Ripples in the Pool: Why Rebeka Njau's book is still causing waves 50 years later

From left: Morille Njau (Rebeka Njau's son), Rebeka Njau, Hana Njau-Okolo (Rebeka's daughter) and Prof Miriam Musonye, chair of Literature Department at the University of Nairobi, during the book's unveiling at the Alliance Française [Courtesy]

During the relaunch of her book, Ripples in the Pool, a dignified Rebeka Njau sat at the Alliance Française Multimedia library, taking it all in, with her daughter Hana Njau-Okolo sitting beside her.

For a 91-year-old woman, Rebeka is surprisingly in good shape. Apart from a walking cane, nothing else betrays her advanced age.

She paid rapt attention to proceedings throughout the entire event but from her facial expression, it was not easy to tell what was going on in her mind. Towards the end of the event, it was question and answer time with the author. Many in the audience were eager to hear from the matriarch as she spoke about the book she wrote 49 years ago.

There were others looking to pin her down on some aspect or other in the book. The first three questions were asked and when it was time for Rebeka to answer, there was pin-drop silence when Hana handed the mic to her mother.

“Read the book,” said Rebeka. “I am a writer, not a talker.” And with that, she was through.

Not satisfied with Rebeka’s response, a journalist that had wanted to know the relevance of Ripples in the Pool, in today’s world decided to have a second bite at the cherry; this time more animated than the first time. He also wished to know what was in the author’s mind when she wrote certain sections of the book.

Perhaps wishing to navigate through the situation and in the face of the journalist’s obstinacy, Prof Joseph Muleka, the moderator of the session, diplomatically cited a few texts written hundreds of years ago but still remain relevant to date.

Not satisfied, the journalist interjected; this time almost making it a shouting march. He even read a passage from the book to drive his point home.

All this time, an unruffled Rebeka sat patiently, facing the audience, a bemused half-smile playing on her lips.

“When I wrote this book, so many bad things were happening in my life,” started Rebeka. “When the book came out, many people could not believe that I had written it. ‘Did your husband write the book for you?’, some of my bosses asked. That is where you want to take me back to.”

The fact that a book that was written 49-years-ago can arouse such impassioned debate speaks to its potency.

More proof of how well regarded this book is, was in the fact that the entire event was organised by the Literature Department of the University of Nairobi. None other than the departmental chair, Prof Miriam Musonye, gave the introductory speech, as well as Prof Jennifer Muchiri, the Associate Dean of Faculty of Arts at the same university.

The University of Nairobi Travelling Theatre, under the direction of Dr Kimingichi Wabende, also staged two skits; adaptation from the book. Dr Makau Kitata, also from the Department of Literature, gave an erudite and nuanced scholarly analysis of Ripples in The Pool.

In his presentation, Dr Kitata noted that the book captures the post-colonial period, where Africans were still learning to cope with new economic dispensation, where they had to work in order to make ends meet.

It was especially tough for those who had their land dispossessed and had to seek employment in urban areas. This was doubly so for unmarried women, who had to endure ridicule from a society that considered such women as having loose morals.

This is the kind of life Selina, a nurse by profession and a central character in the book, leads in Nairobi. Apart from her regular job as a nurse, Selina moonlights as a fashion designer and, well, living off men.

“It is a woman’s duty to make herself attractive,” Selina tells a friend. Well, not much has changed in the intervening period. Don’t we have girls as young as 20 being ‘kept’ by much older, but richer men, the so-called Wababas. You only need to read Sarah Haluwa’s Sinners to appreciate how modern-day ‘Selinas’ are doing their thing. Selina later marries Gikere, much to the annoyance of Gikere’s mother, who knows Selina’s background in the village, let alone her notoriety in the city.

It is here that Selina’s life metamorphoses, thereby giving the book its most enduring legacy. When she moves back to the village with Gikere, Gaciru, his younger sister comes to live with them. One thing leads to the other and the two women develop a romantic relationship.

Mark you, this was written in the seventies, when African authors were deeply conservative and would not be caught dead writing on same sex relationships, never mind that in traditional African societies, there were female-led households, where an older, more established woman, ‘married’ a younger woman, who then bore her children by sleeping with carefully selected men, for procreation purposes only.

To further appreciate Rebeka’s decision to write about Selina and Gaciru’s romantic entanglement, one must consider her background, having been brought up in a strict Christian background.

In fact, she was one of the pioneering students of Alliance Girls High School, where she later taught briefly before getting married to Elimo Njau, the Makerere-trained Tanzanian visual artist, who later founded the Paa ya Paa Art Gallery.

Today, the more ‘liberated’ African authors are writing more freely on same sex relationships like Monica Arac de Nyeko did in her Caine award-winning short story, Jambula Tree.

The current edition of Ripples in the Pool, was reissued this year by Black Star Books and Head of Zeus, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing. It was first published in 1975 by Transafrica Publishers and later by Heinemann, under the African Writers Series, in 1978.

Ngunjiri is the curator of Maisha Yetu, a digital Arts and Books media platform [e-mail]