Pre-independence parents’ pains:

Personal Reflections:

Pre-independence parents’ pains:

I have no qualms with the term ‘MAU MAU Rebellion’ seeing that our forefathers and parents were, during those rebellion years, actually rebelling against the oppression and domination that the colonialists were forcing them to go through before Kenya gained self-rule and political independence from Britain in 1963.

Actually, it is the rebellion that led to the MAU MAU war and eventually won our political freedom as Kenyans.

Yet the pains, tribulations and struggles that our patents went through those years were terrible and despicable.

For instance, the lives of our grandparents (Isaac Kariuki Wamunyu & Rebecca Wanjiru Mburu – Kariuki) and their children were immensely and almost irredeemably disrupted..

While Isaac was captured and taken to the Manyani detention camp, his wives and young children escaped from Kaptagat forest (where Isaac had been a forester and a MAU MAU official assisted by Rebecca) to seek refuge with relatives in Githûngûri, Kiambu.

My dad, Gerishon Ndungu Isaac was  a teenager by then and had his education disrupted. He also disappeared and ended up in Nairobi where he struggled and lived around Grogan rd (Ngirogoni) (current Kirinyaga rd) and even started donning (wearing) the famous Moslems’ cap perhaps to disguise his identity.

He learnt how to survive and even gained motor vehicles mechanic skills. He also leant driving and this marked his immense interest & debut into a long driving career.

According to his elder sister Miriam Njoki, Ndungu still cared about his parents and siblings but was unsure how and where to find them given the difficult times everyone in the country was going through.

Somehow, Ndungu then got to learn that Njoki had gotten hosted by her husband’s relatives and friends in the Ngando area, near current day Ngong racecourse in Nairobi, and he thus one day visited them.

In their conversation, he gave his sister K sh 90.00 (I guess part of his years’ saving and which should have been quite a big amount by then) instructing her to send the cash sparingly to Rebecca lest she sends her the whole amount and then she (Rebecca) generously gives it out leaving her and her family in suffering again.

He definitely knew that her mom was amazingly generous. Njoki had learnt that her mom had later sought refuge with her maternal uncle’s relatives in Uplands.

Rebecca too had disguised herself as a Maasai woman in ‘Shukas’ (predominantly a Maasai woman attire then) and escaped from Githunguri fearing that the Kaptagat area home guards (this were the soldiers loyal to the colonialists and were actually also known as loyalists) would soon get to hear of her and her co-wife’s presence & stay in Githûngûri especially given that the area had its own lot of loyalists and given that loyalists from the different MAU MAU regions ardently kept in touch with each other.

 

I guess Njoki obeyed her brother’s instructions and shared the cash as instructed. Ndungu returned to his safe space in Kirinyaga rd and life continued in earnest fuelled by hope that freedom would eventually be attained.

 

Njoki later learnt that Rebecca and her young children were undergoing terrible times in Uplands and she sent word inviting them to join her in Ngando.

She hosted them in the area and recalls that soon after the mom’s arrival loyalists from the area arrived searching for men who could have have escaped arrest to send them to detention.

They demanded to know where her (Njoki’s) husband was and she confessed that he had already been captured and sent to prison.

Yet, they wanted evidence and fortunately she showed them a letter that the husband had sent from prison. And luckily, none of the homeguards knew Rebecca and so could not recognize her as an active MAU MAU supporter from the Kaptagat area and they left Njoki and her mother and the family in peace.

 

Meanwhile, the Kaptagat area homeguards had received information that Rebecca and her Co-wife had reached Githunguri. They went to Githunguri looking for the women and it was then that they nabbed the co-wife, Gladys Wanjiru, who was never seen again alive or dead😢.

As a very active person, even up to old age, Rebecca later stretched herself out and moved to the Lavington area near Ngando and which was exclusively a white people’s neighborhood, seeking employment. (The area had been dubbed ‘Kanyanga’ – – derived from the strict warning ‘Kanyanga hapa uone cha mtema kuni’ earlier given out to Africans by the white men).

Fortunately, she soon got hired as a cook (Mbishi– from Kiswahili term Mpishi) and that is how she managed to live and support her family until after independence when her husband Isaac was released from detention quite sick and old.

According to Njoki, soon after Isaac’s poor health saw him admitted at the then St George Hospital (present day KNH). He soon after passed on telling his sons at his hospital’s death bed that he had not earned any thing much in life to bequeath to them except love and the freedom he had suffered to attain for them and Kenya.

By then, Ndungu had somehow survived and thrived and gone into the Taxis business in Nairobi CBD and had settled and lived close to his mothers, siblings and other relatives in the Ngando area……{Ends}