The Sacred Seed

Veteran writer, teacher, and artist Rebeka Njau has published a new novel that is likely to cause fireworks in Kenya.

Although the 242-page The Sacred Seed presents an uncanny description of Kenya during the twilight of the 40-year reign of the Kenya African National Union (Kanu) that was dislodged from power by the National Rainbow Coalition (NARC) in the December 27 2002 election, Njau denies she is writing about Kenya. She insists The Sacred Seed is pure fiction and that any resemblance with any one or any place would be coincidental. She says the story could be set anywhere in Africa and at any time after independence of formerly colonised countries.

"I want readers to use their own imagination and interpretation in reading my book," she says. But isn't it a fact that all writing is rooted in a specific social milieu? Granted, the author is free to exercise the poetic license while readers have the freedom to interpret that writing within their own experience. Perhaps it is references to tribal attacks instigated by politicians, sexual harassment, the rape of natural resources, the brainwashing of people using religion, and the rising opposition of the underprivileged to the powers that be that has made mainstream Kenyan newspapers to distance themselves from the book. Only one newspaper has run a subdued review of it.

The ArtMatters take on The Sacred Seed is that Njau is describing Kenya and the synopsis below bears us out: The city stinks with mounds of uncollected garbage while people's mouths ooze out evil and venom against one another in a nation steeped to the neck in corruption. At the Castle reigns President Dixon Chinusi, an arrogant, shrewd and manipulative megalomaniac who appears to have sold his soul to the devil in exchange for a free hand in misgoverning this rich but impoverished country.

Having come to power through the patronage and influence of his White missionary friends and associates, Chinusi uses the clergy to deliver sermons that promises his subjects a good life in heaven tomorrow while they continue to live in hell on earth. As opposition begins to emerge, Chinusi, drunk with power, not only goes onto a looting spree of national resources but also vows to hunt down and destroy his enemies like vermin. He is ready to do anything to remain in power.

Thus he instigates ethnic attacks in which innocent people are beheaded and their property plundered as security forces look the other way, only asking the victims to leave their homes. Perhaps Chinusi's Waterloo comes when he rapes a secondary school music teacher in the belief that he would become the strongest and cleverest man in the land if he sleeps with women of talent, intelligence and strength as their giftedness would be absorbed into his bloodstream. But unlike the other women who do not mind being exploited by the bachelor President so long as they use him to their advantage, Tesa Kenga, the latest victim, puts up a fight.

As the nation rushes towards the precipice and hangs precariously on a cliff, no one appears to raise their voice till Mumbi, an elderly potter and healer establishes Kanoni sanctuary for abused and talented women in a primeval forest. It looks like God has raised up a woman like Mumbi to fight injustice and shame men as they have abdicated their role in defending society from evil. The sanctuary, supposed to be a symbol of courage and liberation, is named after Kanoni, a legendary figure said to have been the most defiant young woman in her society who defied an important tradition-female circumcision-and died for it.

It is to Mumbi and Kanoni that Tesa turns for help and it is here that the battle lines between evil and good are drawn with Tesa on one hand and Chinusi on the other. Not even threats on her life can force Tesa into exile as she braces for a confrontation with the powers that be.

By employing simple words, descriptions, dialogue and figurative language, Njau-who tells a good story with simplicity, delving into African traditions, folktales and myths--makes the story vivid to the extent the reader identifies with the characters. However one wonders why Njau should use an outcast like Kanoni to 'inspire courage'. It is unclear how a young girl of Kanoni's age would tell her benefactor, Kibwara, another pariah who has taken her in after being thrown out by her family, "I don't want anybody to mutilate my body.

