My Childhood in the Shamba (Farm).
We lived in a shamba (a white settler’s farm) in Rift Valley, Kenya, during the colonial era. My father worked as a cook for the white settlers, and my mother as a gardener in the white mistress’ flower garden. On the days my father was home or off duty, he cooked the European style breakfast of fried eggs, tomatoes, bread and butter. The children drunk skimmed milk instead of tea. The fried eggs were garnished with fried tomatoes and had a gorgeous color of orange, white, and red. The eggs were my least favorite. I loved mūkimo (boiled green peas mixed with the potatoes, fried together, salted, and mashed), which was my mother’s best breakfast. This was served with a cup of wimbi (millet) porridge mixed with skimmed milk. I loved both the mūkimo and porridge. The Mzungu (white man) gave us the skimmed milk after making butter from it. My mother called the skimmed milk mathace (water like milk).
At times I accompanied my mother and helped her collect weeds in the garden, especially a type of stubborn weed called ndabibi, which we burned to destroy its seeds. My mother showed me how to collect all the weeds and put them in a heap to stop them from re-growing. They would decay or die off (kūbutha). On the days my mother was off duty, she worked in the family garden that was a considerable distance from our home. She would take us to the farm with her since she stayed in the garden for long hours before heading back home. She would dig a shallow hole in the ground, cover the hole with green leaves, place the baby’s clothing on top of the leaves, and then place the baby on top of the clothes to sit comfortably where she could see the baby as she was weeding. She repeated this process on multiple occasions, always ensuring that the baby was in front of her.
We ate lunch in the garden. My mother would collect firewood in the garden and build a fire. She would roast potatoes and put them in a bag (kīondo) shaking the bag vigorously to remove the black soot from the potatoes, and handing us each a clean potato. My father didn’t work in the garden. He baked bread, cake, and made chapati, and other times, both my parents worked together to make beer, maiyīki, for extra money. They had a big tank, about one thousand liters or more. They dug a hole in the garden and placed the tank inside. They put a metal sheet to cover the tank, and stacked dry maize stalks on top of the cover to hide the tank. The beer was made from maize flour, honey, mīratina (fruits of the sausage tree, Kigelia), and water. The ingredients would be fermented together, and the mīratina were later removed, and honey added. The mixture was then stirred. The beer was called njohi or maiyīki. Some beer would be processed farther to make gatogo (vapor). The beer business was kept a secret from Mzungu.
Gatogo, a crystal clear liquid, was made by collecting the vapor from the fermenting beer. It was served in very tiny glasses, as just two gulps were enough to get someone staggering. I was curious about how the beer tasted since our parents never let us anywhere near it. We went to the tank and lifted the heavy metal cover slightly. We filled up two little bottles, and I sipped from one of the bottles carefully. It tasted so bitter that I immediately spit it out and wiped my tongue using my dress. I had thought it would be sweet since I saw my parents adding honey into it. Later, I realized that we had been in a dangerous situation at the time as we would have easily fallen into the tank and drowned. We never told our parents about what we did that day. This incident taught me that parents need to keep harmful items and substances, such as weapons and alcohol, in a safe place away from the children’s reach.
As a little girl, I accompanied my mother and her two friends when they went to visit a new mother with a newborn baby. We had to cross a river to get to the woman’s house. Each woman carried a bag (kīondo) packed with gifts for her. I noticed that my mother and her friends were served gatogo in small glasses. On our way home, my mother and her two friends crossed the river with great difficulty. The bags they were carrying fell into the river and the soaked bags became so heavy that they couldn’t carry them out of the water. They also seemed unable to pour out the water from the bags, and they kept dropping them back into the water. They began giggling and laughing, and the entire incident looked strange to me. In the end, they did cross the river, but they were all wet. Later, I realized that my mother and her two friends had gotten drunk that day. When my mother became a born again Christian, she recounted the incident in her testimony, to show how Satan made her carry heavy burdens.
My father learned so many things about Mzungu’s food preparation. However, he couldn’t get all the ingredients, so he used what was available in our house. He made some delicacies for us to taste. He baked cupcakes and bread, and as we took a nap after lunch, our parents left to run their businesses. As the oldest child, I cared for my siblings after we woke up to ensure that we remained in the house, quiet for the most part, until our parents came back.
