"What about the other young men of your colony?" I asked. "How do they feel?"
"Most of them are content, as I said. And why shouldn't they be? The hardest work they were ever forced to do was to nurse at their mothers' breasts." He looked into my eyes. "You have offered them a dream, and they have accepted it."
"And what is your dream, Murumbi?"
He shrugged. "I have ceased to dream."
"I do not believe that," I said. "Every man has a dream. What would it take to make you content?"
"Truly?"
"Truly."
"Let the Maasai come to Kirinyaga, or the Wakamba, or the Luo," he said. "I was trained to be a warrior. Therefore, give me a reason to carry my spear, to walk unfettered ahead of my wife when her back is bent under her burden. Let us raid their shambas and carry off their women and their cattle, and let them try to do the same for us. Do not give us new land to farm when we are old enough; let us compete for it with the other tribes."
"What you are asking for is war," I said.
"No," replied Murumbi. "What I am asking for is meaning. You mentioned my wife and children. I cannot afford the bride price for a wife, nor will I be able to unless my father dies and leaves me his cattle, or asks me to move back to his shamba." He stared at me with reproachful eyes. "Don't you realize that the only result is to make me wish for his charity or his death? It is better far to steal women from the Maasai."
"That is out of the question," I said. "Kirinyaga was created for the Kikuyu, as was the original Kirinyaga in Kenya."
"I know that is what we believe, just as the Maasai believe that Ngai created Kilimanjaro for them," said Murumbi. "But I have been thinking about it for many days, and do you know what I believe? I believe that the Kikuyu and Maasai were created for each other, for when we lived side by side in Kenya, each of us gave meaning and purpose to the other."
"That is because you are not aware of Kenya's history," I said. "The Maasai came down from the north only a century before the Europeans. They are nomads, wanderers, who follow their herds from one grazing area to another. The Kikuyu are farmers, who have always lived beside the holy mountain. We lived side by side with the Maasai for only a handful of years."
"Then bring us the Wakamba, or the Luo, or the Europeans!" he said, trying to control his frustration. "You still don't understand what I am saying. It is not the Maasai I want, it is the challenge!"
"And this is what Keino and Njupu and Nboka wanted?"
"Yes."
"And will you kill yourself, as they did, should a challenge not materialize?"
"I do not know. But I do not want to live a life filled with boredom."
"How many others in the colony of young men feel as you do?"
"Right now?" asked Murumbi. "Only myself." He paused and stared unblinking at me. "But there have been others before; there will be again."
"I do not doubt it," I replied with a heavy sigh. "Now that I understand the nature of the problem, I will return to my boma and think about how best to solve it."
"This problem is beyond your ability to solve, mundumugu," said Murumbi, "for it is part of the society that you have fought so hard to preserve."
"No problem is incapable of solution," I said.
"This one is," answered Murumbi with absolute conviction.
I left him standing there by the ashes, not totally convinced that he was wrong.
###
For three days I sat alone on my hill. I neither went into the village nor conferred with the Elders. When old Siboki needed more ointment for his pain, I sent Ndemi down the path with it, and when it was time to place new charms on the scarecrows, I instructed Ndemi to tend to the matter, for I was wrestling with a far more serious problem.
In some cultures, I knew, suicide was an honorable way of dealing with certain problems, but the Kikuyu did not belong to such a culture.
Furthermore, we had built a Utopia here, and to admit that suicides would occur from time to time meant that it was not a Utopia for all our people, which in turn meant that it was not a Utopia at all.
But we had built our Utopia along the lines of a traditional Kikuyu society, that which existed in Kenya before the advent of the Europeans. It was the Europeans who forcefully introduced change into that society, not the Kikuyu, and therefore I could not allow Murumbi to change the way we lived, either.
The most obvious answer was to encourage him - and others like him - to emigrate to Kenya, but this seemed out of the question. I myself had received higher degrees in both England and America, but the majority of Kikuyu on Kirinyaga had been those (considered fanatics by a Kenyan government that was glad to be rid of them) who had insisted in living in the traditional way prior to coming to Kirinyaga. This meant that not only could they not cope with the technology that permeated every layer of Kenyan society, but also that they did not even possess the tools to learn, for they could neither read nor write.
So Murumbi, and those who would surely follow him, could not leave Kirinyaga for Kenya or any other destination. That meant they must remain.
If they remained, there were only three alternatives that I could see, all of them equally unpalatable.
First, they could eventually give up in despair and kill themselves, as four of their young comrades had. This I could not permit.
Second, they could eventually adjust to the life of ease and idleness that was the lot of the Kikuyu male, and come to enjoy and defend it as passionately as did the other men of the village. This I could not foresee.
Third, I could take Murumbi's suggestion and open up the northern plains to the Maasai or the Wakamba, but this would make a mockery of all our efforts to establish Kirinyaga as a world for and of the Kikuyu. This I could not even consider, for I would not allow a war that would destroy our Utopia in order to create his.
For three days and three nights I searched for another alternative. On the morning of the fourth day, I emerged from my hut, my blanket wrapped tightly about me to protect me from the cold morning air, and lit my fire.
Ndemi was late, as usual. When he finally arrived, he was favoring his right foot, and explained that he had twisted it on his way up my hill - but I noticed, without surprise, that he limped on his left foot when he went off to fill my gourds with water.
When he returned, I watched him as he went about his duties, collecting firewood and removing fallen leaves from my boma. I had chosen him to be my assistant, and my eventual successor, because he was the boldest and brightest of the village children. It was Ndemi who always thought of new games for the others to play, and he himself was always the leader. When I would walk among them, he was the first to demand that I tell them a parable, and the quickest to understand the hidden meaning in it.
In short, he was a perfect candidate to commit suicide in a few more years, had I not averted that possibility by encouraging him to become my assistant.
"Sit down, Ndemi," I said as he finished collecting the last of the leaves and throwing them on the dying embers of my fire.
He sat down next to me. "What will we study today, Koriba?" he asked.
"Today we will just talk," I said. His face fell, and I added, "I have a problem, and I am hoping that you will provide me with an answer to it."
Suddenly he was alert and enthused. "The problem is the young men who killed themselves, isn't it?" he said.
"That is correct," I answered him. "Why do you suppose they did it?"
He shrugged his scrawny shoulders. "I do not know, Koriba. Perhaps they were crazy."
"Do you really think so?"
He shrugged again. "No, not really. Probably an enemy has cursed them."
"Perhaps."
