Weep Not Child by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o Read Free Book Online Page A

sacked, well, what did it matter? It was not just that the boys had black skins. The question of wanting to know more about his servants just never crossed his mind.
    The only man he had resisted the efforts of his wife to have sacked was Ngotho. Not that Mr Howlands stopped to analysehis feelings towards him. He just loved to see Ngotho working in the farm; the way the old man touched the soil, almost fondling, and the way he tended the young tea plants as if they were his own…Ngotho was too much a part of the farm to be separated from it. Something else. He could manage the farm labourers as no other person could. Ngotho had come to him at a time when his money position was bad. But with the coming of Ngotho, things and his fortune improved.
    Mr Howlands was tall, heavily built, with an oval-shaped face that ended in a double chin and a big stomach. In physical appearance at least, he was a typical Kenya settler. He was a product of the First World War. After years of security at home, he had been suddenly called to arms and he had gone to the war with the fire of youth that imagines war a glory. But after four years of blood and terrible destruction, like many other young men he was utterly disillusioned by the ‘peace’. He had to escape. East Africa was a good place. Here was a big trace of wild country to conquer.
    For a long time England remained a country far away. He did not want to go back because of what he remembered. But he soon found that he wanted a wife. He could not go about with the natives as some had done. He went back ‘home’, a stranger, and picked the first woman he could get. Suzannah was a good girl – neither beautiful nor ugly. She too was bored with life in England. But she had never known what she wanted to do. Africa sounded quite a nice place so she had willingly followed this man who would give her a change. But she had not known that Africa meant hardship and complete break with Europe. She again became bored. Mr Howlands was oblivious of her boredom. He believed her when she had told him, out in England, that she could face the life in the bush.
    But she soon had a woman’s consolation. She had her first child, a son. She turned her attention to the child and the servants at home. She could now afford to stay there all the day long playing with the child and talking to him. She found sweet pleasure in scolding and beating her servants. The boy, Peter, was followed by a girl. For a time, the three – mother, daughter,and son – made home, the father appearing only in the evening. It was lucky that their home was near Nairobi. The children could go to school there. Her pride was in watching them grow together loving each other. They in their way loved her. But Peter soon took to his father. Mr Howlands grew to like his son and the two walked through the fields together. Not that Mr Howlands was demonstrative. But the thought that he would have someone to whom he could leave the
shamba
gave him a glow in his heart. Each day he became more and more of a family man and, as years went by, seemed even reconciled to that England from which he had run away. He sent both children back for studies. Then European civilisation caught up with him again. His son had to go to war.
    Mr Howlands lost all faith – even the few shreds that had begun to return. He would again have destroyed himself, but again his god, land, came to the rescue. He turned all his efforts and energy into it. He seemed to worship the soil. At times he went on for days with nothing but a few cups of tea. His one pleasure was in contemplating and planning the land to which he had now given all his life. Suzannah was left alone. She beat and sacked servant after servant. But God was kind to her. She had another boy, Stephen. He was now an only son. The daughter had turned missionary after Peter’s death in the war.

    They went from place to place, a white man and a black man. Now and then they would stop here and there,