My father made an oven similar to that of the Mzungu. He dug a rectangular hole into the ground and created what looked like a chimney at the back end. The shelves in the oven were made of corrugated tin sheets held by the lines carved into the side walls in the oven. The oven was heated with firewood placed below the bottom shelf, and the smoke was let out through the chimney. He baked bread to sell to other workers and for the family. He grew wheat in our garden, which was grounded into brown wheat flour for making bread.
Most Notable Parts of My Life In the Shamba
Father. My father, unlike my mother, rarely whipped anyone, and if he had to do it, we had to explain why we misbehaved. It was a stressful process because we had to judge ourselves and make the decision as to how many whips were deserved as punishment for the crime. We all wished to be whipped when my father was not around. My parents loved us, and they took care of us, and they taught us all they could until they were detained during the war, and we were left hungry, infested by lice and jiggers.
Mother: My mother was a good disciplinarian, and her goatskin belt was folded three times and always hung behind the front door. She kept a watchful eye on our behavior, ready to discipline us if we misbehaved. We were not supposed to make anyone cry, and we played harmoniously. If one of us cried, we were all whipped, since we were all responsible for each other’s well being. As we grew up, we never fought. Our mother was the only one with the authority to whip the wrongdoer, and most of the time, she whipped all of us if one person did wrong. We were supposed to watch out for each other.
Children: We kept to ourselves since our mother never let us interact with the neighbors’ children. Our favorite game was playing with water and soil, and using tins to pretend to cook the types of food we saw mother cook. Once I became tired of cooking, I would knit.
I had no knitting needles, so I used grass stalks as the knitting needles. I would burn one end of the stalk to harden it and prevent it from cracking. I reserved the stalk knot on the other end to prevent the sweater from slipping off the makeshift needles. I used thread from the pieces of wool my mother threw away when she repaired a torn sweater. She repaired torn sweaters by undoing the torn parts and knitting it again. When the wool got too short, she threw them away and I picked them and used them, and that is how I leant how to knit.
Sometimes I used a thorn from the sisal plant to sew small dresses from the pieces of cloth my mother threw away after cutting our dresses and shirts. I learned to sew by hand by watching my mother sewing our clothes. She told us that she had learned how to sew while she was a student at Kijabe mission school.
My mother taught us to speak in a low voice when talking amongst ourselves and to other people. We were instructed not to make eye contact with adults, and we were not supposed to talk to our father or mother if they were speaking with other adults. We were not allowed to be near them when we had visitors, so we were sent outside the house until the visitor left.
Eggs: My father cooked great fried eggs garnished with tomatoes for breakfast. Eggs were available since my parents had a number of chicken roaming in the yard. Some would lay eggs in hidden corners of the yard, and then one day, you would see a hen with twelve chicks. There were also animals and birds that preyed on the chicken day and night. The hen would make so much noise when the predators were near, and the chicks would come running to the hen, who would cover them under her wings.
The eggs weren’t my favorite dish. My parents made sure I ate them, but what they did not know for a long time was that I never swallowed the eggs. I would chew for a long time, spit the eggs into my dress and then bury them once I made my way outside. My children also did the same thing, they would ask permission to use the toilet after chewing, and then they would spit out the food in the toilet and flush.
The kids were looking frail, so I took them to Kenyatta General hospital, formerly called King George, for a medical checkup. The doctor asked me whether the children were swallowing food during mealtimes, and I said yes. The doctor advised me to go home and watch closely whether they swallowed their food. I did it for a few days, and that was when I found out that they were not actually swallowing food. Now that I knew what they did, I changed the routine. Whoever told me that they needed to pee had to swallow their food first, and then they could go to the toilet. Their habit stopped, and they became healthier. When we went back to the hospital for a second examination, the doctor noted a tremendous change.
My egg-burying days came to an end when a woman came to visit my parents. She saw me digging a hole and burying something. She checked to see what I had buried, and reported what she found to my parents. My parents went outside and confirmed that the eggs I was served were in the hole the woman had uncovered. From that day, my father promised me that they would not force me to eat eggs. While I was exempted from eating eggs during breakfast, I still had to drink raw eggs whenever I got a cold. My mother would make a hole on one side of the egg and pour it inside my mouth, and I had to swallow it all immediately. She had a goatskin belt in her hand, to let me know that she would whip me if I didn’t drink up. I would throw up after drinking the egg, but my cold or cough stopped.
