we came back inside and stood by our beds, while the house master, David Martin, accompanied by Moses Gathere, inspected the dorm, a kind of intrahouse competition among the four Livingstone dorms for tidiness and preparation for the
jembe
inspection.
    We then rushed for the showers. I hesitated to remove my clothes in front of the others. In my village, the circumcised and the uncircumcised would never have shared showers, but here that’s what everybody, including the prefects, was doing. The school had obviously broken such divisions, fornobody seemed bothered by any other person’s nakedness. Some were already soaping themselves, while humming tunes or shouting at one another. Stop staring and get in, somebody yelled at me.
    After the showers, we were to get ready for the morning parade, a phrase that conjured up magic. Truly, every day, hour, minute, and second in the school was producing something new and strange, with promises of more to come. I put on my khaki uniform and blue tie with