Cleaning the dust in The House of the Interpreters. A memoir of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o.

Ngũgĩ, for me, has always been one of those enigmatic writers whose life story is as interesting as the stories he penned. Think Kerouac and Jack London, these are the type of writers who write deeply from their experiences, that you can’t mistake the authenticity in their words. But these writers write mainly for themselves and though to a great extent, Ngũgĩ has the same intention, Ngũgĩ stands taller than his compatriots in that he had always had a greater purpose in his writing. His writing is why I started reading. It is self-introspective, it is questioning the fact that shit just ain’t right and it is passionate to a damn fault.

The House of the Interpreters covers a small part of Ngũgĩ’s life, but a formative one. Ngũgĩ was a student in one of Kenya’s first high schools in the Alliance School, and the four years he spent there en route to university planted the seeds of the writer he would become years later. Around that time, Kenya would be a decade away before claiming their independence, but important dominoes have already started falling. African countries are toppling one by one from their colonial parents and becoming independent themselves. It was only a matter of time before the Kenyan domino falls.

But the night is darkest just before the dawn. This is the period where the Mau Mau rebels are fighting against the colonial powers and the colonial authorities are doing their best to quell any sort of rebellion, to the cost of many livelihoods including Ngũgĩ’s own family. The memoir opens when Ngũgĩ, as a first year student, returning home via the second class seat in the train, eager to share his academic achievements with his family only to find that his house has been destroyed and the whole community has been moved into a refugee camp that they are building with their bare hands.

It doesn’t help that Ngũgĩ’s older brother, Good Wallace was also one of the Mau Mau fighters which put his family under a precarious position. This is a secret which is difficult to keep for a high schooler as he was also interrogated by the authorities about his family’s involvement with the rebellion. He found later that there was no need to keep secrets, as after revealing his story to his principal after returning late to the school, that he only got off with a light reprimand “to be more careful next time”.

Under the shadows of the principal, Carey Francis

The presence of the said principal, Carey Francis, looms large in the memoir. It is fair to say that in these early years, he had an influence on Ngũgĩ, who respected his character. Under Francis, the Alliance became from a mere school to a proper foundation of leadership. On his arrival, Francis cut the fat, removed staff and enforced stricter discipline for all.

Francis is an enigmatic presence, an eye in the middle of the storm because in his profession lies a contradiction: teaching local boys to be independent thinkers, yet making sure that they tow in line with the colonial authorities. It is also from Francis that Ngũgĩ borrows the title of his memoirs, as he quoted from Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress:

“Then said Christian: what means this. The Interpreter answered: This parlor is the heart of a man that was never sanctified by the sweet grace of the gospel. The dust is his original sin and inward corruptions that have defiled the man. He that began to sweep at first is the Law; but she that brought water and did sprinkle it is the gospel.”

The education he provided then, is the law of good behaviour, while religion is still needed to water the dust. Francis here was quoting passionately in front of a lady who dressed a little bit too liberally in visiting a religious school. Here we see Francis unmasked a little — someone escaping a personal tragedy from his native England and seeking refuge in Africa, as his wife left after he came back from war.

Ngũgĩ respected Francis as he was someone who lived by his values without the need to flaunt, and goes about his business. It is a trait which was perhaps passed on from the principal to the student.

The storm brewing around the oasis

During his years in Alliance, Ngũgĩ became a star in the debating team, learned that he’s not so good with sports but was a pretty fair runner (his famous passage in A Grain of Wheat was attributed to his running experiences in track and field) and was an active boy scout. He also grappled with the ideas of religion after converting to the Christian faith and struggled with the idea of God with a white face.

We also get a glimpse of the influences on his readings. Shakespeare is always prominent. Hearing Kenyans speaking the bard’s English in its iambic pentameter was a revelation for Ngũgĩ as he fell in love with the language. He read books by white authors, books about his continent and picking up right away that shit just ain’t right. Haggard’s King Solomon’s Mines treated the natives in the book like animals, something that he would find recurring in other white author’s writings of Africa (his famous criticism of Karen Blixen being one). He read thrillers for a while before running into Wuthering Heights. He always comes back to Grimm’s fairy tales and Aesop fables for their narratives in morality.

Admittedly, the years in Alliance had only been an oasis for Ngũgĩ. After his graduation, complete with the certification and an offer to Makarere University, he ran into trouble when stopped in a road block for not having his tax papers (though his papers were in order). It was his experience of passing through nights behind bars and locking horns with authorities. The soldiers who arrested him and framed him for resisting arrest tried to convince him for a guilty plea, so that everybody could get on with their lives.

If Ngũgĩ had done so, maybe the story would have been different. He would still go through Makarere and still become an author perhaps. But the fact that he resisted the guilty plea, defending himself by cross examining those who arrested him, as he breaks down the logic as he would during his debates, he was able to clear himself.

This would be the first of many fights Ngũgĩ would go through in his life as an author. It wouldn’t be the last time that he would be in hot waters with the authorities and by the way the country is going, his fight is nowhere near over. I have a funny feeling that he will continue writing and following his principles as long he’s breathing.

— -

In the House of Interpreters may not be Ngũgĩ’s best work, but it is one of his most personal. Fans of the authors would find gems of the origins of his famous works (for example, the landscape in Nyeri which inspired The River Between). The memoir lulls a little in the middle before the unforgettable end where Ngũgĩ found his voice in the courtroom. Regardless, he has been and always will be a hero of mine and he remains sadly to this day underread.