Chicken in the Shamba: The squatters’ yard was a common area, and chicken loitered everywhere. Each family knew their chicken, and at the end of the day, the chicken would make their way to their owners’ house. The chicken that did not return home was usually lying on eggs in a secret place. This chicken only came out to feed before promptly returning to its hidden spot. Once the chicks hatched, the chicken headed home with her chicks. The owner of a chicken that was missing speculated that it was lying on eggs in a hidden place, not stolen. Chickens were never stolen.
Sunday in the Shamba: Sunday was market day for the squatters, and Mzungu went to church or to carry out other businesses away from the farm in places like St. Andrews at Turi in Molo, Mary school in Njoro, or St. Ninian in Nakuru.
I loved going to the garden because I had a chance to collect castor oil seeds, which I sold in the market on Sundays. The market was called Warubaga (Elburgon), and it was about an hour’s walking distance from Shamba where we lived. At times we took a taxi to the market. My mother and I went to the market on Sundays, and I sold a small tin of castor seeds for ten cents (which was a coin with a hole at the center). I bought a piece of sugarcane with ten cents. I loved its sweet taste, and it was the only option I could get since my mother forbade me from eating the type of candies that were available (peremedes or theremende) which were white or green in color). She maintained that they made kids contract a cold. However, sugarcane was safe.
School: We did not go to school or church in the shamba. Children stayed with their parents at home. It was when we relocated to Gīkūyū reserved land in Central Province, Kenya, that I learned about school and the church. I enrolled in school for the first time when I was 17 years old. In standard one I saw chalk for the first time, the blackboard (a black-painted wall), but there were no paper, pens or books. When I first went to church, I saw a hymn book and a small book called “Johana,” written in the Gīkūyū language. There were no complete Bibles at the time. The first time I saw a pencil and a paper was in the home of a family that had employed me as their house girl. The father and his little girl would sit at a table and work on what I later found was called homework. I saw a pencil, which to me looked like a well colored special stick. The paper made no sense to me. What the father and the daughter were doing was magical and beyond my comprehension.
House: Our house in the Shamba was round, with one door and two small side windows. It was just one large room where everyone saw each other and everything in the house. The fireplace was at the center, three stones with a fire built in the center, the stones supporting the pot when cooking. The house was using a Kerosene lamp.
There was a cupboard where the cutlery was kept, and we had a jar, six gallon containers for storing water to be used in the house. There was a tap in the middle of the common area in the yard, and we would use it to fetch water to use in our homes.
Bed: We had beds made of wood, and my mother made the mattresses from sisal bags stuffed with dry grass. Each bed had two blankets, one used as a bed sheet and the other one we used to cover ourselves. We didn’t know anything about bed sheets, bedspreads, pillows or pillow covers. We had three beds in our house, each placed against the circular wall. One bed was for the girls, one for the boys, and the third one for my parents. We could see each other’s beds. There were no pajamas, so we always slept in the same clothes we had worn during the day.
Shower: The adults bathed outside at night so that they couldn’t be seen naked. We changed clothes when we went to the market on Sundays, and took baths the night before. There were no bathrooms. Kids bathed inside the house, and a gallon of water poured into a basin was enough for us.
Toilet: The toilet was outside the house, and was used by several families. It was a deep hole, thirty feet deep, with the top partially covered with wood, leaving a small hole at the center. We would stand astride the hole and squat directly over the small hole to urinate or empty out bowels. When the toilet was nearly full, we could see what was inside. Once the hole was full, a new toilet was dug and the old one filled with soil. On other occasions, salt was added to a nearly full toilet, and feces would sink further into the hole, creating more space for people to continue using it.
Small children urinated and emptied their bowels on the dirt floor inside the house, and when they started walking, they did it outside the home. There were no baby potties or diapers, so the mother would collect the kids’ feces using green leaves (maigoya) and dump it in the toilet. The children couldn’t stand astride the toilet hole, and when a baby urinated or emptied bowels on the mother’s lap while breastfeeding, the mother just wiped her dress with the green leaves or picked the feces of the child and threw it into the toilet. My mother would at times guess when the baby would pee or poop, so she slightly opened her thighs and up her dress, and the baby’s waste would hit the floor. This also helped the baby relieve themselves freely. Mothers believe that the baby’s pee or poop was not bad, and with no perfumes or deodorants to mask the smell of pee and poop on the mother’s dress, these smells were considered normal for mothers raising small kids.
