When I caved in to go to Mau Mau Caves, courtesy of 2 Rasta-pal-ians
Following the death of Field Marshall Muthoni wa Kirima the other day, Wango, Wambugu & Wang'ana (myself) decided to resume our 'Mau-Mau Caves' exploration series, this time in Lari.
On Sato afternoon, I was supposed ta’ go to Goethe Institut. Down River Road and Friends were having a Curatorial Walkthrough & Artists’ Chat for their Amplitudes of Dawn Exhibition (runnin’ till the 13th of Sept, so go check it out!), which is on the 1982 Attempted Coup on Moi, and then in the evening, they would have a 1982 Jam Session, courtesy of Raph (that shaggy-afro guy from The Mist. That fella fascinates me. One time I was at The Mist at 5am, completely wasted, and he was playing some experimental techno that sounded like some Illuminati chants. All I remember before falling asleep is some lady in front of me dancing like a GTA Vice City character in Malibu Club). You see, I love everything to do with River Road. Meja Mwangi’s novel Going Down River Road is my favorite among his books. Down River Road is my favorite anthology group, after Qwani and Kwani? of course, hahahah. And the street River Road itself? Wuuhuuu. My cuzo once took me on a walk there at midnight, and boy! if that’s how the Muslim Heaven looks like (with the 72 Virginias), then Allah Akbar! Anyway, I wasn’t able to attend any of these events because the rain seemed to be daring me to leave the house so that it can pour over me (When I sang the hymn ‘Blessings pour over me’ in Church, I wasn’t expecting them to come in form of heavy water droplets).
So, to compensate for staying at home the whole of Sato (something I dearly hate), I decided to look at my options for Sundae. One, there was my siz, who wanted to visit some church in Zimmerman to meet some people and needed someone to accompany her. Two, Jean & her book club (Meet Me) were having a meeting (in Lavi), and I wanted to dandia even though I haven’t read the books they were going to discuss. I just wanted to chill out apo backbench and enjoy their conversations from a distance. And three, Wango & Wambugu were heading over to Lari to visit the Mau-Mau caves. Well, I’ll be lying if I said I pondered too much over this decision. I just told Wango “208” (Millenial slang for ‘Tu-O-nane’).
So, I woke up early on Sato, kedo 4:30am, though it took me like thate minutes for my brain to finish updating Windows. Couldn’t make breakfast in time, so I just bit one grape (like those dads in telenovellas, who find a whole breakfast set out for them, but then say, “Sorry wife, I’m running late!”, kiss her in the forehead and then grab a grape and leave), and then packed some apples and oranges (I like these fruits because of the phrase ‘apples and oranges’. So, when someone makes a bullshit comparison, I pull out the fruits ostentatiously and say, ‘That’s like comparing apples and oranges’ while holding them like boobs), then I rushed out of the house. I know this is not relevant to the story, but I found 2 of my friends seated on the pavement (at 5:30 am. My mom would tell me, “Unaona marafiki zako venye wanakunywa bagi? Ederea tu kutebea nao, utajipata hivo pia”).
Got to town before 6:30am and I linked up with the mandem, and then we headed ova’ to Khoja (say it with a Jamaican accent) where we boarded a Likana Sacco driven by some humorous dere I made friends with when visiting some caves below Kijabe Hill, right underneath the railtrack, called Kamungu Ka Nduma (another Mau-Mau cave?) back in March this year. From Tao, Wambugu was the passenger princess and sat with the dere and talked the whole way, while Wango dozed off. Being the Kenyan Readathon month (whole month of September is usually dedicated to reading only Kenyan books, courtesy of Lexa Lubanga), I had debated in the morning whether to carry the Down River Road issue that I have (Issue 1: Place) or their Exhibition magazine. I went with the latter, and it’s actually what I read the whole way.
After like an hour on the road, which I spent raising my head every 10 minutes just to see the dere hand over 50 bobs to the numerous police officers manning the roads, we stopped at Kimende for a potty break. It immediately hit me that I’m travelling with Kiambu niggas whose shagz is just an hour away, because why would we have a stop-over for a safari that’s less than 100km? Western & Nyanza niggas know that the 1st stop-over on that road is usually at Nakuru, so seeing people stop at Kimende is a bit amateur-ish.
That aside, Kimende actually looked like Chernobyl that morning. It was so misty, that I wondered how the drivers could possibly see. Staring at the sun, it actually looked like a Kamikaze jet coming to hit me. Speaking of Kamikaze, I just learnt that Japanese kids my age were fighting in World Wars (RIP Seizo Yasunori) and bombing Americans, while the only person I’ve managed to bomb so far, is my woman, with love of course, hahahah.
