By Ogova Ondego
Published February 5, 2024
Mirrors of My Life: A Memoir is not just about the life of Rebeka Njau, the third born child of Paul and Hannah Wanjiru Wainaina’s 12 children born on December 15, 1932, but the 284-page paperback also touches on the struggle of the Africans against the shackles of British colonialism in Kenya. It is the story of family, friendship, unity and divinity. It is the story of hope, determination and resilience.
Born Rebecca Nyanjega Wainaina in Kanyariri in Kiambu on the northern outskirts of Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, Njau’s parents had both received some basic education from missionary schools and were therefore outward-looking.
Njau, a career teacher, writer, editor, visual artist and gender equity advocate, says her parents instilled in their children values that forbade laziness, greed, theft, fighting and foul language, their cherished dream being they grow up to become people of integrity. She has little doubt that all the blessings she and her siblings have had are as a result of the prayers of her parents. And she gives credit to God or her Creator throughout the memoir.
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But was the strong-willed girl who would later change the spelling of her name from Rebecca to Rebeka to look and sound more African, always obedient?
“One morning I decided to defy my parents … I was walking alone when a teenage boy emerged out of the banana plantation, hurling threats at me … I could not stand his nasty remarks and without thinking of the consequences, approached him courageously with an open right hand, and gave him a blow on his face which brought him down … I continued hitting him as he lay on the ground until my hand began to ache,” she writes.
This was a watershed incident in her life as she says it boosted her resolve to fight for justice from then henceforth.
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Saying living as a community during her childhood made them value their roots and develop a deep sense of sharing and togetherness, Njau also mentions the cruelty and injustice visited on her Kikuyu community by the British; “The closeness we had developed as close-knit families was disrupted when our homes were demolished by the British colonial government, supported by the home guards, during land consolidation. We were led out of our original homes like slaves, and taken to a new habitation of two-acre plots per family unit in an area where social and spiritual values of the dwellers differed from ours.”
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But despite this apparent insensitivity, it appears the value of family togetherness they had received from their parents remained ingrained in the Wainaina children who, today, continue to stick together.
“I shudder to think of what would have become of me if my siblings and I had not heeded our parents’ advice to always stick together, for it was that rare solidarity that enabled me to remain afloat when I was faced by insurmountable problems,” writes Njau while stressing that the surviving six siblings “have continued to live in peace and solidarity, providing moral and financial support to those of us who may need it.”
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Njau notes that adolescence was the most challenging phase of her life; “It was a time of confusion, a time when the mind began to wander in various directions, a time when the spirit of rebellion set in. I started to argue with my mother… I desired to be independent to choose my friends … I began to tell lies about what I did and who my friends were … I found the preachers boring and would skip church and lie I had been there,” she writes.
She was 15 when she accepted Jesus Christ as her saviour at a Kutendereza Christian revival meeting but she says she found it almost impossible to live like Jesus Christ had and started doubting her faith as she couldn’t see how she could become a ‘perfect born again Christian’; “How could I love my neighbours who threw abusive words at me? How could I love that cruel teacher who organised gangs of boys and girls to attack those of us who were not circumcised? How could I love something that disgusted me? How could I love those white men and women who preached the gospel of love while they despised us black people? I was disillusioned and confused.”
She says she realised she “had not fully understood who God was and how different he was from the Gikuyu God (Ngai). I wished I could get closer to him, feel his love and power before I started telling others about my transformation.”
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While at Kanyariri Primary School she was among the girls from Christian homes who were marked for bullying and harassment by people she refers to as conservative boys, girls and teachers. She was sexually harassed by the Headmaster while at Kabete Intermediate School before she joined Alliance Girls High School (AGHS) and then Alliance High School (AHS) where she sat the Cambridge Secondary School Certificate examination alongside boys. There were no female teachers at AHS as Carey Francis, the bachelor Headmaster, disliked women his fame of being a mathematics wizard notwithstanding.
Njau started writing after reading The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka. In the Round Chain, the play she wrote under the pseudonym Marina Gashe, revolves around a man who is detained after being falsely accused of being a Mau Mau land army supporter.
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She graduated with a Diploma in Education in 1958 and was posted to AGHS to teach English and History. She was the first and only African teacher at the school.
“Though the school atmosphere was devoid of discrimination against Africans, certain things were determined by the colour of one’s skin … what amazed me more was to hear the Headmistress, Mary Bruce (1955-1967) say confidently that African girls should be encouraged to be teachers or nurses because studying for a degree would be too hard for them,” she writes.
This reminded Njau of what the British Colonial Officer in the Ministry of Education in Nairobi had told her in 1950 when she had sought a scholarship to study Drama at Bristol University in England after excelling on stage at Alliance and getting a special prize from the Director of the British Council; ‘That kind of training is not fit for you, Africans. You are not talented in such skills. You cannot succeed. Why don’t you try a course in teaching or nursing? Those will be ideal for you.”
