Read the first instalment: Day a furious Kenyatta blasted Gen Nkaissery at State House
Right from the time we were dating, I knew that Major’s job entailed abrupt departures, absences of unspecified duration and unannounced returns. But knowing that did not spare me the pangs of loneliness and palpitations from anxiety.
The worst of these moments came in the eighth month of our marriage, when we were still trying to get used to one another’s pastimes, work schedules and ways of communicating.
As fate would have it, I was home alone. Washed over by morning sickness, one Sunday morning, I cancelled my plans of going to church. My next-door neighbour, a housewife, called me at 8am using the house phones, which were connected to the main switchboard.
“Helen, have you heard?”
“What?”
“Now it is the military that is leading the country.”
I gasped.
“It is now the military,” she repeated.
“What? How?”
“Wanajeshi sasa ndiyo wanatawala, so sisi tuko na bahati (The military has taken over, so we are in luck),” she explained.
I said, “What? No, no no. It can’t be.”
“Ebu fungua radio (Turn on your radio),” she instructed me and hung up.
Was she serious? I walked in and turned on the radio. When my husband was home the radio was always on. He listened to news incessantly, he read the newspapers from cover to cover and watched TV news.
I rarely bothered with the radio. How could a coup herald good fortune for military wives? I found the radio and listened keenly for about 20 minutes. It was the same announcement over and over again. Was my neighbour serious? How couldn’t she see the dangers in this situation?
In all my years of hearing news about coups in Uganda, Ghana, Nigeria and a few other countries, I had never heard of a military ouster that ended well for anybody, in the long run. I stepped out into the early morning sun and sat on the porch, telling myself that the morning sickness that had plagued my first pregnancy up to that point, was not going to be made any worse by some sunshine. Not now when a bigger national crisis was brewing.
There were soldiers boarding lorries that left the barracks hurriedly. I tried not to think about the outcome of coups elsewhere. I certainly wasn’t going to try and engage my neighbour in a discussion about why she was wrong about our supposed fortunes. I needed to be alone with my thoughts. I tried to nail the source of my fear.
How could a coup happen in my own country? How had it found me living in a military barracks? Alone. My family was so far away, so were my old friends. What was I to do?
Where was the man who had brought me to this Army base? How was I going to get out of here if things got ugly? Why had he left me here, alone, pregnant, knowing that soldiers could be quarrelsome? Why had I even agreed to be married to a soldier? Argh. I worked myself into a serious fit. My fury kept pace with the heat of the sun as it inched to a vertical position, directly over my head.
And then the phone rang. I stumbled indoors, blinking several times to adjust my eyes to the dim light inside. It was Joe. On a crackling radio call. I strained to hear his repeated instructions, punctuated by radio call lingo “Over”.
“Stay put. Over.
Don’t panic. Over.
Everything is fine. Over.
I am coming. Over.
I just need to organise my cadets Over.
We need to move as a group. Over.
I am coming home. Over.”
I smiled. My anger melted away into something between relief and intense love. So he had not forgotten me? As far away as he was, he had understood that I would be shaken and lonely and he had found a way to reach me? I knew how hard it was for him to make calls from the field. In his relatively junior rank, he had had to wait until the line was free of calls from the command higher up at Army Headquarters and from his bosses in the field. His voice on the phone was official and his instructions were curt, but I still felt the caring, soft side of him.
I would be surprised to learn much later why my husband was always official on those field calls. For now, this day, which had started with so much drama, had one more surprise for me. An hour or so after Major’s call, some friends of his, a married couple, who lived in Nakuru town, arrived at our house in the barracks. He had reached them and asked them to come and keep me company. And they had quickly obliged.
As we civilians huddled around the radio, which was giving infrequent updates, we chatted quietly about other things, neither one of us willing to risk saying the wrong thing about soldiers. Days later when my husband arrived in Lanet, he told me teasingly that he sent his friends to stay with me because he feared I might run away.
A young marriage in the barracks is a fragile union even without a coup in the works. My husband’s sensitivity to my fears, and his foresight in sending me company on a day of national panic and personal anguish strengthened our bond. There were other challenges in our marriage along the way as we settled down to a life together. Monogamy did not come easy for African men of my husband’s generation, but with the help of close friends, we navigated our way out of those storms. I must admit though that there were moments when I was close to despair. Thankfully, with our resolve and the counsel of friends, our marriage was saved. BY DAILY NATION