We resumed our journey up to the KFS gate at The Forest, where we finally alighted the mat, and started our trek. The weather was amazing. Splendid. The cloud cover had cleared, and we could finally see the sky in all its beauty. I had been to The Forest sometime back, driving my sister so that we can do those adrenaline-packed activities like zip-lining and archery together, back when I had money. Anyway, I joined Pastor Mackenzie’s Church afterwards, and he preached that in Matthew 19:21, Jesus said, “Give everything that you have to your pastor and come and follow me.” So that’s how I ended up selling the car and started walking instead. But considering the rate at which I’m aimlessly roaming the country, I think I mistakenly started following Cain instead of Jesus.
We walked on to some clearing atop a hill, where we could get a clear view of Elephant Hill (one of the ranges on the Aberdares) ahead of us and an unclear view of Mt Kenya on the other side, covered by clouds. The grass was so nice that I felt like basking, only to remember that I might come across a woman lying there, ju wao ni manyoks. One side of the clearing had a planted forest, while the other side had a natural forest. The ranger informed us that Wangari Maathai used to call that planted forest ‘a dead forest’, simply because planted forests do not harbor birds, nor do they have underlying vegetation. This was surprising news to me, and upon further inquiry, I was told the reason being that planted forests hardly allow sunlight to pass through them, and the branches aren’t good enough for birds to form nests. Okay?
We got into the natural forest, where true to word, I realized that life actually exists on this side. Seems like that clearing we were on, was like the border between the Dominican Republic and Haiti. I found numerous beautiful webs carved by spiders (call them Spi-Da Vinci), a cow grazing, and a moth which was alive but seemed to be courting death like its ancestors during the Industrial Revolution in the 1850s.
After a 6km walk through the forest trail, we finally got to what we had been waiting for all along . . . (drums roll) . . . the waterfall!!!! I love waterfalls because they are always the best places to meditate. Quite chilled. The air is great. Cool breezes. Only the sound of the water falling. Thales of Miletus was quite right in saying that water is the source of life, and for that reason, he’s my best Pre-Socratic Philosopher.
The caves, which were the focal point of our tour, were the ones used by the Mau Mau guys to hide from the colonialists. They might have been particularly used as hiding points during the Lari massacre. You see, on 25th March 1953 (70 years ago), the Mau Mau factions from Murang’a got tired of the colonial homeguards, and planned an attack on 3 particular ones; Chief Luka, Chief Ikenya & Chief Makimei. They weren’t successful in capturing the last two, but Chief Luka wasn’t spared. He, his 6 wives and his children died when their hut was burned while inside. Was it a relatively less painful death than the alternative, of trying to escape and then getting hacked to death with a panga and being thrown back again into the burning hut? Well, their neighbors, and all the families that lived in that Homeguards’ Post were all burnt to death, bringing the total death tally to around 100 people. The two other chiefs escaped, and so the colonialists got wind of this information. They quickly swung into action, raiding the villages to pick up every man. All the men were rounded up, and assessed whether they were Christians or had land. Those who ticked any of these boxes were released, while those who didn’t were either executed right there and then in the villages or hanged in the gallows. In total, around 700 men were killed, and their bodies piled up and transported in open lorries around the villages for everyone to see, after which they were buried in mass graves. This came to be known as the Lari Massacre.
For a detailed narration of that story, check out these Twitter threads by Kimemia, from whom I also learnt about it.
Eh okay okay, now let’s go back to the tour. I know our minds have wandered off with that History lesson. We went back up (you know, because being at the bottom of a waterfall means you’re at the bottom of a valley, so to go back to normal ground, you must go uphill. I once explained this to Naomi sometime back, and she was left dumbstruck, as if I had just explained how the discovery of Cosmic Microwave Background by Arno Penzias in 1964 was actually complete proof of the Big bang), and veered into a different direction of the forest trail, going up and down, crossing streams, jumping over fallen trees, until we got to a pond, which the ranger explained, is the watering point of the elephants around. Being a Hindu, I was definitely ready to embrace the elephants, knowing that they might be my great-grandfathers who had passed away, but then I was told that they have migrated at the moment, so we won’t encounter them.
We continued meandering in the forest, until we finally came to a clearing, from where we could see the top of the hill where we were supposed to end it all (I mean the walk, not our lives hahahah). It seemed like an arduous walk up to that point, being a steep hill, but trust me, there’s nothing that can’t be overcome with a story. We just went along talking, and suddenly found ourselves at the summit (don’t worry, I’m just practising for when I finally summit Mt Elgon), which, surprisingly, was the point we started our tour. That brought our tour to an end, totaling 14km (according to my Samsung Health tracker).
’twas a lovely walk that I completely enjoyed. Thanks to my pals Wambugu and Wango, who are actually both Rastafarians (maybe they were actually serious when saying that these were their ancestors). I am the bald one amongst them. Maybe one day, I’ll cave into peer pressure (ju nimekuwa na wao kwa cave) and have dreadlocks, but that day is not today.
PS: It’s my 1st time writing a travelogue. How does one end it? Should I also talk about how I went home and took a shower? Or should it just end here? Well, for now, I’ll just end it here, because I’ve run out of breath (muscle memory from when I also ended the tour?). Thanks for reading this far, and please leave a comment so that I can get inspired to write more. Have a good day!