Heritage

Indian High Commission, typewriter hold meaning to my very own existence

type

Back then it was a marvel to work on the typewriter used to produce early newspapers and other documents. FILE PHOTO | NMG

After my father completed his O Levels at Alliance High School in 1949, he went back to school early in 1950 to collect his examination results. Unfortunately, at the time his teacher of English and nemesis Fred Welch doubled as the bursar.

When he went to collect his caution money, Welch caustically remarked; “Those teachers in Makerere must have been asleep when they marked your English paper” upon finding out that my father had passed with a distinction. Once his caution money was securely in his hands, along with his clearance certificate my father told Fred Welch in a rejoinder “Thank you, sir, but if the teachers in Makerere thought that my English was satisfactory, I am not bothered about the opinion of a mere school teacher”.

Later that year he proceeded to Makerere College in Uganda. Returning to Kenya at the end of 1951, he was employed as a secondary school teacher at Kiamwangi Primary and Secondary School in Gatundu Division, one of the foremost institutions of the Kikuyu Independent Schools Association (KISA). Once the state of emergency was declared on 20 October 1952, all KISA schools were proscribed and closed immediately rendering my father jobless.

Lady luck soon smiled on him and he was invited for an interview at the Indian High Commission in Nairobi for the post of sub-editor of a local periodical. India itself had just won independence in 1947 and was sympathetic to the nationalist movement in Kenya.

My father passed the oral interview quite easily but he was given a passage to go and type at home and submit the following morning to secure the job. Not having any typing skills whatsoever, this put him in a quandary but, necessity is the mother of invention.

An idea quickly came to his mind; his niece Njuhi had recently been married to one Rigii who was an accomplished typist. My father had always admired the way Rigii worked on the typewriter without looking at the keyboard.

He sought out Rigii that evening and asked him to type out the passage for him as accurately as possible. No doubt, Rigii, conscious of his in-law obligations agreed to help without much persuasion.

The following morning my father presented the typed piece at the Indian High Commission and his interviewer remarked “Very impressive, Jolly good work!”. With a little help from his in-law, he got the job.

At the Indian High Commission, he quickly made the acquaintance of John Kamau Cauri, Douglas Njiiri Karago (who was to become his lifelong friend) and John Kamba, a Ugandan national. After weeks of planning, on 24 April 1954, the colonial administration launched “Operation Anvil” placing Nairobi under military control with the aim of ridding the city of all Mau Mau elements. British troops assisted by loyalist African home guards arrested more than 24,000 people, most of them being of the Kikuyu tribe, in Nairobi over a period of one month for allegedly taking the Mau Mau oath or being Mau Mau supporters or sympathisers.

On the day that Operation Anvil was launched my father and his African colleagues locked themselves in the office assuming that they enjoyed diplomatic immunity while on the grounds of the Indian High Commission.

Nonetheless, a large detachment of over enthusiastic British troops forced their way into the commission’s offices and ransacked filing cabinets and cupboards hoping to find incriminating evidence. The soldiers ignored the Indian staff and arrested the senior African personnel John Kamau Cauri, Douglas Njiiri Karago, John Kamba and Jeremiah Gitau Kiereini.

Despite the personal protest of the Indian High Commissioner the Africans were herded roughly like goats into a crowded lorry and taken directly to Langata Screening Camp where there were more than 80,000 Africans being held.

John Kamba was released immediately when the authorities discovered he was a Ugandan. The remaining three were beaten up and paraded each morning in front of “tukunia” (hooded informers). The conditions were inhuman.

In the meantime, a diplomatic row was brewing because the Indian High Commission in Nairobi raised this serious breach of diplomatic etiquette with Delhi who in turn complained to the British Government in London.

In addition to the Geneva Convention, which had just been signed in 1949, it did not appear to be politically correct for Britain to be bullying one of its newly independent colonies so soon. In the event, orders were issued from London for the immediate release of the three Africans from further detention and for them to be handed over personally to the Indian High Commissioner.

After a week in detention, the three were released and put into a government saloon car accompanied by a senior European police officer who personally presented them to the high commissioner’s residence in Parklands where they stayed until the situation calmed down.

I am told that my father and his colleagues would later jokingly refer to themselves as the “Langata Three”.

I know for a fact that my father had already met my mother because while rummaging through my mother’s “wedding suitcase” about 10 years ago, I came across a pristine copy of “Biggles in Spain” neatly autographed “E. Njeri, from J. Gitau. August 1952.” My father married my mother in December 1954 and I was born in September 1955.

Who knows what would have happened to my father and his friends had the Indian High Commission not intervened!