JAMES AND THE FAMILY

Birth of James PLOTI

Chapter Two: The Boy Called FORD

On the slopes of Mt Kenya, the mornings came cold and the evenings came early. Mist rolled down from the mountain and settled over the small farms like a heavy blanket. In those mornings James learned the first lesson of his life. Nobody had ever taught it to him in a classroom. He learned it from watching his parents dig, plant, pray and wait for rain that sometimes never came.

The lesson was simple. Laziness, slow thinking and fear will lead you into a dark cave of poverty. Once you are in, the way out is long and steep, like the path up the mountain itself.

The family had little. Supper was sometimes a plate of githeri shared among three children, and sometimes only strong tea without milk. Still, the homestead was full of life, and most of it came from the three children.

Janet was the eldest. She was more of a young mother than a big sister. She woke before everyone else to light the fire, fetch water and make sure her two younger brothers had washed their faces before school. If James tore his shorts climbing a tree, Janet stitched them. If Danson came home crying, Janet wiped his tears and then marched off to find out who had made him cry. She was gentle, but she was not to be played with.

James was the charming one. Even as a small boy he had a way with words that made people stop and listen. He could stand in the middle of the village boys and tell a story so well that they forgot they were hungry. Old women laughed at his jokes, and teachers forgave his mistakes because he explained himself so sweetly. People were drawn to him without knowing why. He spoke, and the room leaned in.

Danson, the youngest, was different. He was quiet and watchful, a thinker. While James talked, Danson observed. He noticed which boy was jealous, which path was dangerous, and which game would end in a fight. Many times he pulled James by the shirt and whispered:

"James, let us go home. Those boys are planning something."

James would laugh it off, but he had learned that his little brother was usually right. Danson was the eyes, and James was the voice. Together they made a strong pair.

The Kirinyaga Karate Movie

In their primary school days at Gatunguru, the two brothers discovered movies. A neighbour who owned a small generator and an old television showed films on weekends. Children paid a few coins, or sometimes a handful of maize, to sit on the floor and watch.

That is where they met Rambo and Jet Li.

Nothing was the same after that. On the way home from school, James and Danson became fighters. Sticks became machine guns. Banana trees became enemy soldiers. They kicked at the air, rolled in the dust and shouted battle cries that sent the chickens running.

One evening by the fire, James announced a big idea.

"Danson, we are going to make a movie. The first karate movie ever made in Kirinyaga."

Danson, ever the analyst, asked the only question that mattered. "With what camera?"

James waved the question away like a fly. "We will find one. First we write the story."

So they wrote it. On the back pages of old exercise books, in pencil, they wrote a full script. There was a hero, played by James of course, a wise fighter played by Danson, a village under attack and a final battle on the hill behind their home. They practised their scenes for weeks. They even told their friends that filming would start "very soon."

The camera never came. The film was never made. Like many childhood dreams, it ended almost as quickly as it was born.

What James did not know then was that the dream had planted something in him. He had learned to imagine something that did not exist, to plan it, to sell it to other people and to believe in it before there was any proof. Years later that would become his greatest gift.

Leaving Home

James sat his final primary examinations and passed with good grades. Gatunguru Primary celebrated him, and the village spoke his name with pride. Then the admission letter arrived. James had been called to Kiamutugu Boys High School.

Joy filled the homestead, and worry quickly followed. School fees. Uniform. Shopping. A box, a mattress, soap, sugar, a metal basin. The list was long and the family's pockets were empty.

James's father walked out to the small shed where the last cow stood chewing slowly. He stood with it for a long time. The next market day, the cow was sold. It was the last of the family's cattle and their last piece of security. It all went into the school fees of one boy.

Friends of the family came through for the rest. One bought the shirts, another the trousers, someone else a sweater. A neighbour brought a mattress tied with sisal rope. Janet packed his box with the care of a mother, folding each item as if it were made of gold.

On the morning he left, his mother held his face in her rough hands and said only this:

"Mwanakwa, remember where you come from."

James nodded. He did not yet know how heavy those words would become.

The First Day

Kiamutugu Boys High School welcomed new students the way a hungry lion welcomes a lost goat.

In those days, harassing form ones, the "monos" as they were called, was almost a tradition. Older boys saw newcomers as fresh supplies brought from home. Every new student was assigned a "school dad," a form three or four boy who was supposed to guide him and protect him.

James's school dad did not protect him. He planned how James would be robbed.

That first evening James stepped out of the dormitory for a short while. When he came back, his box had been opened. His new uniforms were gone. His shopping was gone: the sugar, the soap, the bread, the Blue Band, everything Janet had packed so carefully. His mattress was still there, only because it was too heavy to hide quickly.

James stood looking at the empty box. Around him some boys laughed and others looked away. He felt as if the ground had opened under his feet.

That night he did not sleep. He lay on his mattress staring at the dark ceiling, and the same thought kept going round in his head:

"They sold the last cow."

What would he tell his father? How could he write home asking for more when there was nothing left to sell? The uniforms had been gifts from people who barely had enough themselves. Where was he supposed to start?

For the first time in his young life James felt real depression. His chest was heavy and his mind was disturbed. Fear, the very thing he had promised himself never to give in to, sat on the edge of his bed and whispered: "Go home. Give up. You don't belong here."

But somewhere deep inside, another voice answered, the voice of the mist and the mountain and the cow that was no more:

"Laziness, slow thinking and fear will lead you to a dark cave of poverty."

