Summary
Chapter 4
1. The narrator says the history of Kenya does not begin with imperialism and colonialism, as present-day historians insist; rather, it has a long and wondrous past. Yet that past is full of the Gods of Africa warring with the Gods of other lands.
Abdulla seemed much more cheerful now. Joseph was doing well in school and the store seemed cheerier. People said it was Wanja’s doing.
2. Munira loved the twilight, feeling part of everything. He had come from a home of Christian manners and propriety but he desired Wanja again so strongly that he could barely control it. She had shifting moods and seemed sad and introspective. She spoke of how she felt badly for Abdulla, who also seemed so sad.
She asked Munira why he came here and he tried to keep his voice steady. He said he needed a change of place, of climate.
Wanja was part of the village now. She enjoyed gossiping with the women who asked her about city men. She was the “life and now the major attraction in the place” (74).
That year’s harvest was poor and followed by no rain. This was accompanied by Wanja’s restlessness, as if something were eating her. One day she burst out at Munira that she hated Ilmorog and the countryside, that it was dirty and boring. She turned to Abdulla and castigated him for not paying her enough, but her mood passed and she laughed and said he ought to turn this place into a church so the tired city folk could come here and he could get rich off the poor. She had a sinister smile, and then stood and began to dance faster and faster, with an expression of pain and ecstasy on her face.
Munira watched her lustfully. Abdulla told her that he knew what it is like to carry a live wound, and he would make her a partner in the business if she stayed. She was touched by his sincerity but she would not accept. She sighed that she was a wicked woman and had a long story to tell. With that, she left for her hut.
The next day Nyakinyua came to them and said Wanja left, but that perhaps she would return because she left her things.
Chapter 5
1. A year passed. In that year there was an assassination of an Asian national who had spoken of an agrarian revolution. People gathered and spoke of him, and about communism and the end of poverty.
The rains were also in short supply that year, and even though the people of Ilmorog continued on as usual, there was disquiet. The old farmers sat at Abdulla’s shop and talked of the drought and then asked Munira about how he was managing the school. Munira replied that he would have to ask Mzigo for another teacher.
After Wanja left Munira hoped he would regain some of his mystique, and he tried to throw himself into teaching and tried to suppress memories of making love to her in her hut. Things were not the same in Ilmorog, or in the wider world where they heard someone was trying to walk on the moon.
Abdulla was not the same either, cursing Joseph more often. The old men complained about the young men leaving for the cities and never returning, but acknowledged that there was little land here anymore.
*
The village waited for a change but “every morning they awoke to wind and dust and a dazzling sun” (83). Talk centered more and more on Abdulla’s donkey, and how it was eating too much grass. The older men were concerned about it, which made Abdulla angry. He spat out that the men were “emissaries of evil” (83) and he would not get rid of his donkey. Joseph heard Abdulla’s bitter complaints and worried he would not be able to go to school; he missed Wanja.
2. School opened again and Munira prepared to go to Mzigo to ask for another teacher. But before he could go, two memorable things happened. First, a tax officer came in a Land Rover with gun-carrying men. All the Ilmorog men vanished and the officer wondered why the place kept becoming more depopulated. Then more men came, saying they were from Nderi wa Riera. They spoke of a new entity, the Kiama-Kamwene Cultural Organization, which would bring together the rich and the poor. The villagers were skeptical about the plans, and the women began to verbally assault the unctuous civil servants until they left.
Munira had these incidents in mind when he goes to Ruwa-ini. There Mzigo told him he was the new Headmaster of Ilmorog Primary School and promised to help him. He gave him an envelope from the KCO inviting him and his staff to join Nderi in a delegation that would go to tea at Gatundu. Munira trembled with pride and happiness. He decided to hurry home to Limuru to tell his wife.
As he crossed into the land, he was struck by how fertile and favored Limuru was—not at all like Ilmorog. He thought of his unreal past: “between the call of life and involvement in living history and an escape into family seclusion with a morality rooted in property and the Presbyterian Church; between an inexplicable fear of the people and an equally inexplicable fear of his father; between the desire for an active creation and a passive acceptance of one’s ordained fate” (88).
*
Munira thinks of his father’s life. His father, known as Waweru at that time, and grandfather had been driven from their land, beset by forces that they could not understand. The “red stranger” (89) was starting to take their lands and clan-heads betrayed their people and allied themselves with the Foreigners. Waweru was intrigued by the Foreigners’ religion, and how its magic seemed more powerful than the local sorcerer’s. He decided he would not resist anymore, and joined the Christian church and became Ezekieli. His father was devastated but he did not care; he became a wealthy and powerful landowner and churchman.
*
Munira approached his home. He soon found out most teachers and their wives had been invited to tea, but he still felt set apart. A bus came for them all and excitement filled the air. Yet something was not right. The bus kept going past Gatandu. The government official was not there and the people were separated into lines. People went into the tent in small groups.
