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Even his name had been subtly different then. He had been our friend Francis Nkrumah, an African student recently arrived from the United States, and he had not seen Africa for a decade and more. He had quickly become a part of our African colony in London and had joined our little group, the Pan-African federation in our protests against colonialism.
He was much less relaxed than most of us. his eyes mirrored a burning inner conflict and tension. He seemed consumed by a restlessness that led him to evolve some of the most fantastic schemes.
The president of our federation was an East African named Johnstone Kenyatta, the most relaxed, sophisticated and “westernized” of the lot of us. Kenyatta enjoyed the personal friendship of some of the most distinguished people in English political and intellectual society. He was subtle, subtle enough to attack one’s principles bitterly and retain one’s friendship. He fought the British as imperialists but was affectionate toward them as friends.
It was to this balanced and extremely cultured man that Francis Nkrumah proposed that we form a secret society called The Circle, and that each of us spill a few drops of our blood in a bowl and so take a blood oath of secrecy and dedication to the emancipation of Africa.
Johnstone Kenyatta laughed at the idea; he scoffed at it as childish juju. He conceived our struggle in modern, twentieth century terms with no ritualistic blood nonsense. In the end Francis Nkrumah drifted away from us and started his own little West African group in London. We were too tame and slow for him. He was an angry young man in a hurry.
Then he went back to his part of Africa, and Francis Nkrumah became Kwame Nkrumah. he set himself at the head of the largely tribal populace and dabbled in blood ritual. There was some violence, a spell in prison, and finally Nkrumah emerged as the first African Prime Minister in a self-governing British African territory.
Tribal myths grew up around him. he could make himself invisible at will. he could go without food and sleep and drink longer than ordinary mortals. He was, in fact, the reincarnation of some of the most powerful ancestral spirits. he allowed his feet to be bathed in blood.
By the time I visited the Gold Coast the uneasy alliance between Nkrumah and the tribal chiefs had begun to crack. A week or so before my arrival he had threatened that, unless they co-operated with his government in turning the Gold Coast into an efficient twentieth century state, he would make them run so hard that they would leave their sandals behind them. This was a calculated insult to the tribal concept that the chief’s bare feet must never touch the earth.
As we talked in Nkrumah’s cool office that hot August day in Accra, my mind kept slipping back to our mutual friend Jomo or Johnstone Kenyatta, [later to be] imprisoned in his native Kenya for leading the Mau-Mau movement. significantly, though we mentioned many friends, both Nkrumah and I avoided mentioning Kenyatta. I had decided not to mention him first. I had hoped Nkrumah would. He did not.
A year earlier, I had flown up to Kenya from South Africa and visited Kenyatta. I felt terribly depressed as I got off the plane. Things had grown so much uglier in the Union. The barricades were up in the ugly war of color. When I had left South Africa in the dim-and-distant past, there were isolated islands where black and white could meet in neutral territory. When I went back in 1952, the islands were submerged under the rising tide of color hatreds, and I was glad to quit that dark, unhappy land which yet compelled my love.
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It was in this mood that I got off the plane. I had not seen my friend Jomo for years. Now there he was, just outside the airport terminal building, leaning on a heavy cane, bigger than I remembered him in Europe, paunchy, his face looking puffy. And behind him was a huge crowd of Africans.
I began to move toward him when a lean-faced, lean-hipped white colonial-administrator type suddenly appeared beside me and said: “Mr. Abrahams.” I stopped and thought, “Oh, Lord.”
Kenyatta also came forward. The two men ignored each other. Lean-face introduced himself and said the Colonial Office had alerted them that I was coming to do some writings for the London Observer and they had drawn up a provisional schedule for me. Had I done anything about accommodation?[/CENTER]
Before I could answer, Kenyatta said, “you are staying with me, of course.” The old detachment was back in his eyes. They seemed to say, “You’ve got to choose, pal. let’s see how you choose.”
Lean-face said, “We’ve got something set up for you tomorrow and --”
“I live in the bush,” Kenyatta added.
It dawned on me that I had become, for the moment, the battlefield of that horrible animal, the racial struggle. I made up my mind, resenting both sides and yet conscious of the crowd of Africans in the background. A question of face was involved.
“I’ve promised to spend this weekend with Mr. Kenyatta,” I said.
Lean-face was graceful about it. I promised to call at the Secretariat first thing on Monday morning. He gave me a copy of the schedule that had been prepared for me and wondered, sotto voce, whether I knew what I was letting myself in for. Kenyatta assured me that I would be perfectly safe, that nobody was going to cut my throat. I was aware that they were talking to each other through me. I was aware that they knew I was aware, and that made me bad-tempered.
“then I’ll say good night, Mr. Abrahams,” lean-face said pointedly.
As soo as he was out of hearing Kenyatta began to curse.
“It’s good to see you again, Johnstone,” I gripped his hand.
