Sacrifice in time Nativity: Anna Nduku’s sad, yet inspiring story

Nduku is my bright star of the night, light of the silent night, holy night that came upon the midnight clear. The Nativity season is upon us again, and nativity means childbirth.

Whatever our beliefs about dates or seasons, a central fact of our existence is that a child was born, a child is born and a child will be born. Humanity will thus “live for evermore” because of this childbirth – this nativity.

CELEBRATING WOMEN

Childbirth ensures the continuity of our race. So, whichever way we approach the season, whether the Bethlehem way by carolling, praising and worshipping, the “X-mas” way by shopping, glittering and feasting or the neutral way by going about our daily business as usual, one reality unites us. This is childbirth.

Childbirth, however, is inseparable from woman. Now, those who know me know how irresistible and attractive I find women.

“My heart leaps up when I behold a strong woman on the scene. So was it when my life began. So is it now I am a man. So be it when I grow old, or let me quit the scene.”

I am parodying Wordsworth there, and he was talking about rainbows.

But it is enough to explain my inclination to observe the nativity festivities by celebrating woman. Without woman, there would be no childbirth, no Nativity, no Noel and no Christmas. Minimising the role of the woman, and the child in the Nativity celebrations may partly explain why our festivities are sounding increasingly hollow, despite the glitter and the noise and fanfare that we invest in them.

HEART-BREAKING

There is, however, a specific reason why my thoughts this Christmas are focusing on women and children. Indeed, curiously, I am thinking of girls as the main players in my nativity drama. The prima donna here is Nduku, the one that I mentioned at the beginning of my ruminations. Out on the slopes of the Iveti Hills, where I had my Kenyan reincarnation, Nduku is a name given to a girl child born in the mysterious stillness of the night. Nduku is also the name of my Ukambani mother (Prof Kioko), so I say it rather quietly and shyly, lest my teeth should fall out of my gums.

But the particular Nduku who triggered my fascination is Anna Nduku of Ongata Rongai.

You probably heard her heart-breaking story. Out near a bridge over the Kandisi River, 19-year-old Nduku heard the calls for help of a man threatened with drowning in the raging waters of the rain-swollen stream. She rushed over to assist the man but she slipped, fell into the water and was swept away to her death, as her horrified mother called out to her and tried to throw out the end of a stick for her to hold on to.

BENIGHTED WORLD

This is the stuff of noble and high tragedy. What particularly struck me was the way Nduku’s mother summed up her daughter’s snuffed-out potential. “She would have made a future leader or a future teacher,” the bereaved mother said.

What can one add to that?

I hear the man who had cried for help survived. Didn’t Nduku thus beget and bear him in her last moments? But for me, Nduku became a symbol for the woman’s power and potential to teach and inspire humanity in the darkness and gloom of this benighted world.

Nduku is Leila, Atieno, Jepkemboi, Chausiku, Nabwire, bright star of the night. This is the same name in our many tongues for those children recognised for their arrival in the night to make the heavenly glory shine around.

Behind the comely image of Anna Nduku I see a whole series of brave and selfless young women who will give of their best, even if it is their own lives, in order to save others.

TRAGIC SACRIFICE

Do you remember Mary Mogaka of the Moi Nairobi Girls School? She, like nine-year-old Yvonne Namaganda of Budo Junior School several years before her, perished in a dormitory fire, fighting to save her schoolmates.

You may remember my writing, generally, about the miserable weather that has been complicating our lives over the past few months.

Nduku’s heroic and tragic sacrifice in the face of a weather-related challenge concretises for me the predicament of our children and grandchildren in the rapidly deteriorating global environment. If we can spare a moment of reflection on Anna Nduku’s martyrdom as a symbol of not only utter selflessness but also of the need to act courageously and decisively to save our planet and our humanity, Nduku will have fulfilled, in her death, her role as a teacher and a leader.

DESERVES RECOGNITION

Behind Nduku I also see the living icon of our young people’s determination to change their world, especially their environment, for the better.

Even as Anna Nduku was being laid to rest, 16-year-old Greta Thunberg was arriving in Madrid to deliver to the world, once again, her and her generation’s irrefutable message that the final chance to act radically on saving the planet is now or never. I believe I mentioned this slightly autistic Swedish teenager to you, months before Time magazine named her their Personality of the Year.

I do not know anything about the official processes of naming and crowning our heroes. But I think Anna Nduku deserves national though posthumous recognition as a shujaa. Her spontaneous response to a human cry for help is a glorious lesson in the goodwill that builds genuine bridges. It challenges all of us to try and respond as best we can to a humanity, and to a planet, that is in desperate need of salvation.

NOBLE ACTS

During these days of reflection on nativity, birth and rebirth, the noble acts of young people, especially young women, like Greta Thunberg and the late Anna Nduku, should inspire us with hope, love and generosity towards one another and our world.

Have a truly blessed, peaceful and joy-filled season of love and goodwill.

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