Mrs Njau with Thithi Watene at the official launch of The Sacred Seed at Braeburn School in Nairobi

My creator created me the way I am, and I shall remain so… I will never let anyone cut any part of my body." Is Njau not forcing such words in the character? Njau glorifies nature, shrines, sacred trees, birds and the arts. People came to Kanoni, a former sacred but desecrated and abandoned ground, to silently listen to their inner selves in the hope of receiving healing. And to learn from Mumbi's traditional wisdom told through folktales, proverbs, similes, and songs. Although one reads parallels in The Sacred Seed with The Concubine of Elechi Amadi's and Ngugi wa Thiong'o's writings, Njau says this is not intended. Like Ihuoma who is good, respected and is of great beauty, Njau presents Tesa as simple, dignified and stately. However, both bring death to any man who has sex with them. While Tesa has birthmarks on her thighs and around the navel to show that she is endowed with special gifts and therefore meant to be celibate, Ihuoma is said to have been the wife of a jealous sea god who cannot allow any man the pleasure of cohabiting with his queen.

"Although Tesa had vowed to remain celibate and devote her energy to passion in developing intuitive wisdom and skills in music, art and poetry, she forgets this when she gets emotionally involved with Muturi. She has the normal feelings of a woman for a man, after all. Just like Ihuoma who insisted on being reincarnated into a human being for her love of humans!

Kibwara and Kanoni of Njau could be compared with Ngugi's Mangara in The black bird ( 1963). After converting to Christianity, Mangara desecrates traditional holy places resulting in his being cursed. The curse wipes out his entire family through a black bird that pursues them wherever they try to hide.Similarly, Kibwara and Kanoni cannot have peace.Parallels with Ngugi's Joshua the village priest and the traditional rainmaker in Makuyu and Njau's Pastor. Jonah's confrontation of Mumbi whom he accuses of being an agent of Satan are also evident In both cases,the rainmaker and Mumbi triumph over the Christian Joshua and Jonah, respectively.

Both writers compare the disillusionment of Africans with Christianity. And both appear to advocate the return to traditional African values. Through Tesa, Njau says that though most people are disillusioned by Christianity they should be made to understand that there are Christians who aren't hypocritical. Hence Tesa is determined to build a bridge between her Christian values and the traditional spiritual beliefs of Mumbi's. Njau, who admits to expressing strong emotions in verse, has strung The sacred seed with so many songs and chants which, she says, enables her to say more things and express herself better than in straight narration.

Another style of Njau's is symbolism. "I always have a pool of water in my writing. I like streams and pools-not large water masses like lakes and oceans-where I can see water and the stones therein. I also like to put mystery plants and unusual things in my writings." Set in the city and its environs, the time setting of The Sacred Seed is vague. Here, conflict is brought between the old African ways and the new Western-influenced ones. Njau reiterates that African literature must be functional and not purely for aesthetical value.

Joint emcee John Sibi-Okumu listens to a reader at the launch of The Sacred Seed

"African writing should be serious and inspiring. It must be functional and not just literature for art's sake. Our literature must speak about our daily lives: social and economic ills," Njau says. "By functional I mean meaningful to people's lives and not just in the employment of difficult vocabulary to impress." Granted, the theme of creativity in the form of painting, pottery, poetry, music, sculpture, and writing run through this almost autobiographical book of Njau who writes, decorates pots, and designs batik. Njau accuses publishers in Kenya of apathy. "They are not encouraging people to write. Many of them say they are not interested in fiction," she says, adding that one publisher kept her manuscript for eight months and that when she went to collect it she discovered that one of the external readers had made some disparaging remarks about the manuscript to the effect that it could not be published as it was written in "East African English." This forced Njau to self-publish the book under the umbrella of an outfit called Books Horizon. The Sacred Seed is the second novel by Njau, the author of the award-winning play, The Scar: A Tragedy in One Act (Kibo Art Gallery Publications, 1965) and novel, Ripples in the Pool (Transafrica Publishers, 1975; Heinemann, 1978), for which she received the East African Writing Committee Prize. Like Ripples in the Pool that Njau says she wrote for therapeutic effect, The Sacred Seed has rings of Njau's life to it.

She had in 2000 indicated that she was writing a manuscript-then called 'The Gourd Seed'-that would give her healing as it would be based on her life with Elimo Njau, her estranged Nairobi-based Tanzanian artist husband and co-founder of Paa ya Paa art gallery. Of Ripples in the Pool that uses a pool to symbolise the tragedy that befalls several elite urbanites--a thief, a prostitute, a hospital assistant--who return to the village with high hopes of changing its lifestyle without considering the established order of things, Njau says it is "a complicated book that I wrote under intense pressure." She published The Hypocrite, a collection of folk tales, in 1977.