“Jomo,” he replied. The hint of ironic speculation was back in his eyes. A slightly sardonic, slightly bitter smile played on his lips.
“Welcome to Kenya, Peter,” he said. Then, abruptly: “Come meet the leaders of my people. They’ve been waiting long.”
We moved forward and the crowd gathered about us. Jomo made a little speech in Kikuyu, then translated it for my benefit. A little old man, ancient as the hills, with huge holes in his ears, then welcomed me on behalf of the land and its people. Again Jomo translated.
After this we all bundled into the fleet of rattling old cars and set off for the Kikuyu reserve in the heart of the African bush. Kenyatta became silent and strangely remote during the journey.
We stopped at the old chief’s compound, where other members of the tribe waited to welcome me. By this time the reception committee had grown to a few hundred. About me, pervading the air, was the smell of burning flesh; a young cow was being roasted in my honor. before I entered the house a drink was handed to me. Another was handed to the old chief and a third to Kenyatta. The old man muttered a brief incantation and spilled half his drink on the earth as a libation. Jomo and I followed suit. Then the three of us downed our drinks and entered the house.
A general feasting and drinking then commenced, both inside and outside the house. I was getting a full ceremonial tribal welcome. the important dignitaries of the tribe slipped into the room in twos and threes, spoke to me through Kenyatta for a few moments, and then went away, making room for others.
"Africa doesn’t seem to change," Kenyatta murmured between dignitaries. There was a terrible undercurrent of bitterness behind the softly murmured words. I was startled by it and looked at his face. for a fleeting moment he looked like a trapped, caged animal.
He saw me looking at him and quickly composed his face into a slightly sardonic humorous mask. “Don’t look too closely,” he said.
And still the dignitaries filed in, had a drink, spoke their welcome and went out.
The ceremonial welcome reached its high point about midnight. Huge chunks of the roasted cow were brought in to us, and we gnawed at the almost raw meat between swigs of liquor. Outside, there was muted drumming. Voices were growing louder and louder.
Suddenly, in the midst of a long-winded speech by an immensely dignified Masai chief from a neighborhood and friendly tribe, Kenyatta jumped up, grabbed his heavy cane and half staggered to the door.
“Come, Peter,” he called.
Everybody was startled. i hesitated. He raised his cane and beckoned to me with it. I knew that this would be a dreadful breach of tribal etiquette.
“Come, man!” he snapped.
I got up, aware of the sudden silence that had descended on the huge gathering. By some strange magic everybody seemed to know that something had gone wrong.
“Jomo,” I said.
“I can’t stand any more,” he snapped. “Come!”
I followed him to the door. I knew the discourtesy we were inflicting on the tribe. I also knew that my friend was at the breaking point. We walked through the crowd of people, got into Kenyatta’s car and drove off into the night. the African moon was big and yellow, bathing the land in a soft light that almost achieved the clarity of daylight.
He took me to his home. It was a big, sprawling, empty place on the brow of a hill. inside, it had nothing to make for comfort. There were hard wooden chairs, a few tables and only the bed in the bedroom. there were no books, none of the normal amenities of western civilization. When we arrived two women emerged from somewhere in the back and hovered about in the shadows. They brought in liquor, but I never got a clear glimpse of either of them. my friend’s anguish of spirit was such that I did not want to ask questions. We sat on the veranda and drank steadily and in silence until we were both miserably, depressingly drunk.
And then Kenyatta began to speak in a low, bitter voice of his frustration and of the isolated position in which he found himself. He had no friends. There was no one in the tribe who could give him the intellectual companionship that had become so important to him in his years in Europe. The things that were important to him–consequential conversation, the drink that represented a social activity rather than the intention to get drunk, the concept of individualism, the inviolability of privacy–all these were alien to the tribesmen in whose midst he lived. So Kenyatta, the western man, was driven in on himself and was forced to assert himself in tribal terms. Only thus would the tribesmen follow him and so give him his position of power and importance as a leader.
To live without roots is to live in hell, and no man chooses to live in hell. the people who could answer his needs as a western man had erected a barrier of color against him in spite of the fact that the taproots of their culture had become the taproots of his culture too. By denying him access to those things which complete the life of western man, they had forced him back into the tribalism from which he had so painfully freed himself over the years.
None of this was stated explicitly by either Kenyatta or myself. But it was there in his brooding bitter commentary on both the tribes and the white settlers of the land. For me Kenyatta became that night a man who in his own life personified the terrible tragedy of Africa and the terrible secret war that rages in it. He was the victim both of tribalism and of westernization gone sick. His heart and mind and body were the battlefield of the ugly violence known as the Mau-Mau revolt long before it broke out in that beautiful land. The tragedy is that he was so rarely gifted that he could have made such a magnificent contribution in other circumstances.
http://www.nathanielturner.com/nkrumahandkenyatta.htm
Source: Jacob Drachler, African Heritage, 1964