Sometime during the fall of 1963, a few months after arriving at Giakanja Secondary School (Nyeri, Kenya), I was looking out over my front lawn and saw row upon row of little mounds or bumps in the grass, illuminated by the slanted rays of the late afternoon sun.  When I asked a fellow staff member, he said they were graves and added that the school had been built on the site of a former Mau Mau detention center (Mau Mau Rebellion1952-60) and those who filled the graves had died under interrogation by the security forces. When I asked my students if they knew that my front yard was filled with graves, every hand shot up!  Upon reflection, I realized that I should not have asked the next question, but it just popped out: did they know anyone buried there? At least half the class raised their hands.  None volunteered more, nor did I pursue it, thinking that it was traumatic for them. 

But, thirty years later when conducting interviews for my collective biography of Kenya’s post colonial elite (Mau Mau’s Children), I learned more.  Several former students told me that they had relatives or neighbors in those graves.  Another said that his mother had been held for a year at the center, where she was forced to be the concubine to the security forces.  I also learned that in 1962 when Giakanja officially opened, local people interrupted the ceremony to point out to the visiting dignitaries that the bright future they were forecasting for Giakanja students was only made possible by people's sacrifices during Mau Mau, some of whom were buried beneath their very feet.  Of course, none of this was known to me when I first sighted those bumps in my lawn 18 months later.