By morning James had made a decision. He would not run.

The Old Shirt and the Torn Trouser

James did something that surprised everyone. He went to the very school dad who had arranged the robbery. He did not shout or accuse him. He calmly asked him for help.

"I have nothing to wear to class," he said. "Please get me an old shirt and a trouser. Anything."

The older boy looked at him strangely. Maybe he felt guilty, or maybe he was simply surprised. Either way, he came back with an old shirt, faded and thin at the elbows, and a trouser torn at the knee and loose at the waist.

That is how life at Kiamutugu Boys began for James.

For a whole term he went to class in that old torn trouser and that faded shirt. He had no sweater. On cold Kirinyaga mornings, when the wind came down from the mountain and cut through the classrooms, James sat with his arms folded tight, shivering but writing.

Under the old shirt he wore a white t-shirt he had brought from home, one of the few things the thieves had missed. On its front was the image of a Ford pickup truck. The boys noticed it immediately.

"Eh, look at this one. FORD!"

The name stuck. From then on, to every boy at Kiamutugu, James was FORD.

At first it was meant as mockery. But James carried the name the way a Ford pickup carries a load: steadily, without complaint, on rough roads. Slowly, without anyone noticing, the name changed meaning. FORD became the boy who would not break down.

The Price of Survival

The older boys tested that strength again and again. There were punishments for no reason, chores that belonged to others, insults and blows. James took them, swallowed his pain and kept going.

One boy stood out from the rest. His name was Kimachia, and he came from Thika. He was big, loud and cruel in a way that frightened even some of his own classmates. For reasons James never understood, Kimachia picked him as his target.

One evening Kimachia beat James badly, worse than anything he had ever experienced. The blows landed on his back and lower belly, and when it was over James could barely stand.

The damage went deeper than bruises. In the weeks after, James found he could not hold his urine. His bladder had been injured. For more than two months he lived with the shame and fear of it, hiding his condition, washing quietly at night and praying nobody would find out.

He went through many medical visits and trials before a good doctor finally found the problem and treated him properly. To this day James thanks God for those doctors. He came close to losing more than his dignity.

Even then he did not quit. He did not run home. He did not let Kimachia decide how his story would end.

The Coffee Plantation Business

It was in those painful early days that James discovered something about himself, something that would shape the rest of his life.

He was an entrepreneur.

He noticed it first in the dining hall. School food was plain, and the older boys took the best portions. For a form one, a slice of bread with Blue Band was a luxury. Toast was a dream. The few monos who had pocket money had nowhere to spend it, because going to the canteen meant walking straight into the older boys.

Every evening, many form ones went to hide in the coffee plantation next to the school. It was the one place they could escape the older boys for an hour or two. They sat between the coffee bushes, talked quietly and waited until it was safe to go back.

James watched them and thought: "These boys have money. They are hungry. They cannot get bread. And they are all sitting in one place."

That was a market.

So James made a plan, the way he and Danson had once planned their karate movie. This time it was real.

Every evening, while the other monos hid among the coffee bushes, James quietly slipped out of the school compound. He walked quickly to the shops nearby and used the little money he had to buy a few loaves of bread and a tin of Blue Band. Then he crept back, careful not to be seen by teachers or older boys, and went straight to the coffee plantation.

There, among the bushes, FORD opened for business.

He cut the bread into slices, spread the Blue Band and sold each piece to the form ones who had money, at a price higher than he had paid. Nobody complained. To a hungry fourteen-year-old hiding from bullies, a slice of bread with Blue Band was worth every cent.

The business grew. Boys started waiting for him. Some asked him to bring extra the next day. Some paid in advance. James kept everything in his head: who owed what, who wanted what and how much bread to buy. He reinvested his profits, bought a little more each time and saved the rest.

He took real risks. Getting caught outside the school compound could have meant punishment or suspension. Getting caught by the older boys could have meant losing everything. But James had learned that fear leads to the cave of poverty, so he moved carefully, thought quickly and kept going.

His father gave him fifty shillings as pocket money for the term. Fifty shillings would have been gone in a week if James had spent it on himself. Instead it became his starting capital.

By midterm, James had saved more than six hundred shillings.

A New Beginning

When midterm came, James did not go home with a sad story and an empty hand. He went straight to the market and spent his own money, earned with his own mind and his own courage.

He bought a new pair of trousers, a second-hand sweater, two shirts and a vest.

When he came back to Kiamutugu after midterm, the boys looked at him twice. The torn trouser was gone. The faded shirt was gone. FORD stood in front of them in clean clothes and a warm sweater, bought with money nobody had given him.

Some boys respected him. Some were jealous. Some started asking him for business advice. James just smiled, the same charming smile that had once drawn the village boys around him on the slopes of Mt Kenya.

For the first time since he had walked through the school gates, life seemed to be taking shape. The cold mornings did not bite as hard. His wounds were healing. His business was running, and his name meant something new. The boy who had arrived with nothing had, in a single term, built something from nothing.

James lay on his mattress one night, looked up at the same dark ceiling he had stared at on his first night, and thought:

"Maybe I will make it after all."

He did not know that, beyond the dormitory walls, the mood in the school was changing. Older boys were holding secret meetings in corners. Angry whispers were moving from one dormitory to the next. Something big was coming.

Then came the Mega Kiamutugu Boys High School Strike...

Read Chapter Three for more.