Petals of Blood (22 page)

The fact was that Karega’s heated ridiculing of the whole thing had made Munira feel better and more calm inside. It had given form in words to thoughts in Munira’s mind.

The more Karega thought about the idea which took form in the course of his talk with Munira, the more it seemed the right thing to do. He felt restless, eager to effect the plan. It was this very restlessness which had always driven him on, often bringing him into trouble, but he could not help the inner voices of discontent. He would have to face the drought as a challenge and also as a test. But whatever the decision, he would not be able to teach under these conditions where theory seemed a mockery of the reality.

He broached the plan to Munira, Wanja and Abdulla.

‘It seems to me that we all have our reasons for coming to Ilmorog. But now we are here. There is a crisis facing the community. What shall we do about it? The elders are acting in the light of their knowledge. They believe that you can influence nature by sacrifice and loading all our sins on Abdulla’s donkey. Why – I even heard Njuguna say that the sacrifice will also bribe God to shut his eyes to the Americans’ attempts to walk in God’s secret places. I believe we can save the donkey and save the community.’

Anything which would save his donkey was welcome to Abdulla. So he asked eagerly: how?

‘This place has an MP. We, or rather they, elected him to Parliament to represent all the corners of his constituency, however remote. Let us send a strong delegation of men, women, and children to the big city. To the capital. We shall see the MP for this area. The government is bound to send us help. Or we can bring back help to the others. Otherwise the drought might swallow us all.’

‘And the donkey?’ asked Abdulla.

‘We shall take him with us. We shall repair the cart. We shall bring back food and things in it.’

Wanja was stabbed with pain: Go back to the city, the scene of her other humiliation? She fought against the faintness at the remembrance of her double terror.

‘Can’t we send one person? You, for instance? You can go on Munira’s bicycle,’ she suggested wildly.

‘Me? He would not listen to one person. He would think it a trick or something. But I am sure he can’t ignore a people’s delegation.’

Abdulla readily agreed with the idea. Wanja was thinking: that time last year I went to the city to seek sudden wealth for my own self. Now I am going for the people. Maybe the city will now receive us more kindly.

Munira could not see what an MP would do for them. He was thinking: I seem unable to settle: I keep on moving, driven by other people’s promptings: can I never will my own actions and decisions? But since Wanja and Abdulla had agreed, he also accepted. At the same time he saw a chance to finally still the occasional voices of guilt since his midnight tea at Gatundu. It would also be good to test if there was anything to this KCO and its call for unity and harmony of interests.

The next problem was the elders. They had called a meeting for the following day to announce the verdict on Abdulla’s donkey and also announce the day for the sacrifice of a goat. Wanja would that night talk to Nyakinyua, who in turn would discuss it with a few more elders before the crucial meeting.

The meeting was well attended: Njuguna told the people what Mwathi wa Mugo had said:

‘We send this donkey away. We sacrifice a goat. Nobody has the
mouth to throw words back at Mwathi. You know he is the stick and the shade that God uses to defend our land. You know that since that fight for Ilmorog a long time ago we have not had many plagues in our midst. Nobody can throw words back at him. So we did not ask him how! He did not tell us how. He knows we are not children. If it was a goat we would beat it and then send it away and ask it to pass the plague to others. This animal is not a goat. But we are using it for the same illness: I say we shall beat it and when it is about to die we shall send it away into the plains to carry this plague away.’ A few other elders spoke and agreed with the idea: a donkey was truly the stranger in their midst!

‘But perhaps the teachers of our children might have a modern cure for an old illness,’ another suggested.

Karega trembled a little. In school debates he had talked and argued. But he had never before talked to a gathering of elders. He could not now think of an appropriate proverb, riddle or story with which to drive home his points. So he made a plain speech.

