Weep Not Child was written in 1964 by Nguigi Wa Thiong’o (using James Nguigi as pen name). The title comes from a poem called “On the Beach at Night” written by Walt Whitman:

…Weep not, child,

Weep not, my darling,

With these kisses let me remove your tears,

The ravening clouds shall not long be victorious,

They shall not long possess the sky, they devour the stars only in apparition,

Jupiter shall emerge, be patient, watch again another night, the Pleiades shall emerge,

They are immortal, all those stars both silvery and golden shall shine out again,

The great stars and the little ones shall shine out again, they endure,

The vast immortal suns and the long-enduring pensive moons shall again shine…

It is a tragic story, a story of dispossession of a people from their own land. It is a story of unrealised hopes unfulfilled love and dreams that collapsed and shattered. It is a story of a people who welcomed strangers into their own land. They even went with these strangers to fight a war that they had no clue about. However, returning back from war, the young men discovered there were no lands to farm. The colonial master had taken everything. In exchange, there is education, which was nothing more than teaching people to speak and think in the language of the colonial master. What good will that do? Well, only if it helps to acquire land…

On the very first page of the book, you will note that going to school was a privilege in those days in Kenya. During my childhood in Southern Nigeria , going to school was a right. This was not the case for Njoroge during the colonial era. He wanted to go to school but he knew his family was poor and could not ask. Nevertheless, his mother, Nyokabi knew how strong his desire was and strained to provide the opportunity. She warned him that he would have to go without midday lunch unlike the other children and truancy would not be tolerated.

The context of Njoroge’s life was the poverty of his family. In the very first paragraph of the book, Nguigi drove this home as he described Nyokabi, Njoroge’s mother:

One could tell by her small eyes full of life and warmth that she had once been beautiful. But time and bad conditions do not favour beauty.

Poverty, in the process of time erodes those things that nature bestowed abundantly on people. The poverty that we are talking about here would not be easy to grasp in social welfare democracies of the West where the welfare state often provide basics, even if there are no frills attached.

Njoroge broke the news to his step brother, Kamau, who was training to be a carpenter. Excited, he said after he had finishing all the books in Kenya he would head over to England. His brother quipped ‘or Burma’, the country where many Kenyans died defending the British empire during the Second World War. Kamau then wondered aloud why Mr Howlands, a colonialist, left the land of learning to come down to Kenya, an interesting question to bring Njoroge back to earth.

The author moved on to discuss the Big War (second world war), querying why white people were fighting one another and reached a conclusion:

It is better to give up and be content with knowing the land you lived in and the people who live near you”

In other words, Njoroge, you don’t have to aspire to go and read all the books in England, just stay here in Kenya.

In the very first few pages, the exploitation of the people in their own land was graphically illustrated

You could tell the land of the Black People because it was red, rough and sickly while the land of the white settlers was green and was not lacerated into small strips

It is likely the white settlers took the best lands and had more per person than the black people to whom everything belongs.

And it was not only the white settlers who ill-treated the black people, the Indian traders did not treat their black employees fairly. There were black traders but their goods were more expensive, probably due to inbuilt disadvantages in terms of access to produce markets. The tragedy of colonialism in Kenya was not just the oppression of the white European. To add insult to injury, they brought people from other parts of the empire, such as India to come and exploit and oppress the people.

Next, we were introduced to Ngotho, Nyokabi and Njeri’s husband. As we already know both Njoroge and Kamau were growing up in polygamous family, where both women were friends. He bought some meat and asked them to divided equally, for his two wives. We are provided some insight into Ngotho’s thoughts about women.

But you could not quite trust women. They were fickle and very jealous. When a woman was angry, no amount of beating would pacify her. Ngotho did not beat his wives very much. On the contrary, his home was well known for peace

Weep Not Child was written in 1964. Why would you pacify an angry person by beating him or her? And the expression “Ngotho did not beat his wives much” suggested he nevertheless beats them. This reveals a very patriarchal social and cultural environment. Very shocking to read these paragraphs today.

Later we read this:

..his wives were good women. It was not easy to get women like this today

What exactly does this mean? Was it that society was changing and women were resisting the docile role into which they were cast? Were they beginning to fight for more rights and equality?

In the process of time, Njoroge started school. We learnt that Ngotho, his father, is a muhoi. A muhoi lives off another man’s land and is allowed to cultivate it. Jacobo was the owner of the land, and was father to Mwihaki, a girl who was a friend of Njoroge. He received the treatment of new starters and was taunted but Mwihaki defended him. Seeing a teacher beat other students in the class was a painful experience for him.

Nyokabi took a lot of personal pride in Njoroge’s learning, activities like doing sums and learning English. As Njoroge walked to where his brother was learning carpentry under a man called Nganga, he meditated on the importance of land in Kenya:

..If a man had plenty of money, many cars, but no land, he could never be counted as rich. A man who went with tattered clothes but had at least an acre of red earth was better off than the man with money

Nganga had land and could afford three wives. The number of wives you had was a signal of your social status in Kenya of those days. Nganga was not allowing Kamau to do anything and that frustrated him as Kamau felt that you learn by doing and not by watching. Njoroge was shocked that a black man can treat other black people like that.

