In the House of the Interpreter by Ngugi wa'Thiong'o Page B
Authors: Ngugi wa'Thiong'o
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knowledge. Agriculture was then a major subject, and studies of indigenous trees and fruits, the language of cattle marks, beekeeping, and butter making were part of the classroom. Efforts to connect with local technology included visits to local blacksmiths, from whom the students learned how to make forges and smelt iron. Teachers were required to learn at least one African language, and the program of Bantu studies and civics incorporated a practical project of recording African legends, riddles, proverbs, and songs.
But as the literary side of the academy gradually took over, the tribute to local knowledge diminished. With Makerere, in 1948, beginning to offer degree programs from the University of London, secondary education became increasingly a preparation for college, with the Overseas Cambridge School Certificate the gateway to academic heaven. By the time I joined the school in 1955, hardly any traces, except in carpentry, remained of these early efforts to mine and harvest local knowledge.
Our literature classes were no different: English texts were the norm, and Europe the cultural reference. But Kariuki, who took over from James Smith in 1956, introducedfun into the study of literature. To Shakespeare’s
Macbeth
, the set text, he added what he called love sonnets, which we happily welcomed, thinking they might turn out to be useful to hearts awakening to Cupid’s whispers, real or imagined. One boy in fact soon claimed that he had used Shakespeare’s eighteenth sonnet on an Acrossian one sunny afternoon, with unspecified good results.
In the first term of my first year, the constant allusions to Acrossians in tales told by seniors had puzzled me. The name conjured an image of dwellers from a different planet, who would occasionally descend to play in a valley of green meadows awash with magic that lured men. Wanjai unraveled the mystery of the valley to me.
In its early years, Alliance High School, though mostly for boys, also admitted girls. Among its earliest female graduates was Nyokabi, who later married her teacher, Eliud Mathu, himself the second Kenyan African to get a B.A., the first African to join the staff of Alliance, the first African to represent African interests in the Legislative Council, and the first African member of the colonial Executive Council. Among the last female graduates was Rebecca Njau, an actress of amazing power and grace in the 1951 Alliance production of
The Lady with a Lamp
, who, years later, would become a force in women’s education and a pioneering novelist, playwright, and internationally acclaimed batik artist. Still, the number of female students had remained small: between the first intake in 1938 and the last in 1952, the school had averaged only five girls annually.
The situation of women in secondary education changedwhen a separate Alliance Girls High School was officially opened in 1948. The two institutions literally faced each other across a valley, so the students referred to dwellers in the opposite institution as Acrossians. For the boys, their female counterparts were nymphs in a misty valley who sang soft but irresistible siren songs, melodies wrought with a promise to mellow the souls of the lucky and, equally, with a danger of anguishing the unlucky. Nearly every tale that related to matters of the heart started and ended with reference to these nymphs, and one did not always know what to believe. But now, here in the second year, one of us swore that he had emerged from the green meadow with the promise and not the anguish, all on account of a Shakespearean sonnet. The success spurred us on. We committed the whole sonnet to memory and could be heard reciting it loudly in the school corridors, trying out different poses and voice modulations:
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day
? /
Thou art more lovely and more temperate
, and then declaim,
Thy eternal summer shall not fade / Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest
, clinching the
But as the literary side of the academy gradually took over, the tribute to local knowledge diminished. With Makerere, in 1948, beginning to offer degree programs from the University of London, secondary education became increasingly a preparation for college, with the Overseas Cambridge School Certificate the gateway to academic heaven. By the time I joined the school in 1955, hardly any traces, except in carpentry, remained of these early efforts to mine and harvest local knowledge.
Our literature classes were no different: English texts were the norm, and Europe the cultural reference. But Kariuki, who took over from James Smith in 1956, introducedfun into the study of literature. To Shakespeare’s
Macbeth
, the set text, he added what he called love sonnets, which we happily welcomed, thinking they might turn out to be useful to hearts awakening to Cupid’s whispers, real or imagined. One boy in fact soon claimed that he had used Shakespeare’s eighteenth sonnet on an Acrossian one sunny afternoon, with unspecified good results.
In the first term of my first year, the constant allusions to Acrossians in tales told by seniors had puzzled me. The name conjured an image of dwellers from a different planet, who would occasionally descend to play in a valley of green meadows awash with magic that lured men. Wanjai unraveled the mystery of the valley to me.
In its early years, Alliance High School, though mostly for boys, also admitted girls. Among its earliest female graduates was Nyokabi, who later married her teacher, Eliud Mathu, himself the second Kenyan African to get a B.A., the first African to join the staff of Alliance, the first African to represent African interests in the Legislative Council, and the first African member of the colonial Executive Council. Among the last female graduates was Rebecca Njau, an actress of amazing power and grace in the 1951 Alliance production of
The Lady with a Lamp
, who, years later, would become a force in women’s education and a pioneering novelist, playwright, and internationally acclaimed batik artist. Still, the number of female students had remained small: between the first intake in 1938 and the last in 1952, the school had averaged only five girls annually.
The situation of women in secondary education changedwhen a separate Alliance Girls High School was officially opened in 1948. The two institutions literally faced each other across a valley, so the students referred to dwellers in the opposite institution as Acrossians. For the boys, their female counterparts were nymphs in a misty valley who sang soft but irresistible siren songs, melodies wrought with a promise to mellow the souls of the lucky and, equally, with a danger of anguishing the unlucky. Nearly every tale that related to matters of the heart started and ended with reference to these nymphs, and one did not always know what to believe. But now, here in the second year, one of us swore that he had emerged from the green meadow with the promise and not the anguish, all on account of a Shakespearean sonnet. The success spurred us on. We committed the whole sonnet to memory and could be heard reciting it loudly in the school corridors, trying out different poses and voice modulations:
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day
? /
Thou art more lovely and more temperate
, and then declaim,
Thy eternal summer shall not fade / Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest
, clinching the
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