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Apart from racism and discrimination, Njau says she also suffered from pain and distress at the hands of men.
When she passed the Cambridge Secondary School examination in 1952 and was accepted at Makerere College in Uganda in 1953, Njau says she, at 19, chose not to report to the college as a man called Zak, a graduate of Makerere and a teacher at AHS, had asked her to marry him. But before then he had to go for further studies at Cambridge in England. The man forgot all about her making her to regret the decision to have agreed to marry him at the expense of her own college education and disappointment to her parents. Feeling she would suffer if she didn’t get educated, Njau called off the engagement and went to Makerere in 1954.
It was at Makerere that she reconnected with Joseph, a student she had been on stage with at Alliance, and struck up what she refers to as a unique friendship “which we thought would be long-lasting . But fate had other plans. Our relationship came to an abrupt end” over Queen Elizabeth II’s visit to Uganda and the authorities’ refusal to include her among the Kenyan students who were to receive the queen as she was suspected of being a supporter of the Mau Mau who were waging war against the British.
She says this break up “intensified my feelings of despair and despondency, when I considered my fall out with Zak, barely two years before.”
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Towards 1958, Sheila Mayo, wife of Rev Gordon Mayo, a missionary with Christian Council of Kenya (CCK), invited her for lunch where she met Elimo Njau, a Tanzanian artist who had been at Makerere’s School of Fine Art.
“Sheila was on a match-making plan, and her scheme seemed to work. However, I was to later realise that I should have taken stock of the whole situation; in particular Elimo’s background and personality. But I was so overcome by the force of emotions, that I was unable to resist his approach.”
This is the same Rebeka Njau who, before leaving Makerere in April 1958, had “had only one goal on mind – to be a playwright and a successful teacher … I had had enough of men’s relationships. They had brought me nothing but pain and distress. I had resigned myself to living single, as long as my creator wished me to live.”
She and Elimo Njau married at AGHS on December 19, 1959.
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“My greatest mistake however, was to get married to him before I knew his background in Tanzania … If I had weighed his personality, behaviour and his actions, I would have discovered that achieving compatibility between us was like pounding water in a mortar”.
She says their 10 years of bliss ended as soon as a woman called Philda Ragland who had been sent by Presbyterian Church in USA to take photos of Christian art came to Dar es Salaam towards the end of 1969 looking for Elimo Njau and “immediately entrenched herself into our life and broke our marriage.”
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Elimo Njau finally married Philda Ragland secretly in Moshi in 1975, sending Njau’s mind into a tailspin and forcing her to “seek refuge in stories of the old world before the missionaries set foot on our land” as told to her by her maternal grandfather and a woman called Wanjiku.
“What mattered to me at that time was to find a solution for the nightmares and morbid imaginations which terrorized my mind almost every night … I decided to stay awake and engage my mind in creativity. I started exploring my past … I thought of people I had met during my youth.”
Njau, who at the time of writing this article is still married to Elimo Njau of Paa Ya Paa Art Centre though they have lived separately since 1983, laments that John Gatu, the then Moderator of Presbyterian Church in East Africa (PCEA) who had endorsed Philda Ragland’s application to continue working at Paa ya Paa gallery, blamed her for not having complained about the illicit relationship between Philda and Elimo Njau; “Why didn’t you complain about their relationship right at the beginning? You are to blame. You should not have kept silent. I thought you did not object to their relationship.”
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And how did she come to leave the family home in Ridgeways on Kiambu Road?
“One evening, as he was speaking to Philda from his study, I picked the phone from the sitting room and listened. I heard him say: ‘When Hannah leaves, I shall force her out’. He went on to tell Philda that he wanted me to leave in order to make room for her and her children. As I did not want to be forcifully driven out, I told him: ‘Do not worry. I shall leave tomorrow’ .” That was in March 1983.
Rebeka Njau’s sister, Kezziah, “arrived early the next morning and placed everything I could take with me in her car. As we drove away, Elimo seemed relieved to see me go. He stood at the verandah, watching the car leave the drive. I did not know where to go. But suddenly, I remember we had stayed at the Plums Hotel when we first arrived in Nairobi. I asked my sister to drive me there. I booked a room for one night.”
The following morning she got a bedsitter in Upper Hill district and moved in. Her sister, Muthoni, lent her her Fiat 127 car to enable her get to work at National Council of Churches of Kenya (NCCK).
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Did you know that Rebeka Njau is the founding Headmistress of Nairobi Girls School?
She says she not only founded the school in 1964 with 35 girls drawn mainly from Nairobi’s Eastlands area but also worked hand in hand with Education Permanent Secretary Kenneth Matiba and Education Officer Moses Mudavadi in building it into a boarding school that would later be renamed Moi Nairobi Girls School some 20 years later.