Often in books written by Africans about colonial days, we catch insight from the perspective of Africans. Nguigi gave us a bit of insight into the typical colonial master of those days, Mr Howlands. Howlands fought during the first world imagining an opportunity for glory. After being brutalized by the terrible destruction, the peace that followed disillusioned him. Africa provided an escape from Europe, the scene of carnage. He went on to lose his own son during the second world war. Such a man could be very bitter. In fact his wife was worse, beating their servants mercilessly, after which she discarded them.

Mwihaki and Njoroge were close friends. Jacobo was a wealthy Kenyan. Eventually Kenyan workers decided to strike, a very tricky situation for Ngotho (Njoroge’s father). He was employed by Mr Howlands, who said he would sack anybody who joined the strike. Nyokabi did not want her husband to join the strike because of the financial implications. Ngotho understood that but again, he felt that he had let down his own children. Boro for example thought Ngotho was a coward for watching as Mr Howlands farm their ancestors land, doing nothing about it, just waiting for him to leave and for the prophecy (read more about the prophecy here) to be fulfilled. Jacobo was sent by the colonial masters. Ngotho was so infuriated that he confronted Jacobo. That started enmity between the two men. Jacobo was bent on destroying Ngotho. This is classic divide and rule technique used by the British Empire in Africa.

To Njoroge, education was the vehicle to drag his family out of poverty. To Ngotho, education only matters if it offers access to land. Njoroge was the brightest among his peers and he eventually ended up in a boarding school where he came in contact with missionaries. He was impressed by the missionaries teachers because they treated everybody nicely but the head of the school’s project was to make the boys like Europeans whom he believed can do things better.

While at the school, Njoroge met Stephen, Mr Howlands’ son. After they struck up conversations both realised that back home, they wanted to get to know each other but were kept apart by fear.

Meanwhile, Boro, Njoroge’s older brother had joined the Mau Mau movement, devoted to driving out the white colonial masters. He had extreme hatred for Jacobo, who he considered a traitor. He had every reason to think this way because Jacobo has been working with the white colonial masters in a campaign of intimidation of the black people, imposing curfews. Jacobo did not forget his humiliation in the hands of Ngotho and was determined to exact revenge. Boro was a devotee of Jomo, who was fighting for independence for Kenya from the colonial masters. When Jomo was imprisoned, it resulted in frustration and escalation of the activities of groups like the Mau Mau movement.

Nevertheless, Mwihaki and Njoroge’s friendship deepens. At one time, she requested both ran away but Njoroge believed that once he has this education, he would be in a good position to save his people. Unfortunately, he was not going to finish his education. Despite his brightness, one day at school, he was summoned and taken to an interrogation camp where he was tortured and asked to confess his membership of the Mau Mau movement. The reason for this? Jacobo, the father of the woman he loved had been killed. Ngotho confessed to the killing because Kamau was a suspect. It turned out that it was not Kamau who did it. Instead, it was Boro. That was how Njoroge’s education ended, and he had to go and work in an Indian shop as a salesman.

Meanwhile, Mr Howlands’ wife had implored him to let them all return to England until things settled down. However, Mr Howlands’ god was the land he farmed. He sent his wife and children back to England but stayed there, determined to overcome the various freedom movements. One day, Boro turned up and killed him. When Ngotho told the story about the prophecy earlier, Boro had realised that the land that Mr Howlands claimed as his own belonged to his forefathers. By killing Mr Howlands, he avenged the injustice done to his forefathers.

Njoroge was dejected. Mwhiaki whom he loved, believed he was part of the conspirators who killed her father. No communication between both for quite a while. Without education, the dream of saving his people died. He summoned up courage and invited Mwhiaki to meet him. Mwhiaki’s mother was surprised she would meet one of the conspirators who killed her husband.

Mwhiaki confessed her love for Njoroge and apologized for wrongly thinking Njoroge could be part of the plot to kill her father. However, she refused to run away with Njoroge, and told him that they had responsibilities, reminding him of Njoroge’s saying “The sun will rise tomorrow”. “Let us wait for a new day”, Mwhiaki implored.

After Mwhiaki left, he collapsed and wept bitterly, shouting her name.

Without Mwhiaki, and with hope of education dead, Njoroge decided to hang himself. He made his way to where Mwhiaki left him after declaring her love for him. He was going to end everything there. He decided to wait for the night to fall. He prepared the rope and was about to do it when he heard the voice of his mother calling. She had come looking for him. Courage failed him and he was relieved she had come and followed her back home, navigating their way using a glow piece of wood as lamp. Shortly after they met his second mother (Njeri, his father’s second wife) who had also gone looking for him.

I reckon the sun rose the next day and Njoroge was alive to witness it.

As the colonial masters fought to control Kenya and as the missionaries did their best to evangelize it, thousands, if not millions of personal stories like this play out as people’s lives and prospects were torn apart by the conflict. There aspirations, ambitions, dreams, hopes and desire became collateral damage in the ensuing tussle.