Still, there's scope for improvement and crucially too for the treatment of subjects such as our history and the social issues that have informed our painful progress through times. The dark days of the Kenyatta government, the hunger and horrors of the Moi years and the increasing unemployment and desperation that collar us to this day are all fertile ground for a wealth of ideas that properly done, would make for great movie experiences.

I recently watched just such a movie, Kitchen Toto. The movie, shot in 1987, is a period piece from the post World War II, emergency years. It is filmed on location in Kakamega Forest and attempts to take up a neutral position as it navigates the complexities of the independence struggle particularly in Central and Rift Valley Kenya and the strain these had on native society, the settlers and the colonial civil servants.

The film begins when MauMau leaders visit a village priest and ask him to preach against the evil of the British colonial presence in the Kenya colony. They ask that the priest point out the injustice of the land distribution, and the cruelties meted out on workers by the settlers. Finally, they ask that the priest takes the Thenge oath, binding himself to the brotherhood of the forest, and the struggle to expel the invader. The priest refuses, but more than that, the next Sunday, he speaks to his congregation and asks that all who have taken the oath denounce it.

but a boy

It is to be his last sermon, as later that night he is hacked to death by the MauMau. His wife and his children take to the darkness and safety of the forest.

Mwangi, the priest’s eight year old son is soon sent by his mother to seek help from the police station. Returning to his house with the Chief of Police John Graham, they find Mwangi's mother alive but hung up in a tree.

And so begin the adventures of Mwangi. Educated and the son of a priest, he is unable to take on the subservient role that the other workers take on so naturally, with their British employers the only link between them and the new world of money and government. Mwangi however, is torn between the British who provide him with a home and food but condescend to him and hold him as something of a slave, and the MauMau, proud and resistant to this condescension but also the murderers of his father and terrorisers of his mother.

Life at the preacher's house is not what it once was, and so Mwangi's mother sends him off to the police chief's house where he is expected to work and earn an income for the family. Mwangi is promptly posted to the general duties of the assistant house boy, a post that bears the title Kitchen toto.

John Graham the police chief, lives with his wife and two children. He has a cookto help his wife in the kitchen, an aya who takes care of the Graham’s two year old, and Mugo who does the odd jobs around the home. Mwangi the new employee, is to be Mugo's assistant.

Mwangi’s relationship with Graham’s son Edmund who Mwangi, and the other servants, call Bwana Mdogo is complex. They have a lot of fun together with the innocence of youths bearing no responsibility for the cogs of the adult world abovut them, but then comes an incident that betrays the true soul of the boy to Mwangi.

in retirement

They are hunting in the forest, when Mwangi and Edmund trespass into a settler's compound. Edmund hides and it is only Mwangi ,dead bird in his hand, that is found out. Enraged at the trespass and poaching, the settler attempts to strangle Mwangi, but in the end the struggling Mwangi is only tied to a tree. Edmund witnesses all of this but says nothing of it when he gets home, even when the place is in an uproar with everyone wondering where Mwangi is.

A few hours later, one of the MauMau finds Mwangi and unbinds him, setting him free to return to his employer. Mwangi loses a week’s wages for his truancy.

The custom in those times is that the MauMau would come knocking every night and gather people out of their beds and force them into the forest where they administer the oath to them. The solemn and emotional oathing ceremonies are ended with a pledge by the , however, at the end of the oath they pledge allegiance to the Mau Mau promising to bring the head of a white man when ordered.

One night, the Mau Mau come knocking on Mugo’s door. He invites them into the main kitchen and feeds them there. By and by they give Mugo a panga and ask that he delivers the head of Graham. Mugo goes into the house, but rather than decapitate the Head of Police, he hangs himself. The next day, there's an inquiry and the recalcitrant cook, steadfastly refusing to name the MauMau loses his job. Fearing a mutiny among the Agikuyu in his police force, and not knowing MauMau from loyalist, Graham disbands his force and brings in Maasai and Samburu men in their place.

One night while Graham is out, with his mistress Mary (his best friend McKinnon's wife), the Mau Mau come into his home and attempt a kidnap of his wife and daughter. They manage to capture Janet Graham and the baby and are escaping into the forest, when Edmund(Graham's son) shoots at them and accidentally kills his mother.

Once again Graham and his police force begin an earnest hunt for the Mau Mau. Desperate to avenge his wife, and rescue his child, Graham resorts to hours of torture, including the now fashionable waterboarding to get information out of Mwangi. Mwangi shows him to the mauMau, but the trip to the hideout to smoke out the rebels proves a failure as the rebela are expecting the visit. Now wary of the fact that Mwangi can finger them, the rebels come after Mwangi to take him away from the police. They manage to evade Graham and the police by escaping through the roof and out into the forest.

The story ends on a tragic low as the valiant Mwangi finds the baby and is on his way to returning him to Graham when he is shot dead by police supposing him to be part of the kidnapping plot.

The movie does not sufficiently address the complexities of the emergency or of the MauMau rebellion. We are shown the ugly side of the colonial experiment in the dour attitude of Janet Graham, but very little of its beneficient face. We also see the ugly face of the Mau Mau, but little about their organisation and cry for freedom. In the end however, it works best as a movie that opens a window into the formative years of our history; a window that the wise will use to lead them to perhaps more thorough work on our early history, and where the experiment started to go wrong.

This was perhaps the beginning of the "Emergency" from 1952 to 1960 when the threat from the Mau Mau to the colonial government saw hundreds of Kenyans arrested and others killed. Although, not a social documentary, the movie fails to articulate the real issues that plagued Kenya with the presence of the British colonial government.

Here is the award winning movie's IMDB page.