You Will See Fire

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The dispute with his bishop ran deeper still. With villages erupting in a pandemonium of flame, arrows, and machetes, Kaiser questioned Mugendi’s refusal to take a forceful stand against what seemed clearer by the day: that the regime was exciting the Masai and Kisii to war. It was Kaiser’s insistence on doing so in public, before other churchmen—including young African priests—that Mugendi found intolerable. The American priest was breaching the deep-dyed cultural prohibition: An African bishop, like a president, was a paternal personage not to be challenged. “Here in Africa you never discuss the Father (#litres_trial_promo), much less criticize him in public,” Kaiser wrote.

Other priests warned Kaiser that his style was too confrontational. Ignoring pleas to back down, Kaiser wrote a letter, detailing his objections to Mugendi’s leadership and pointing out “the Catholic failure as regards Human Rights.” (#litres_trial_promo)

Mugendi had had enough. He sent word to Kaiser’s superiors: Remove this priest from my diocese. Maurice McGill, the London-based superior general of the Mill Hill order, informed Kaiser that he should leave immediately, and invited him to spend some time at Mill Hill headquarters in London.

“I can hardly be appointed away (#litres_trial_promo) from this place without an appointment to someplace else,” Kaiser wrote back. “Your invitation to visit Mill Hill is kind, but at this point I need clear orders and not an invitation. I will make no preparations for leaving here until I have heard from you and I would consider at least two weeks, but preferably four weeks, to be a reasonable time to finish up here and say goodbye to those I have lived with for nearly thirty years.” He said Mugendi had refused to speak to him that morning.

“I confess, Maurice, that I am deeply hurt by your action or rather lack of action as well as those Mill Hill superiors who have assisted you in withdrawing me. I would have thought that a minimum response from a superior would have been to ask the Bishop to put into writing the reasons for expelling me,” he continued. “I would not for any reason in the world contradict Bishop Mugendi except that I should think that not to do so would be disobedient to the clear teaching of the church. I will make a report of this affair for the priests here, the Kenya Hierarchy & the papal representative & also send you a copy.”

He distributed his letter widely within the Mill Hill organization and the African Church. He also reportedly sent a copy to the Vatican, a further humiliation for Mugendi. “I told him not to write the letter,” (#litres_trial_promo) Keane recalled. “If he had something to say and do, he had to do it, regardless of whether it destroyed you or not. John would reprimand you and he wouldn’t care if you were hurt or not. He had also that cruel side in him, that justice was everything.” Keane said that Mugendi wept when he read the letter, and that it caused “tremendous hurt” between the mostly European Mill Hill members and the African Church. “They didn’t like the white man attacking the black bishop,” Keane said. “It wasn’t in John’s vocabulary to express regret.” It seemed no coincidence that people called him the “rhino priest.” This was the same John Kaiser, Keane recalled, whose answers to a psychological test administered by Mill Hill earned him a comparison to the animal said to charge friend and foe alike.

“My conscience is clear (#litres_trial_promo) and I will not apologize for any of my statements or opinions,” Kaiser wrote to a friend that June. “I can always admit & lament the fact I am an undiplomatic clod, but for me that is not the point.”

Kaiser remained in Kisii as the elections approached. There was little doubt about the outcome. Violence was not Moi’s only tactic (#litres_trial_promo). The registration forms of illiterate voters could be invalidated by purposely misspelling their names; by these and other means, an estimated one million Kenyans were prevented from voting. The American ambassador was troubled by his nation’s decision not to boycott the election. Hempstone reasoned that such a boycott might have led to civil war, and yet “having put our imprimatur on a flawed electoral process (#litres_trial_promo), we seemed to be certifying that second-rate democracy was good enough for black people.”

In one sense, Moi had read his country accurately: The vote fractured along ethnic lines. By and large, political loyalties were not animated by ideology, not defined by particular stances on foreign and domestic issues, but by the understanding that whoever controlled State House would lavish the national resources—jobs, schools, roads—on their own. When the results were counted, Moi had won 1.9 million votes, 36.5 percent of the total. His three opponents divided the rest. He solemnly lifted the Bible and took the oath of office for a five-year term. After riots and protests (#litres_trial_promo), after tear gas and truncheons, after a crush of domestic and international pressure, after the long-awaited introduction of multiparty politics, the dictator had wrested from his ordeal a new prize: the veneer of democratic legitimacy.

KAISER CLUNG STUBBORNLY to his job in the Kisii Diocese, until finally, in the summer of 1993, his superior general sent him what he called “a letter firm in tone,” ordering him to leave immediately. He said one final Sunday Mass, packed his few belongings, and departed for the missionary house in Sotik, a few hours east. He was sixty years old, and devastated. “Exile,” (#litres_trial_promo) he called it. He had given three decades to the Kisii people; he knew their language and customs; he had baptized thousands and heard countless confessions; he considered himself one of them. And he had loved Bishop Mugendi.

Kaiser was frustrated by the superior general’s failure to give clear orders regarding his next assignment. “These days it’s mighty hard (#litres_trial_promo) to get a superior to say ‘I appoint you to Timbuktoo, period,’” he wrote.

Kaiser would not be nudged out noiselessly; he was unwilling to establish roots elsewhere without having had a face-to-face meeting with Mugendi. He wanted an official release from his duties in the diocese. It’s possible that Kaiser realized he’d gone too far and wanted forgiveness.

Kaiser drove to the bishop’s house in Kisii and insisted on seeing him. Mugendi declined. Kaiser waited. Hours passed. Finally Mugendi emerged, walked past Kaiser, and climbed into his car. He refused to acknowledge the priest.

“I want your blessing,” Kaiser said. The man who would hurl his body before the bloody juggernaut of Kenyan history, daring it to change course or crush him, lowered himself to his knees before the bishop’s car (#litres_trial_promo). The bishop must have known that his most obstinate priest was prepared to wait forever. He relented, dismissing him with a quick and perfunctory wave, his hand tracing a cross in the air. It was enough. Kaiser climbed to his feet.

SINCE LATE 1992, Gathenji had been receiving ominous reports about the storm brewing in Enoosupukia, a high, fertile plateau of terraced hills in the Rift Valley. Once the grazing area of Masai pastoralists, the land was now tended by Kikuyu farmers who grew maize, beans, and potatoes. The Catholic Church had asked Gathenji to investigate claims that Kikuyu landowners were being threatened with eviction by the fiery William Ntimama, Moi’s minister for local government and the nation’s most powerful Masai. He was the most flamboyant advocate of Majimboism, which called for a constitutional reform that would turn the clock back a century. Groups lacking ancestral roots in a particular region would be forced to abandon their lands without compensation.

“Lie low like envelopes or be cut down to size,” he reportedly told the Kikuyu, warning them that their fate would match that of the Ibo, a reference to the Nigerian ethnic group slaughtered en masse in Biafra. It didn’t matter that the Kikuyu had been settling in this area of the Rift Valley for decades, and that he’d sanctioned the influx himself. Nor did it matter that the Kikuyu possessed deeds to land they’d legitimately purchased; he declared them “mere pieces of paper.”

Ntimama portrayed himself as a man betrayed: The Kikuyu had backed his rival in the recent election. “People say I hate the Kikuyu,” (#litres_trial_promo) he was quoted as saying. “But it is they who have driven me to that extremism. Because they were never grateful for what we had done for them.” He ordered their eviction. His pretext: to preserve the land as a water-catchment area for the Masai, whose traditional grazing grounds were supposedly parched by the misuse of the Kikuyu interlopers. In his rhetoric, the Kikuyu were an extension of the colonial yoke. “The British suppressed us (#litres_trial_promo)