On the way home Julia, his wife, cried with disappointment. Munira knew he needed to talk to his father, which he was now beginning to see in a new, more positive light. He went to him the next day and found him in prayer. He was impressed by the man’s wealth and faith and was nervous to tell him about the prior day. His fear and puzzled anger were quite manifest, as was his shame in being fooled. He spoke of a man yesterday who said he was a squatter and would not take an oath, and was then beaten in front of them.
Munira’s father was stern and rebuked him which Munira felt was justified. He told Munira he was a disappointing eldest son and he had all of this property that he wished Munira would look after. He compared him to his brothers and told Munira he would come to a bad end. Munira could not help but ask about Mukami, and all Ezekieli would say was that she kept bad company.
The two walked out onto the land. Ezekieli told Munira the bounty came from the Lord and the Lord alone. He spoke frankly of the KCO, saying he had been there and wanted his wife to go. It was a good thing; the oath was necessary for “peace and unity and it is in harmony with God’s eternal design” (95). Munira is confused, remembering how his father refused to take the Mau Mau oath in earlier times and lost an ear for it; was this the same thing? Ezekieli told him to go home and stop drinking, and if he was tired of teaching, come back here and he would give him work on one of his many estates.
As Ezekieli walked away, Munira pondered how he’d never understand him: what was the oath, the connection, between the KCO and the Church?
*
3. Munira cycled to the Kamirithio Township for a drink. It was all so surreal to him how he could have been made a headmaster and then immediately taken to drink tea of unity and then visit his father. A woman caught his eye; to his complete shock, he saw it was Wanja.
*
Wanja said, believe it or not, that she was heading back to Ilmorog. She wished she had stayed there; she became a barmaid in the same place as before. She heard groups of men talking about other groups and how dangerous they were. She met one tall Somali whom she liked, and she suggested going back to her place, which she never did. When they got there she saw a small fire had started there and she was terrified. She realized that someone had wanted to trap them both in that room. She wanted to go to the police, but the man fled. This was serious and made her want to return to Ilmorog.
4. Munira dwells on this moment of “a night of mutual baptism by fire and terror” (99) in his statement. He remembers sitting there with Wanja, filled with disgust and desire. Then he relents, thinking of what happened in that hut, and decides they all live in a surreal world.
They drank all day and Munira told her stories of Limuru, both true and untrue, remembering factories and strikes. She only half-listened, drawn by people dancing. These people in the bar were all strangers to the land of their birth. The bar was loud and one man’s drunken voice rose above the others. Munira did not want to listen to talk of violence. Then Wanja called out Karega’s name, and he came over to them and sat with them.
At some point, Karega’s head drooped and he dozed, and Wanja watched him. It was as if they shared a common pain and hope, and Munira was jealous. They got him a taxi and took him back to the room Munira secured. He was sobering up, and felt guilty and sad. He looked at Karega and wondered at how the young and bright and hopeful could deteriorate like this.
Karega spoke in a miserable tone of what he had endured after Siriana—letting his mother down and wasting his education, working as a roadboy, losing all his hope and dreams, coming to Ilmorog to seek out Munira for advice. He never wanted to be an object of charity and he felt crushing despair. Wanja told him kindly to come back to Ilmorog with them, and he agreed as if hypnotized.
Chapter 6
1. They returned to Ilmorog, Munira the whole time wondering about the confluence of people and history in this moment. Wanja was telling herself this would be a new beginning; she would break with her past. Karega was unsure what to expect but felt grateful that Munira had told him he could be a teacher at the school. When they arrived back at the village, they were filled with sorrow at the loss of green and the concomitant loss of hope; it was still a season of drought.
They came to Nyakinyua, Abdulla, and Joseph standing together discussing the donkey. The elders wanted it killed to drive the plague of drought away. Abdulla’s face was heavy but Wanja smiled and asked if he was glad to see his barmaid return. He was lightened a bit.
2. Karega became a teacher and was committed to enlarging the children’s consciousness about Ilmorog and Kenya and the African people and their struggles. He felt his time at Siriana was inadequate to help these young pupils. It bothered him that he and Munira were ostriches burying their heads in the sands about the drought and the wind. What did math help when explaining how the land worked?
3. April came and ended and it had not rained. Animals were skeletons and hawks wheeled in the sky. May brought no rain either. The elders went to see Mwathi wa Mugo, who said the donkey and a goat must be sacrificed.
4. The people told stories of the past; it seemed like Ilmorog “had always been threatened by the twin cruelties of unprepared-for vagaries of nature and the uncontrolled actions of men” (111). Karega despaired, thinking about the difference between city folk and these villagers. Munira shrugged and said this was an act of God and there was nothing they could do. Karega lit upon going to the city. Munira was initially skeptical, but when they both haltingly told of the oath—Munira who took it, Karega who did not take it—Munira began to think this could be a plan. They could go to their MP Nderi wa Riera and tell him they were members of the KCO and needed help.
