Free In the House of the Interpreter by Ngugi wa'Thiong'o

alone, and my later instinctive escape from Johnny the Green, stoked the nascent defiance within me, urging me to dare outside the walls of the sanctuary, even during term time, despite the hounds at the gate. It was such a crossing, one too many, that eventually earned me a summons to the principal’s office for my first face-to-face encounter with Edward Carey Francis.

23
    On one special Saturday, students were free to be away from the compound all day, provided they returned to school by six. It was called Nairobi Saturday, probably because many students, particularly those who came from distant places and therefore could not go home, went to the capital city instead. In the first year, I did not take advantage of Nairobi Saturday; my experiences during the term breaks had only increased my reluctance to leave the safety of the school compound. But in the second year, Wanjai persuaded me to accompany him and Leonard Mbũgua to Limuru.
    Wanjai assured me that he and his friends had often walked the ten or fifteen miles and back on previous Nairobi Saturdays without any adverse effects. Besides, his father,Reverend Jeremiah Gitau, had a car and would drive us back. Not that he, or I for that matter, had been in touch with anybody at home: it was always a matter of gamble, hope, and chance.
    The first part of the trip went smoothly. We decided to visit my mother’s place first and end up at his father’s for the transport back. It turned out that my mother was in the fields near Limuru town, on a strip of land that had long been hers to cultivate, even before villagization. I had known the big Mugumo tree in its center since childhood. It symbolized a continuity in my life, and I felt like I was bringing the others to my
real
home. She fed us her famous potatoes roasted on an open fire.
    Feeling good about ourselves, still sure that we had plenty of time, we decided, at Wanjai’s insistence, to walk to Loreto Girls School just to see them in their flaming red uniforms. Wanjai and his friend wanted to confirm that the girls had hot showers, as the rumors claimed, instead of the cold ones we had at Alliance. After Loreto we would pass by Wanjai’s home and then ride back to school, in style, in his father’s car. So simple.
    At Loreto we let the nun on duty at the office know that we had not come to visit anybody in particular, we just wanted to see the school. Uniformed Alliance boys coming just to visit? Not only did we get an escort to show us around, we were treated like stars, with the girls ogling us, some even whistling, strange in my ears, because I thought only boys did that. Unlike over a year ago, when I took my intermediate school exams at that location and all the girls seemed equally beautiful, this time I was able to tellsome differences in their personalities, despite their red uniforms. Wanting to prolong the moment of adulation, we even accepted late afternoon tea with them, dismissing any suggestion that we might be late getting back by saying that we had a ride. When we finally left for Limuru, Wanjai stilled our worries: his father was certain to come to the rescue.
    Well, he did not. Though he never raised his voice in anger, he was not amused and asked Wanjai why he brought his guests home so late in the day. In his calm preacher voice, he said that as we had not asked his permission to waste time, we must have had a plan to get back to Alliance, and we had better follow through with it. We were late back. The next Saturday we were confined to the school to cut grass as punishment. It was a lesson on how not to plan on the expectations of what others will do for you.
    In time, and with each telling, the tale of our visit to Loreto became more dramatic, the inconveniences, fatigue, and dangers of walking alone in the dark morphing into a thrilling adventure. Wanjai must also have sung praises of my mother’s art of roasting potatoes in the open because later many of his friends hinted that they