She however resigned in 1968 to accompany her husband to Tanzania where he had been offered a three-year teaching contract at University of Dar es Salaam.
Njau embarked on a project that would lead to the publication of a book titled Kenya Women Heroes and Their Mystical Powers after applying for a Research Clearance Permit from the Office of the President and conducting a nationwide survey on the topic, “Kenya Women Heroes and Their Mystical Powers”, in 1985.
“I had an exciting time listening to oral narratives … stories of medicine women and seers, with special powers … women poets who used riddles and other devices to pass on important messages to the community … stories of women who had been the backbone of the resistance movement against land alienation by the colonialists … women who were endowed with great social power; women who were consulted whenever decisive actions needed to be taken … women who had taken on male roles, running their households and raising their families single-handedly … women warriors who went to battle and fought side by side with men,” she writes of the project.
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Rebeka Njau, who worked as as Director of Information and Education of NCCK’s Community Relations Project and Editor of Target fortnightly newsletter, faults NCCK on having abandoned its role of being the conscience of the nation due to what she refers to as “selfishness and hypocrisy in the churches”.
“The gap between the rich and the poor has widened. But how concerned are the church leaders about this inequality in their churches and elsewhere? What concrete measures have they put in place to assist the government and the private sector to get rid of the obstacles which hinder the poor from crossing the bridge of poverty? Week after week, the poor attend church services with the hope that their lives might be transformed and their children would no longer go to bed hungry. But they remain poor and hungry. Are the church leaders comfortable to continue preaching, telling the poor people to believe, in order to inherit everlasting life, without tears or toil, while they themselves continue to live comfortable lives on this same earth? Are these preachers living by the doctrine of Christ?” writes the former editor of NCCK’s critical fortnightly publication, Target.
She says NCCK Secretary-General, Samuel Kobia, sacked her on trumped up charges on April 30, 1990, pulling the rag from under her feet.
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“What I needed to concentrate on was a roof over my head. I could not continue living in a bedsitter, paying KSh4000 per month, without a stable income.”
So she decided to move to her land in Ongata Rongai on the southern outskirts of Nairobi City.
“When I bought the piece of land off the Magadi Road in 1972, little did I think that one day it would provide a shelter for me and a place to call home. I had never thought that I would one day be forced out of our matrimonial home at Ridgeways, and my haven would be in the Maasai wilderness.”
But exactly 20 years later she sought refuge in that ‘Maasai wilderness’
“At the end of 1992 In decided to leave the city and settle down in my new habitation, however rough it was going to be,” she says. “The compound was bare. There were no bushes or tree branches upon which the little birds could settle and sing joyfully at dawn … I planted [a mugumo seedling] at the entrance of my compound. I also managed to find another tree seedling and planted it near the entrance of my house. This one has grown to become a unique evergreen tree of great height, with thorny branches, and three crosses at its apex. The sight of the three crosses, the bigger one in the middle, take me back to my childhood. I recall the lessons we were taught about Christ carrying the cross and dying for our sins. The mugumo, which has also become a gigantic tree, awakens in me the stories I learned from Guka’s homestead. It reminds me of my ancestors who taught me to work hard and become the self-reliant person that I am today. I’m proud to have been able to build a home for my children and I, through the sweat of my own hands.”
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So how did she survive after losing her marriage, home and job?
“I resumed making batik and tie-dye material. Soon I was able to acquire a Singer sewing machine, through the hire purchase and employ a professional tailor to make shirts, dresses, tops and table cloths which were sold at Usanii, my new shop,” she writes.
She also developed interest in handmade clay pots and was introduced to Thomas Milimu, a self-taught potter from Kakamega who had come to Nairobi to look for a market for his pots to whom she offered shelter to make it easier for him to do his work.
“His pots were the best I had seen. They were strong; hardly cracked, unlike other pots I had seen before. I selected the best and paid him for them. Then I painted various designs on them and invited my friends and relatives to buy them,” Njau, who also made a living from writing consultancy work, including working with opposition politician Kenneth Matiba in compiling a list of corruption in National Social Security Fund (NSSF) and on his autobiography, Aiming High, says.
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“I thank God that in my old age, I have been able to support myself and others financially, through the income generated from the shops,” writes Rebeka Njau who credits God and her parents for the blessings in her life.
Meanwhile Rebeka Njau has had a multimedia recording studio built in her home and is working on various writing projects as she looks forward to celebrating her 92nd birthday later in 2024:
1). Folklore and Legends that targets children
2). Kenya Women And Their Mystical Powers that gives credit to women leaders
3). Kabura, a novel developed from a short story
4). Songs and Poetry for screen and stage.