Sewing: My father bought us extensive material for my mother and the children. His favorite color was the zebra design. My mother knew how to cut dresses and shirts and sew. She used to cut the girls’ dresses, her dress, and boys’ shirts without tracing any patterns. She would then hand-sew them. My mother and the girls would wear dresses with no underwear, while the boys only wore shirts and no shorts. The boys’ shirts were long, and would reach above the knees. We all looked like beautiful zebras in the house or the yard.
I learned to cut and sew at an early age. After the clothes were worn they faded, my mother would buy red color from the market, put it in boiling water in a large pot and dipped the clothes inside the pot. She would boil the clothes some more, and when she removed them, the clothes would have a permanent red color, which made new outfits for us.
Washing clothes: Clothes were washed by hand and placed on hanging lines made of wire or string. Most people had one or two dresses and no brassiere, underwear, petticoat or a full slip.
Snakes: There were so many snakes in the garden, yard, and other times inside the house, during the day or night. To get a bag or a pot, one had to check if there was a snake inside. I was afraid of snakes then and I am afraid of them now. One night my father was not home and we slept early. When my mother looked into her Kīondo hanging on a wall, she saw a big snake inside the Kīondo, with its head outside the Kīondo. She screamed and I woke up, and I saw her pointing at the snake. When I saw it, I stayed in bed, covering my head in fear. My mother went to a neighbor to ask for help to kill it. I have never forgotten that scary night.
Crops: The workers were given a new land every five years to clear and prepare for Mzungu to plant trees. Workers planted their crops in this land, and the common type of crops planted included peas, white maize, beans, peas, njahi, potatoes, Kahurura, wheat, and pumpkins. The workers cared for the trees more than they did their crops. They were penalized for any damaged tree, and had to replace it with another one.
Beverages: The popular beverages were skimmed milk (mathace), unsweetened wimbi porridge, sour porridge made from dry and fresh maize, sour porridge made from ground wimbi (ūgīmbī) or mūhīa. My mother would grind the maize using a pestle and mortar, while the millet was ground with a small stone she held in two hands, the wet grain placed on the large stone. The grounded mooch was put in water and then stored in a container for a few days to sour before it was cooked and served. My mother taught me to grind grains using the two stones, as well as with the pestle and mortar.
Baby food: The mother would chew food until it became soft, spit it into her palm and using one finger, put it into the baby’s mouth. Those mothers who could not chew food for their babies usually asked their friends and other mothers to chew on their behalf.
Discipline: We were always told by our parents and other adults, “do not do this or that,” and we couldn’t question why. As I got older, I began understanding that there were some unacceptable behaviors, tone, attitude, language, titles, and actions, and that different age groups had certain societal norms to fulfill. We were taught all mothers were addressed as the mother of so and so, auntie, father, uncle, but not by their names because they were our elders. We called our age mates by their names, but adults that were of the same age as our parents were called uncle or auntie.
Visitors: Whenever we had visitors, we had to leave the house immediately they entered. We were not allowed to listen to their conversations or eat in their presence. Adults believed that kids could not handle their discussions and that they might spread confidential information. My mother never allowed my little kids to be near us when she was talking with me.
We didn’t play with other children without permission, which we were rarely given, and we were not allowed to ask questions or cry when she whipped us, since she was not beating us per se, she was giving us good behavior.
Medicine: Whenever any one of us got a cold, my mother went to the forest and gathered different types of leaves. She boiled them in a large pot and then set the pot on the floor. She would gather all of us around the pot, and cover us with two blankets with our faces over the pot, breathing in the steam. After this treatment, we all swallowed a raw egg, and the cold would disappear soon after. We were never taken to the hospital. She treated all of us except my father, who never became sick in his lifetime, except when he was eighty years old. He complained of a stomach upset, and he went to the neighborhood clinic. He was treated, but two days later he died of a heart attack.