Word: kikuyu
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Near Nyeri last week, a Kikuyu chief and two black policemen were hacked to pieces when they surprised a Mau Mau oath-taking ceremony. Only one top Kikuyu chief survives; he is being closely guarded. Police witnesses ("Traitors," according to the Mau Mau) have had both hands cut off or were tied in sacks and drowned. A British colonel and his wife were slashed about the neck and face as they lay in bed one night...
...have caught and jailed 1,000 Mau-Mau blacks, flogged thousands more. Yet the secret society is growing at a pace that suggests professional organization and funds from abroad. The Mau-Mau's leader, Kenya officials are sure, is black-bearded Jomo ("Burning Spear") Kenyatta, 50, a thickset Kikuyu dandy, who runs the outwardly respectable Kenya African Union (K.A.U.), whose stated purpose is Negro advancement. A London-trained anthropologist who wrote (1938) a first-rate study of his people, Facing Mt. Kenya, Kenyatta is a devotee of Red magic. He spent the '30s in Moscow as a student...
...drive from the haunts of zebra, giraffe and hartebeest, the Mut-haiga's members have built themselves a sporting retreat as refreshing as those they remember in Old England. From the club terrace, after nightfall, visitors may watch red, green and white fireflies flickering over the Kikuyu grass lawns...
...these well-governed, well-content heathens, British rule proclaimed itself taking over to preserve order and administer justice. In Kikuyu eyes British rule merely looked like the invention of lunatics. Even more incomprehensible was the Christian religion. Why, asked incredulous natives, did God scorn polygamy when "only poor men have one wife, and God does not like poor men." Why pray when there is no immediate bad luck! An old man, dying a few years after British occupancy, summed up for his generation: "Soon I shall die, for I have seen enough...
...although Author Huxley views the natives' misfortunes with sympathy, her sympathy with the whites makes Red Strangers a tragi-comedy rather than a tragedy. The final scene (after two generations of British rule): A young Kikuyu farmer takes his first ride in a plane, trudges boastfully home, pleased with himself and the white bwana, determined to name his forthcoming child Aeroplane...