Striving for the wind

Mwangi (a Kenyan author ) is on the strength of his earlier works usually thought of as a ‘popular’ — i.e. ‘non-literary’ — writer, but Striving for the wind (1990) is an unmistakable masterpiece of African fiction.

It has the dimensions of a parable in its juxtaposition of Baba Pesa — the “father of money” with his 300 acres of land and his overwhelming greed to add to these acres the tiny 10-acre “shamba” (smallholding) of his poor neighbour — with that neighbour himself, the humble and dignified Baba Baru.

It is an immensely amusing novel, with numerous hilarious scenes and moments, yet simultaneously a distinguished, humane and poignant work. Perhaps this is so because this tale of two neighbouring farming families, and the village society that is their larger context, is so fully and vividly depicted. Not only through the delineation of individual personalities, but by means of the portrayal of a range of relationships, sudden eventualities and slower changes, as well as descriptions of the land, the village, the creatures and the very machinery employed by people.

Baba Pesa’s farm, for instance, is “crammed with old tractor parts, fuel drums, old tyres and heaps of scrap metal left behind by the original farm owners who fled down to South Africa at the mention of the word UHURU — freedom” (10).

The personalities with which Mwangi peoples this novel are unforgettable, the two most prominent being a father and his eldest son. The son — Juda Pesa — is a reprobate and a philosopher who is more-or-less permanently drunk, partly (one may guess) in reaction against the vulgarity and vicious meanness of his father, the richest and most ruthless man in the district. Juda’s favourite companion is his accidentally acquired dog, Confucius the Thinker, and one of his favourite occupations is to address the villagers on the subject of self-improvement (while deeply drunk) from the dangerous perch of the village windmill.

After reading hundreds of books and acquiring two degrees, Juda was sent down from university because of his outrageous eccentricities, but he firmly believes that there is more than enough wisdom and knowledge in an uneducated country and the village people themselves.

In contrast to his idle, but generous and compassionate son, Baba Pesa is gross and harsh, a man who rejoices in the virtually absolute power he wields over almost everyone in the vicinity. Baba Pesa’s favourite, bragging saying is simply “because of money” (35) and he enjoys humiliating everyone (and that means everyone around him) who has less power and money than he, particularly the poor.

The awfulness of Baba Pesa is offset by his wonderful, kindly wife, “Mama Pesa, whose patience was legendary” (90), and whom Juda, her son, recognises as the sanest person in the vicinity. She is one of those women who, however wealthy her husband may be, is never idle and who has a huge, compassionate heart. She is typically to be found “up to her elbows in pig food, helping Njeri, the lame old woman whose duty it was to feed the animals” (11).

The village, a typical postcolonial community, is full of impoverished, illiterate people driven off the soil by colonists or by greedy land-grabbers like Baba Pesa and of barely schooled, unemployed youngsters.

“The birth of Kambi village,” we are told, “was as accidental as that of most of its inhabitants” (30). Not that Mwangi (or Juda) sentimentalises them: most villagers are lacking in enterprise and most officials either inept or corrupt (or sinister).But the perspective is never contemptuous — rather, these lives are observed with humane understanding, shot through with humour.

The tough village health worker, known as “Jeni the Castrator” because of her efforts regarding condom use and birth control, is portrayed “hopelessly looking for converts among the terminally male chauvinist gathering” (58).

One of the characters who is most memorable is an old, old man, Mutiso the goatherd (to Baba Pesa), who seems to be of Masai origin: “A dark phantom in a heavy greatcoat and a floppy hat, standing on one leg and leaning on the time-worn herdsman’s cane as his goats [swarm] over the hillside around him” (99).

He is so ancient and so wise that “there wasn’t anything that happened on this hill and the next and the next that Mutiso didn’t know about” (149-150). Yet even he is surprised by the sorrows and horrors that impinge upon them towards the end of the novel. Even though Mwangi never loses the light touch in his writing, his sense of the funny aspect of almost everything that occurs, what happens does plot-wise resemble one of the ancient Greek tragedies.

The poor (Baru) family has a sexy daughter just entering womanhood. Baba Pesa, who at first merely gives her lifts to school, ends up seducing and impregnating her (she threw the birth control pills he supplied away).

Juda decides to marry her and they actually develop a real, mutual affection and tenderness in their relationship. But on the night her difficult labour starts, floods have inundated the countryside. We begin to see a better side of even Baba Pesa when he takes his own whole family and the entire Baru family, at great risk, through a swollen river to Nyeri General Hospital. But the nurse there next morning brings them the news that, although the twin babies have survived, the young mother (Mwangari) has died in labour.

‘It was too difficult for her,’ she told them. ‘She was too young’ (195).

And here the novel ends, with a description of Juda “weep[ing] for the girl he had grown to love like his own sister” (196). “Only his mother sees his tears and it is also she (Mama Pesa) who,” throwing her arm around Mama Baru’s suffering shoulders hugged her gently. ‘Have courage,’ she told her. ‘Mwathani ekaga wendo wake. The good God does his will’ (196).

to the top

© Kopiereg in die ontwerp en inhoud van hierdie webruimte behoort aan LitNet, uitgesluit die kopiereg in bydraes wat berus by die outeurs wat sodanige bydraes verskaf. LitNet streef na die plasing van oorspronklike materiaal en na die oop en onbeperkte uitruil van idees en menings. Die menings van bydraers tot hierdie werftuiste is dus hul eie en weerspieël nie noodwendig die mening van die redaksie en bestuur van LitNet nie. LitNet kan ongelukkig ook nie waarborg dat hierdie diens ononderbroke of foutloos sal wees nie en gebruikers wat steun op inligting wat hier verskaf word, doen dit op hul eie risiko. Media24, M-Web, Ligitprops 3042 BK en die bestuur en redaksie van LitNet aanvaar derhalwe geen aanspreeklikheid vir enige regstreekse of onregstreekse verlies of skade wat uit sodanige bydraes of die verskaffing van hierdie diens spruit nie. LitNet is ’n onafhanklike joernaal op die Internet, en word as gesamentlike onderneming deur Ligitprops 3042 BK en Media24 bedryf.