Her other writings are included in collections for colleges in the United States and other parts of the world. One such tome is Humanities in the Modern World: An African Emphasis that carries two of Mrs Njau's short stories, Marina Gashe and Prayer of a modern woman. So what had she been doing since 1983 when she released her last major book? "I have concentrated on my textile and batik design besides doing lots of writing consultancy," she says. "I write a lot without necessarily offering my writing to publishers." A former editor of publications with the National Council of Churches of Kenya, Njau also co-edited Kenyan Women Heroines and their Mystical Powers, and folk-tales, fables and essays with Gideon Mulaki. Njau is about to reprint Ripples in the Pool and Kenya Women Heroines and their mystical powers. She is looking for a publisher. Njau describes the experiences of women in post-colonial Kenya in Kenyan Women Heroes and their Mystical Power. She says, "I give strength to women in my works. I don't like them being stereotyped as the weaker sex. I am a woman and I know what I am talking about. I castigate ideas that belittle women and crusade those aimed at empowering them without behaving like an activist."

Rebeka Njau pages through a book in her Ongata Rongai home

Njau says her mother inspired all her 12 children without regard to their gender. "Although I have never joined any feminist organisation, I use my pen to express these views. I have not copied them from the West but from my own mother who was a liberated woman." Just before writing The Scar, Njau says she had written In the Round Chain that is yet to be published although having been performed in 1964. The British colonial authorities had considered it subversive and Njau a Mau Mau terrorist sympathiser. "I will one day revise and publish it," she says.

The Scar revolves around a dying father leaving land to his unmarried daughter alongside his sons. However the sons are bitter with their father over this act of 'madness'. Their mother dies of a broken heart over what she considers betrayal and hard-heartedness of her sons against their sister. Njau, who had always wanted to be an actress says she almost realized her dream when Bristol University in Britain admitted her for theatre studies. However her being black worked against her. "The Mzungu I went to see over admission said Africans are not gifted enough for theatre and so I was denied a scholarship," Njau says, adding that she chose to become a teacher so she could continue writing plays. In life, Njau admires strong women characters but loathes despotic male figures. She admits to crusading "feminist ideas" and "castigating stereotypes about women." Her creation of Mumbi, Tesa, Pastor Jonah and President Chinusi in The Sacred Seed appears to live up to this billing. Saying a woman has just as good a brain as a man, Njau says she and two other girls attended Alliance Boys' School in Forms Three and Four as they did not want to end their secondary school education at Form Two at Alliance Girls as was the case during their time.

"Whenever I beat boys in English language, they would say I was being favoured by male teachers." She went on to study Kiswahili, English and History at Makere University College and then taught English and History at Alliance Girls' School and at Makerere College Secondary School in Kampala.

Upon her return to Kenya, Njau had no job and so Kenneth Matiba, the then Permanent Secretary for Education, asked her to found a girls' secondary school in Nairobi. She chose to transform Woodley Primary School into Nairobi Girls' School which she ran single-handedly without a board of governors for a year from February 1964: teaching and handling accounts and general administration. She was here till 1969 and saw the school-now Moi Girls' School Nairobi-- turn into a boarding institution. What other autobiographical information about Njau can one glean from The Sacred Seed? Whereas Philda Ragland who later became Mrs Njau's co-wife had been sent to East Africa by the Presbyterian Church in America to take pictures of Kibo and Paa ya Paa galleries that belonged to the Njaus, Ellen is sent to Kiambatu Church as a fundraising officer but Jonah ends up having an affair with her.

After the separation with her husband, Njau says she derived her healing from her mother whom one can equate with Mumbi who helps bring about healing in Tesa following her traumatising experience with Chinusi. Would one be wrong to conclude that the defiled Tesa represents Rebeka Njau? Mrs Njau was born in Kanyariri village, Kiambu District, on the outskirts of Nairobi, in 1932.

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