Echoes From a Distant Land Read Online Free Page A

make a joke, then felt unworthy. He changed the subject.
    â€˜Do they give you food?’
    â€˜Yes.’
    â€˜I meant to bring you a banana, but I forgot.’
    Johnstone nodded.
    Wangira couldn’t take his eyes off the tent.
    â€˜There’s nothing to see,’ Johnstone said, following his gaze.
    â€˜Nothing?’ Wangira said, looking from Johnstone’s face to the missing legs. ‘You mean they have …?’
    â€˜No, idiot. I mean they have wrapped my feet and legs in mericani . There is nothing to see until they remove the cloth.’
    â€˜Oh.’
    Wangira looked around the clinic. There were four others in the ward. A white woman in a crisp white uniform rolled a trolley through the door to the first bed. She filled the patient’s glass with fresh water.
    â€˜These white people … did they punish you?’
    â€˜For what?’
    â€˜I don’t know. They look like askaris .’
    â€˜They are the doctors. If it wasn’t for their help I would be as you thought — without toes, or even legs.’ He looked towards the nurse before speaking in a lowered voice. ‘I tell you, Samson, these people are clever. We can learn much from them. When I finish at the Consolata mission school I will find work with the whites where I can learn more. Much more.’
    Wangira knew that Johnstone, like he, had been offered a place in the mission’s secondary school in Nyeri.
    â€˜Are you not continuing at school?’ he asked.
    â€˜There is no money for books and pencils. My uncle said I must either work in his shamba or work for one of the settlers. But I don’t want to work on a farm — not my uncle’s, and not the white’s.’
    â€˜What will you do?’
    â€˜I will go to Nairobi.’
    It was such an implausible notion, Wangira smiled.
    Johnstone became irate. ‘You don’t think I can?’ he demanded. ‘You stand there with that funny face and you think I can be nothing more than a shamba boy because I am taken to live with my father’s brother? Well, one day you’ll see — I will be a leader.’
    Wangira felt awkward. At any other time he would have responded to the challenge posed by Johnstone’s words and manner, but to argue with a boy in bed with bad toes seemed shameful.
    He thought it best to leave, and said goodbye.
    He was at the door of the ward when Johnstone called to him. ‘Sam.’
    Wangira waited, but Johnstone said nothing more.
    He turned to go again.
    â€˜Sam,’ Johnstone repeated. ‘Come here.’
    Wangira bristled, but again made concessions because of his injuries.
    â€˜I didn’t thank you,’ Johnstone mumbled.
    It was the last thing Wangira expected from his mouth, and so he replied that it was nothing special.
    â€˜You might have been attacked by the hyena too,’ Johnstone insisted. ‘You were brave. Very brave.’
    Wangira shuffled from one foot to the other, anxious to be gone.
    â€˜I … I …’ he stammered in response.
    â€˜And you … you saved my life.’
    This was too much. Wangira couldn’t believe his old enemy could talk that way.
    Johnstone glared at him with the intensity that Wangira had learned to respect when meeting him in a contest.
    â€˜I can tell you this, Samson Wangira,’ Johnstone said. ‘I do not forget these things. When I am a leader of the Kikuyu — a great leader — I will not forget you. You and your funny face.’

CHAPTER 3
    1912
    Wangira felt different. He was in his fourteenth year and his life had suddenly changed.
    He knew he looked different, and when alone he would occasionally study the change in his body to confirm it. Each time he did he fought to control the enormous pride that welled up within him. The instructions that he and his age-mates received before their circumcision warned against such behaviour. It was unseemly to be so vain.
    Three years