How Mau Mau war interrupted learning for African children

By Joseph Karimi

One sunny afternoon in March of 1953, our teacher at Kiambura Out School was halfway through the lesson when a bullet was fired outside our classroom. I was then in Standard Three.

The bullet shot through the iron sheets of our classroom and spread pandemonium as pupils and teachers ducked for cover.

Missionaries operated the main school, Tetu Mission. All other satellite institutions such as ours were known as “out schools.”

Three weeks earlier, as we walked to school past a thick forest of wattle trees, shots were fired over our heads. We scampered with fear and ran down to Karumutiindu, a few kilometres from Nyeri Town, and uphill to school.

The Monday that followed, the Union Jack was hoisted on a flagpole outside our block that day as usual. The head teacher, Consolato Karuiru, alerted the school of a letter found pinned on the mud wall of his office and signed by Mau Mau. It warned thus: “Ni ithui Mau Mau na nituguka gucururia bendera, Union Jack. Ciana iria tugukora guku, tugacitinia matu.” (We are the Mau Mau and we shall come to lower the Union Jack. We shall cut the ears of all the children we find). Two bullets were left on the ground as testimony to how serious the threat was.

The matter was reported to the authorities.    It was several months into the Mau Mau liberation struggle and the State of Emergency, declared on October 20, 1952. A curfew was in force and the war between Mau Mau fighters and the British colonial forces was raging. There were cries of pain and desperation in the country, especially in Central Kenya.

Firing shots

And so it was that the Mau Mau eventually came for the Union Jack. They alerted us by firing a shot though the roof.  About 200 pupils forced their way through the doors, dashed across the playground and between a row of latrines into the shambas along Kanoga Stream. It was a struggle for survival as we fell time and again before reaching the stream and jumping across.

It was only after we reached Gitathi-ini ridge that we paused to survey the other side.

No one, not even our teachers were bold enough to go back and retrieve the items abandoned. We salvaged nothing, not even our books. We rescued only our bodies in the scare. Later, the school was razed to the ground.  Scenes like these were a result of the guerilla tactics used by the freedom fighters.Because we had done very well in Standard One, three boys including myself had been “promoted” straight to Standard Three. No Standard Two. We had caught up with others especially in arithmetic, where we had to grasp the “Long Division” we had not seen in Standard One.

But now, our school was no more. Our plight represented how everyday life was disrupted by the war for liberation. Despite this, most people were happy with the Mau Mau and offered them any assistance they could.

We retired back to our homes to wait for any opportunity for a place in another school. Some of the bigger boys, who were in Standard Four went to Ithengenguri School to seek places.

 Gun battle

One of my friends, Patrick Kiama later recalled that as they adapted to the environment, a gun battle erupted around the school between the Mau Mau and Home Guards (loyal askaris). The children in his class was scared as one Mau Mau fighter sought refuge in their classroom.

By the end of 1953, there was no place yet for many of us. The government launched the “villagisation” programme where all the families who were living on their own parcels of land were ordered to move to areas designated as Emergency Villages.

Space was allotted to individual family heads to put up new houses in the village. It was time to look for building materials. Many were forced to pull down their dwellings and transfer the materials to set up a new home.

It was so agonising for parents who had no money for the new undertaking. Marauding home guards patrolled the villages, fingers on the trigger. Our parents were mobilised at sunrise to provide free labour under guard by digging a moat near the Aberdare Forest. It was meant to cut off the Mau Mau and game from crossing into the “native” reserve.

Children of today are very lucky because they do not go through what many of us encountered those days.  For me, 1954 was the worst period we lived through. We endured harassment by security forces who were handling the thousands of humans cramped together in the concentration “camps” they called emergency villages.

At night, the Mau Mau would creep into the villages to seek assistance and punish those suspected to be supporting the government. They were brutally beaten or executed. Many were convicted after trial in absentia.

Around February 1955, word came that the pupils who were forced out of Kiambura School were required to report at Kamakwa Trading Centre, some three kilometres away to resume schooling.

Kamakwa Trading Centre near Nyeri town fell within the designated “Operation Area” also known as “No man’s land”. The entire Trading Centre was desolate. There were several business premises and residential plots lined up along the streets and others dotting backyards. If you were seen unescorted by government security, the Emergency Law stipulated that you be shot on sight.

When we reported at Kamakwa, only one premise owned by pioneer businessman Nderi Waigeria was occupied. These abandoned buildings would now be our classrooms.

On our first day, we met our former head teacher Karuiro, and also Dionisio Kariuki who had taught us earlier. What a happy re-union it was! Most of us lined up to join a majority of boys and girls from our village. It was a reunion of villagers rather than academics. The bigger numbers came from Gitathi-ini and other villages like Gitamuiri (Kamuyu).

 Ours class, a small room of about 14 by 20 feet, was a hotel named “1940.” We were allocated a female teacher named Jane. She was very kind and anxious to impart knowledge.