Weep Not Child Read Free Page A

shorts.’
    O, Mother, you are an angel of God, you are, you are
. Then he wondered: Had she been to a magic worker? Or else howcould she have divined his child’s unspoken wish, his undivulged dream?
And here I am with nothing but a piece of calico on my body and soon I shall have a shirt and shorts for the first time.
    ‘I thank you, Mother, very much.’ He wanted to say more. But Njoroge was not used to expressing strong feelings in words. However his eyes spoke all. Again Nyokabi understood. She was happy.
    When Kamau came in the evening, Njoroge took him aside.
    ‘Kamau, I shall go to school.’
    ‘School?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Who said so? Father?’
    ‘No. It was our mother. Has our elder mother told you the same thing?’
    ‘No, brother. You know I am being trained as a carpenter. I cannot drop the apprenticeship. But I am glad you’re going to school.’
    ‘I am, oh, so glad. But I wish you too would come.’
    ‘Don’t you worry about me. Everything will be all right. Get education, I’ll get carpentry. Then we shall, in the future, be able to have a new and better home for the whole family.’
    ‘Yes,’ Njoroge said thoughtfully. ‘That’s what I want. And you know, I think Jacobo is as rich as Mr Howlands because he got education. And that’s why each takes his children to school because of course they have learnt the value of it.’
    ‘It’s true. But some, you know, must get learning and others this and that trade.’
    ‘Well, you see, I was thinking that if both of us could learn and become like John, the big son of Jacobo, it would be a good thing. People say that because he has finished all the learning in Kenya, he will now go far away to…’
    ‘England.’
    ‘Or Burma.’
    ‘England and Burma and Bombay and India are all the same places. You have to cross the sea before you can reach there.’
    ‘That’s where Mr Howlands comes from?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘I wonder why he left England, the home of learning, and came here. He must be foolish.’
    ‘I don’t know. You cannot understand a white man.’

    There was only one road that ran right across the land. It was long and broad and shone with black tar, and when you travelled along it on hot days you saw little lakes ahead of you. But when you went near, the lakes vanished, to appear again a little farther ahead. Some people called them the devil’s waters because they deceived you and made you more thirsty if your throat was already dry. And the road that ran across the land and was long and broad had no beginning and no end. At least, few people knew of its origin. Only if you followed it it would take you to the big city and leave you there while it went beyond to the unknown, perhaps joining the sea. Who made the road? Rumour had it that it came with the white men and some said that it was rebuilt by the Italian prisoners during the big war that was fought far away from here. People did not know how big the war had been because most of them had never seen a big war fought with planes, poison, fire, and bombs – bombs that would finish a country just like that when they were dropped from the air. It was indeed a big war because it made the British worry and pray and those black sons of the land who had gone to fight said it was a big war. There was once another big war. The first one was to drive away the Germans who had threatened to attack and reduce the black people to slavery. Or so the people had been told. But that was far away and long ago and only old men and middle-aged men could remember it. It was not as big as the second because then there were no bombs, and black people did not go to Egypt and Burma.
    The Italian prisoners who built the long tarmac road had left a name for themselves because some went about with black women and the black women had white children. Only the children by black mothers and Italian prisoners who were also white men were not really ‘white’ in the usual way. Theywere ugly and some grew up