Dreams from My Father

that they had come only to trade their goods. Some of their customs we soon developed a taste for, like the drinking of tea. With tea, we found that we needed sugar, and teakettles, and cups. All these things we bought with skins and meat and vegetables. Later we learned to accept the white man’s coin. But these things did not affect us deeply. Like the Arabs, the white men remained small in number, and we assumed they would eventually return to their own land. In Kisumu, some white men stayed on and built a mission. These men spoke of their god, who they said was all-powerful. But most people ignored them and thought their talk silly. Even when white men appeared with rifles, no one resisted because our lives were not yet touched by the death such weapons could bring. Many of us thought the guns were just fancy
ugali
stirrers.
    Things began to change with the first of the white man’s wars. More guns arrived, along with a white man who called himself district commissioner. We called this man
Bwana Ogalo,
which meant “the Oppressor.” He imposed a hut tax that had to be paid in the white man’s money. This forced many men to work for wages. He conscripted outright many of our men into his army to carry provisions and build a road that would allow automobiles to pass. He surrounded himself with Luos who wore clothes like the white man to serve as his agents and tax collectors. We learned that we now had chiefs, men who were not even in the council of elders. All these things were resisted, and many men began to fight. But those who did so were beaten or shot. Those who failed to pay taxes saw their huts burned to the ground. Some families fled farther into the countryside to start new villages. But most people stayed and learned to live with this new situation, although we now all realized that it had been foolish to ignore the white man’s arrival.
    During this time, your grandfather worked for the white man. Few people could speak English or Swahili in those days—men didn’t like to send their sons to the white man’s school, preferring that they work with them on the land. But Onyango had learned to read and write, and understood the white man’s system of paper records and land titles. This made him useful to the white man, and during the war he was put in charge of road crews. Eventually he was sent to Tanganyika, where he stayed for several years. When he finally returned, he cleared land for himself in Kendu, but it was away from his father’s compound and he rarely spoke to his brothers. He didn’t build a proper hut for himself, but instead lived in a tent. People had never seen such a thing and they thought he was crazy. After he had staked his claim, he traveled to Nairobi, where a white man had offered him a job.
    In those days, few Africans could ride the train, so Onyango walked all the way to Nairobi. The trip took him more than two weeks. Later he would tell us of the adventures he had during this journey. Many times he chased away leopards with his
panga
. Once he was chased into a tree by an angry buffalo and had to sleep in the tree for two days. Once he found a drum lying in the middle of the forest path and when he opened it, a snake appeared and slid between his feet into the bush. But no harm came to him, and he eventually arrived in Nairobi to begin his work in the white man’s house.
    He was not the only one who moved to town. After the war, many Africans began working for wages, especially those who had been conscripted or lived near the cities or had joined the white missions. Many people had been displaced during and immediately following the war. The war had brought famine and disease in its wake, and it brought large numbers of white settlers, who were allowed to confiscate the best land.
    The Kikuyu felt these changes the most, for they lived in the highlands around Nairobi, where white settlement was heaviest. But the Luo also felt the white man’s rule. All persons had to register with the colonial administration and hut taxes steadily increased. This pressured more and more men to work as laborers on the big white farms. In our village, more families now wore the white man’s clothes, and more fathers agreed to send their children to mission school. Of course, even those who went to school could not do the things the white man did. Only whites were allowed to buy certain land or run certain businesses. Other enterprises were reserved by law for the Hindus and the