Mau Mau fighter 'writes book' detailing betrayal of Independence heroes

Chelestino Twamwari M'Mwirebua, 95, suffered under the yoke of colonialism and detention and now tells his story in a handwritten autobiography

For 95-year-old Chelestino M’Mwirebua, the drums of Mau Mau war and the trumpets celebrating independence still ring in his ears to this day.

It is as if the entire struggle for independence and the eventual triumph happened just yesterday.

The nonagenarian now lives a quiet, peasant life deep inside the highlands of Imenti in Meru County.

His home is perched just on the verge of Mount Kenya Forest where for five years, he waged war against the British under the command of the late General Baimungi.

In a show of resilience, after determining that the world is keen to forget him and the deeds that happened to get Kenya free, M’Mwirebua has decided he will not go to his grave before his story is told. And since no one has shown interest in telling his tale to the world, he has decided to write his ‘autobiography’.

Kimeru language

The old man’s life story has not been published in a fancy hard cover book that could be reviewed by armchair literary scholars and found stacked in bookshops across the country.

It is penned in his native Kimeru language on a typical exercise book with an ink pen. But it clearly details M’Mwirebua’s life, which mirrors Kenya’s tumultuous independence history.

M’Mwirebua, who attended Catholic Mission schools up to Standard Four in 1936, dropped out and, as he writes in his book, decided to train for priesthood.

However, having been circumcised a year earlier, he could not take orders from a woman.

At the time, no circumcised Meru man could take commands from a woman and he told off an Italian nun when she tried to bend him to her will. “I was circumcised and proud. A nun being a woman could not tell me to do something and I obey. So I quit the seminary,” M’Mwirebua writes in his ‘autobiography’.

“In 1941, I was recruited to join the police force. Three years later in 1945, I was recruited again by the British Army as part of the contingent in the Second World War to go fight in Ethiopia against the Italians.”

M’Mwirebua is alluding to the Kenyan soldiers during the Second World War who were sent to liberate Ethiopia after the brutal invasion by the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini.

After the World War, the aged soldier came back to Kenya only to be relieved of his duties by the colonists and left not even with an army pension. “By that time, I was married and had a son. But I found myself frustrated with no money or a job. I turned to drinking alcohol out of frustration until the call came in 1947 to join the African Forest Army to fight the coloniser. I did not think twice and I took the oath and entered the forest,” M’Mwirebua narrates.

The old man however is cagey to reveal some of the secrets in the forest, especially the struggle between the Dedan Kimathi-led faction in the Abendere region and the Meru faction in Mt Kenya led by General Baimungi, because as he claims, the forest oath still binds him to this day.

However, during the emergency period of 1952, a swipe in Mt Kenya Forest area of Mikumbune in Meru saw him captured together with 20 other fighters.

“When I was arrested, I was taken to the White man’s camp in Meru town. I was immediately sentenced to four years in prison and taken to a detention centre called Nairobi Temporary camp. Some other detainees were taken to Lodwar. Others to Sakwa. Others to Embakasi and others to Manyani. I was later taken permanently to a detention camp called Nduruma in Mombasa.”

Escaped from prison

After six months in detention, M’Mwirebua escaped from prison, as he writes, with five other detainees.

The walk across the jungles on their way to the mainland was hard.

“Two of our friends did not make it to Kibwezi and died on the road. We separated in Kibwezi where I was hosted by a Kamba family who at first pretended to be friendly. They fed me and took care of my swollen feet,” he writes.

“But later at night, they called the chief who arrested me again harshly, tying me crudely with ropes, and sent me again to prison in Mombasa. This time, the imprisonment was even harsher. I did not get out of prison till 1959.”

M’Mwirebua came out of prison a broken man. He writes that he came out amid noises of KADU and KANU espousing what kind of a Kenya each wanted. But everyone was united in the clamour for the release of Jomo Kenyatta from detention.

“When I came out of prison, my wife had died. All my property had been taken by the village headman who commanded the local homeguard called Kaborio to burn my house to the ground. My brothers took my land, and I was left on the little two-acre piece that my father had occupied. My children could not even go to school since I was totally impoverished. To this day I don’t understand what Uhuru means.”