Fan into Flame

Description

Cleric’s powerful tale on storeyed journey of Kenya

Autobiographies tend to take a very narrow view of the world. A politician’s life story will, in its broadest reach, only veer off the author’s life to his or her country’s political journey. A trade unionist’s will tend to drone on about trade unionism, and so on.

But not so John G. Gatu’s Fan into Flame.

Like a flame with uncontrollable embers, this wide-ranging 320-page tale refuses to be confined to any narrow literary alleyway.

First, the versatile nature of the author’s life history is as interesting as it is enlightening. From the time he ran away from home alongside other boys, keen to seek a better life in Nairobi, his was an adventurous and eventful life.

After a lengthy search, he joins the military as a signal officer. From the military, he works as a Swahili translator for a colonial military officer, church clerk, film editor and magazine reporter, before rising to be among the most influential church leaders in the history of Kenya. This career versatility – coupled with his numerous travels across the world – enables him to tell the story of Kenya from many perspectives.

As a young man, Gatu is seen as caught between the traditional African ways and Christian ways. No scene captures this better than when his father wants to take Gatu’s sister to a medicine man to have pneumonia “sucked out of her with a sheep’s horn”, as his mother insists that they take her to a dispensary.

The uncertainty that propels his life’s journey also makes for interesting reading. For instance, when all his young friends board a bus –on credit – return to their homes after failing to get a job in the city, Gatu stays on because no one would pay his fare at home after he escaped. It is such awkward situations that seem to open doors to even more interesting things.

His military adventure reads like a war movie script. When he enlists, he is given two blankets, two pairs of shorts, a pair of boots, puttees, a mess tin and a tag with a number that he was to hang around his chest all the time. The eight-shilling-a-month job offers a peek into the conditions of African military officers on Her Majesty’s Service in World War Two.

On the warfront in Ethiopia, at a time when he was strangely a heavy drinker and smoker, he is court-martialled and sentenced to 60 days in prison for a crime he insists he did not commit. On his way to Dire Dawa prison, interesting scenes unfold that see the man – who would later become the first African General Secretary of the Presbyterian Church in East Africa- throw an Ethiopian off a moving train.

In prison, he meets people from his childhood days and soon, the prison time morphs into another military job – as a translator. The twists from then on are greatly intriguing. His journey back to Kenya is so eventful and comical that his life qualifies for a film rendition. We see him almost dying while trying to swim in the Indian Ocean at Mogadishu, Somalia. When his regiment reaches Chogoria, in present-day Tharaka Nithi County in Kenya, women scampered to the hills. The sight of the soldiers really horrified the women, who thought they had been invaded by Ngorogothi, the dreaded man-eaters from Gold Coast who were believed to be fond of tearing off women’s breasts before eating them.