from Kuria-Mwangi

Nyamweya:
Lets start with the ghosts of Githumu piece because that will be the title of the Githumu Memoirs (Ghost of Githumu Mission).

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Githumu Memoirs: The Ghosts of Githumu Mission.

Students (boys) had reported hearing creepy sounds at night especially near the boys’ dorms. Dorm D students were notorious for reporting those ghostly sounds. Dorm D was the dorm closest to the teachers’ houses. There was also talk of ghosts emanating from Africans who were not properly buried by the missionary at Githumu Mission.

No problem was reported in regards to the White Missionaries buried in Githumu Mission. The dead missionaries lay in their marked graves peacefully. They were buried by the Church and had white tombstones visible at the back of the Church. Unlike the Africans who were buried in unmarked graves and said to be dumped together in huge graves, the whites lay in individual and well finished graves. No wonder the ghosts of the White Missionaries were peaceful. The marked graves still exist to date. These graves are located at the area between the church’s office and the chapel and at the back of the Headmasters’ office and Form One Tuition Block. Students were known to sit on these graves during break time or after classes. The place was serene and one of the quietist place in the Compound.

It was reported that many unclaimed bodies from the Githumu Mission Hospital’s mortuary were buried at the site where some of the teachers’ houses are located. It was rumored that some Mau Mau adherents felled during the height of the movement were taken to the mission’s mortuary and buried on this site. The hospital and the mortuary were located inside the school’s compound but were run as private entities. Those teachers’ houses located near the boys’ dorms were reported to have been built on the mass graves. Reports of many graves getting unearthed during the construction of these houses existed. The rumors of the ghost making funny sounds or getting sighted at night near the dorms were even more common after Mr. Osundwa was beaten by ghosts of Githumu Mission.

I was in form two when we heard about our favorite teacher’s predicament. Mr. Osundwa, our Kiswahili teacher had that morning moved his wife and children to the watchman’s house from his nice house located at the Teachers’ Quarter.

John was the neat and smartly dressed watchman. He also took pictures. He was married with children and lived in a two roomed house which was located near the headmaster’s office but across the barbed wire separating the school with the hospital and Church. John’s house was located on the side of Church and very close to the White Missionaries’ grave yard. His house looked old and rundown from outside but was always clean and well taken care off by John and his wife. Unlike other watchmen, his house was well equipped with sofa sets and other furniture which were always neatly placed and super clean. I guess the extra income from the picture taking business made the difference. He had a camera which was always placed inside a brown leather bag. He was the strictest among the school’s watchmen and looked like the dean of watchmen in school. He was a no nonsense watchman and looked as if he was one of the teachers except at night when he would be dressed like a watchman and armed with arrows.

The rumor about the ghosts beating Mr. Osundwa first spread during the breakfast time. We were informed that his family was living with John the watchman and had moved there the previous night after the family was beaten by the ghosts and chased out of their house.

I do remember seeing Mr. Osundwa’s wife and children at John’s house that morning. Students had gone to the Watchman’s house that morning to witness and confirm that the Osundwa family had moved from a three bedroom nice house to a two roomed rundown house belonging to the watchman. We knew something had gone wrong when we saw Mr. Osundwa at the watchman house that morning. May be it was a wise move since John was always armed with arrows and so Mr. Osundwa probably thought he could protect our dear teacher. The problem was that John’s house was located only a few steps from the graves of the white missionaries. But Mr. Osundwa was probably worried of the dead Africans buried under his former house and didn’t care about the dead white fellows buried at the back of the church and close to John’s house. May be the ghosts would not want to come near God’s place of worship and since John’s house was next to the church, Mr. Osundwa felt safer. But many people kept on asking themselves why Mr. Osundwa went to John’s house instead of moving to one the other teachers’ houses. May be because they came from the same region and felt more comfortable there.

The ghosts’ story was confirmed by Mr. Osundwa when he came to class that morning. He was our class master and had to come first to our class for the daily roll call. He also had a class to teach in 2B, my class.

Mr. Osundwa arrived in class with a bruised face. Everybody was interested in finding out whether those ghosts left the marks on his face. It looked swollen and he did show us marks on the face made by something which looked as if somebody had slapped our teacher and left marks there. He was a dark stout teacher and so it was not possible to see those marks from a distance. Most of us were doubting Thomas and so we moved closer and examined our teacher’s face. Anyway, the marks could have come from a beating from a human being but we asked ourselves why his wife and children moved to John’s house and why our teacher looked shaken. We got to hear what happened from the horses’ mouth.

The previous night, Mr. Osundwa got from his bed to go the bathroom inside his house. There was no light since it was past midnight and the generator had been shut-off. The school generator would run from six O’clock to midnight.

In order to find his way to the bathroom, Mr. Osundwa lit his lighter (he used to smoke) but something put the lights off. He wanted to use the lighter to find his way but every time he lit it, the fire would be put off. He reported seeing a skeleton in the form of a human being’s hand move towards him and put off the lighter. Mr. Osundwa moved back one step backward and away from the skeleton. It moved towards him and sent towards him one hard slap which sent him straight to the floor. He tried to get up but before he was on his feet, the skeleton gave him another good slap. He started shouting and running towards the bedroom where his wife was now waking up and trying to find out what was happening. Mr. Osundwa was by then shouting and calling for help.

Mr. Osundwa was trying to run away from the skeleton but the skeleton would get in front of him and slap him. He had to run out and ask his wife to get the children and follow him. Fortunately the skeleton was interested in punishing our teacher and was always chasing Mr. Osundwa. The skeleton would get hold of him and slap him on the face. His wife could not light anything too because the skeleton was putting off the light. The family managed to get out of the house but with Mr. Osundwa badly beaten by the ghost. He was by this time nursing a swollen face.

The family took off in the dark as Mr. Osundwa being slapped further on their way to John’s house and as he kept on running with wife and children crying and following him. The skeleton is said to have left as soon as he got out of the teachers’ compound. The family arrived at the Watchman’s House and they felt safe at John’s house.

That morning, Mr. Osundwa gave us what amounted to a very scary account of his encounter with the ghosts of Githumu Mission. The police officers were involved in the investigations and asked to provide protection to Mr. Osundwa but they reported that the ghosts were outside the realm of their work.

Mr. Osundwa was given another house and far from the ghost ridden house. The ghost house remained vacant for a long time. No sane teacher would have been stupid to want to live there after what amounted to a ghost scare. The ghosts didn’t seem to want anybody live in their territory again.

I think afterward some two A-level graduates who were to go to University and were teaching temporary at Githumu High School lived in that house. One died soon afterward and before he went to University. I don’t know what happened to the other one who was to go abroad to study chemical engineering. I never heard of the ghosts return during their tenure at the ghost house but I heard the story of another teacher who was terrorized by the ghosts before Mr. Osundwa moved in the ghost house. I can claim to be an eye witness to a victim of the Ghosts of Githumu Mission.

Kuria Mwangi
http://www.kuria-mwangi.blogspot.com
http://www.facebook.com/kjmwangi
© Kuria Mwangi 2009

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On Tue, Jul 12, 2011 at 2:54 AM, Humpden Nyamweya wrote:
Kuria,
Can you kindly please resend that mail about Githumu memoirs – it has disappeared within my hundreds of mails!