Free Dreams in a Time of War by Ngugi wa'Thiong'o

offspring of families would also claim as their teacher. There is one teacher, Benson Kamau, nicknamed Gĩthuri, “Old Man,” who used to sing out his lessons but with nonsensical lyrics like
Cows are property; money is property; goats are property
that became more and more absurdly monotonous by their repetition—but they stayed in the mind.
    One event I always recall with heartache. I was in grade one when Teacher Joana selected me to join a performance group that would recite from memory the Beatitudes from the Gospel of Matthew and another passage from Mark at the end-of-year assembly for students and parents. I committed the whole passages to memory. They were poetic. They were music. I looked forward to it. I dreamed about it. But on the day of performance I left home a little late and arrived just as the group was saying:
And they brought young children to him, that he should touch them, and his disciples rebuked those that brought them. But when Jesus saw them he was much displeased, and said unto them, suffer the little children to come unto me and forbid them not, for such is the kingdom of God
.
    The failure to perform left a hole in me, the need for a second chance to redeem myself to myself. For the durationof my stay in the school I always hoped that such a chance would present itself.
    It never did. One day my elder brother Wallace Mwangi, with my mother apparently in agreement, told me that I had to leave Kamandũra for Manguo. It was very sudden, unexpected. It was the end of 1948, and I had been in Kamandũra for only two years, or, more precisely, one and a half, because I started there in the last quarter of 1947. I had many questions but I knew this would end an important phase of my life. The alternation between dream and reality that was my Kamandũra period was over, but I would forever carry in me the magic of learning to read and also the memory of loss. Perhaps the unknown Manguo would add to the magic of reading, and even soothe the ache of loss, but I doubted it could ever fill the hole.

Manguo was a short distance away: It stood on the ridge opposite our home, father’s homestead; one went down the slope of our ridge, a narrow valley near the Manguo marshes, then up the next, Kĩeya’s ridge, to the compound. The shorter distance and the news that my younger brother would be starting school at Manguo were enough to cheer me, and I started feeling good about the change.
    Njinjũ was special to me and remained so even after I realized that my tears had had nothing to do with his coming into the world. But sibling rivalry for our mother’s affection always produced tension between us. Sharing the same bed with my mother, we had often fought to be the one next to Mother’s breasts. But moments of tension would alternate with those of extreme affection when we would share everything, a banana, a sweet potato, biting into them by turns, happily. But a few days later there would be accusations and counteraccusations about who had taken the bigger bites or who had taken an unfair turn; Mother would settle this by admonishing us to love each other as brothers, and then would follow a little talk on the importance of family. Shedid not have to convince us: We were at once brothers and best friends.
    Once, soon after transferring to Manguo, I jumped over a low barbed wire fence around the school. One of the barbs caught the top of my left foot and tore deep into the flesh. Later it swelled and hurt so much that I could not walk. There were no medical clinics around and no doctor we could pay. My mother simply kept on washing the wound with salt water. My brother would literally cart me from place to place on the wheelbarrow. Somehow after weeks of my mother nursing my foot, I managed to begin walking again. An inch-long scar remains to this day. And a well of gratitude, for years later I learned of a child who had died of a similar wound, through tetanus poisoning.
    But this memory and my love for