Karega was excited and brought Abdulla and Wanja into the plan. He said they could save the donkey and the village. There was a crisis facing their community and they needed to go to the MP for the area and have the government help them. Wanja felt a stab of pain at the thought of going back to the city, but Abdulla was intrigued. Munira was not sure what an MP could do, but when he saw the others accept, he did so as well. Perhaps something would come of it; he wanted to see what power the KCO had.
They called a meeting of the elders, who were skeptical at first, but Karega’s passion and reasoning convinced them. They thought just Karega should go, but Nyakinyua stood up and reminded them of how their young men were always swallowed up so they all must go and demand their share; they must go as one voice. People were affected by her words and arguments faded. This seemed like a war, a new kind of war.
The plan was that some elders would remain and sacrifice a goat. Others would form the delegation. They “forged a community spirit, fragile at first, but becoming stronger and made preparations for the journey” (116). Abdulla seemed to gain new strength, and people accepted him into their hearts.
The day of the trek began. There was a sense of the enormity of the undertaking.
Munira recalls how this was the beginning of a ten-year journey for him to a place where he could see “that man’s estate is rotten at heart” (118).
Analysis
Ilmorog is home, whether native or adopted, for most of the characters, but it is not always an easy place in which to live. As the narrative continues, the lack of rain and concomitant poor harvest begin to take their toll. The people look up and “the sun seemed to mock their inquiring faces…[it] sent direct waves of heat in exaggerated brightness that almost blinded the eye to look…in the fields were no more green umbrella leaves of mwariki to give shade and shelter” (79). The elders gather and wonder what to do, seeking help from Mwathi and concluding they must sacrifice Abdulla’s donkey. When Wanja, Karega, and Munira come into the village after being away (the first two for much longer than Munira), they see Ilmorog as a place of “sun, dust, and sand” (107). Wanja rues, “So green in the past…So green and hopeful…and now this” (107).
Critic Christine Loflin explains that in Ngugi’s novels, especially Petals, “the importance of the landscape is paramount, as the landscape of Kenya is intimately related to the community's spiritual, social, and political identity.” Karega, with his “youthful blood” (115), as Njuguna puts it, decides that the best thing to do to save the land is to travel to Nairobi and confront their MP. He tells his community that they ought to “look to ourselves to see what we can do to save us from the drought. The labour of our hands in the magic and the wealth that will change our world and end all droughts from our earth” (115). For Karega, Loflin writes, while he “shares his community's vision of the land as belonging to the people as a whole, he rejects the magical beliefs of the community in favor of a socialist approach which relies on labor and communal action rather than on ancestral ties to preserve the productiveness of the land.” This perspective is valid, of course, but Karega will have to learn that while his vision is grand and transcendent, it ignores some aspects of Kenyan culture and may be impossible to bring to fruition.
Ngugi also begins to delve into his conception of history—of Kenyan history, of African history, and, later, of history of all places before Europeans came. In an interview, Ngugi said, “Kenyan intellectuals must be able to tell these stories, or histories, or history of heroic resistance to foreign domination by Kenyan people . . looking at ourselves as ... as a people whose history shines with the grandeur, if you like, of heroic resistance and achievement of the Kenyan people. ... I feel that Kenyan history, either pre-colonial[,] has not yet been written.” In Petals, his narrator comments, “our present-day historians, following on similar theories yarned out by defenders of imperialism, insist we only arrived here yesterday” (67). The people’s stories are elided, erased; they need to be recovered and celebrated. The story is not only the mercenary, greedy Europeans coming and turning landowning Kenyans into tenant farmers, but one of accomplishment and resistance. What complicates this story is that it is still ongoing, for Ngugi is living and writing in and about a time of neocolonialism, where the Europeans do not directly control African lands anymore but through foreign investment continue to exercise outsized power (more on this in analyses 4 and 5).
One of the most insidious ways foreigners continue to permeate the country is through the KCO, which is ostensibly a Kenyan cultural organization but is actually a way to keep the people docile, hardworking, and subordinate to foreign control and Africans allied with them. Karega is beginning to see this and will be the mouthpiece (along with the lawyer) for the author’s ideology. When he returns to Ilmorog and takes up a teaching position, he thinks of the students, “How could he enlarge their consciousness so that they could see themselves, Ilmorog and Kenya, as part of a larger whole, a larger territory containing the history of African people and their struggles? In his mind he scanned the whole landscape where African people once trod to leave marks and monuments that were the marvel of ages, that not even the fatal encounter of black sweat and white imperialism could rub from the memory and recorded deeds of men” (109). This thinking will, as stated, prompt him to devise the idea to travel to Nairobi.