‘A donkey has no influence on the weather. No animal or man can change a law of nature. But people can use the laws of nature. The magic we should be getting is this: the one which will make this land so yield in times of rain that we can keep aside a few grains for when it shines. We want the magic that will make our cows yield so much milk that we shall have enough to drink and exchange the rest for things we cannot grow here. That magic is in our hands. Tomorrow when it rains: we should be asking the soil: what food, what offering does it need so that it will yield more? If we kill Abdulla’s donkey we shall all be cutting our other leg in a season of drought. I come from Limuru where donkeys have proved to be motorcars that don’t drink petrol. When the last grain in your stores is finished, will any of us be able to walk afar and fetch food and water on our backs? Let us rather look to ourselves to see what we can do to save us from the drought. The labour of our hands is the magic and the wealth that will change our world and end all droughts from our earth.’

He told them the idea of a delegation, singing a bit too glowingly the virtues and duties of an MP. ‘We give him our votes so that he can carry our troubles. But if we do not show him that we have
troubles so he can pass them to the government, can we blame him?’

They started talking and whispering among themselves . . . Yes, that was right . . . We should let those in authority know. Maybe if they knew . . . Yes, yes, maybe if they knew of our plight they would not be sending men to only collect taxes and others to demand money for organizations the villages knew nothing about . . . This your teacher . . . Hardly been here two months . . . Where did he get such words?

Njuguna stood up and opposed the idea of going to the city.

‘My ears have heard strange words. That we should send a whole community to beg. Have you ever heard of a whole people abandoning their land and property to go and beg on strange highways? The young man has youthful blood: we shall send him to the city and he will tell the MP to come to us. Yes, it is the MP who should come to us instead of his sending us envoys and children as his spokesmen,’ he added, glancing at Karega.

Njuguna’s idea seemed simple, direct and it upheld the dignity of Ilmorog. There was renewed argument. Nyakinyua stood up:

‘I think we should go. It is our turn to make things happen. There was a time when things happened the way we in Ilmorog wanted them to happen. We had power over the movement of our limbs. We made up our own words and sang them and we danced to them. But there came a time when this power was taken from us. We danced yes, but somebody else called out the words and the song. First the Wazungu. They would send trains here from out there. They ate our forests. What did they give us in return? Then they sent for our young men. They went on swallowing our youth. Ours is only to bear in order for the city to take. In the war against Wazungu we gave our share of blood. A sacrifice. Why? Because we wanted to be able to sing our song, and dance our words in fullness of head and stomach. But what happened? They have continued to entice our youth away. What do they send us in return? Except for these two teachers here, the others would come and go. Then they send us messengers who demand twelve shillings and fifty cents for what? They send others with strange objects and they tell us that they are measuring a big
road. Where is the road? They send us others who come every now and then to take taxes: others to buy our produce except when there is drought and famine. The MP also came once and made us give two shillings each for Harambee water. Have we seen him since? Aca! That is why Ilmorog must now go there and see this Ndamathia that only takes but never gives back. We must surround the city and demand back our share. We must sing our tune and dance to it. Those out there can also, for a change, dance to the actions and words of us that sweat, of us that feel the pain of bearing . . . But Ilmorog must go as one voice.’

She sat down to a thought-charged silence. They were all affected by her words. She had touched something which they all had felt: yes, it was
they
outside
there
who ought to dance to the needs of the people. But now it seemed that authority, power, everything, was outside Ilmorog . . . out there . . . in the big city. They must go and confront that which had been the cause of their empty granaries, that which had sapped their energies, and caused their weakness. After her, there was not much argument. They all talked of going to the city. Long ago when their cattle and goats were taken by hostile nations, the warriors went out, followed them, and would not return until they had recovered their stolen wealth. Now Ilmorog’s own heart had been stolen. They would follow to recover it. It was a new kind of war . . . but war all the same.

Muturi stood up and summed up the whole thing. He suggested that indeed this could be what Mwathi had meant: he had said we should send the donkey away: but he did not say where, or how: and he did not say that the donkey could not come back . . .

It was then agreed that some elders would remain to sacrifice a goat. Others would form the delegation. Abdulla was the first to volunteer. Next stood up Nyakinyua, followed by Munira, Muriuki, Joseph, Njuguna, Ruoro, Njogu and others. Muturi and others would remain to do the other rites.

From that moment, they forged a community spirit, fragile at first, but becoming stronger as they strove and made preparations for the journey. Women cooked food for the journey, some draining their last grains. Others gave any money they might have saved. Munira,
Karega and Ruoro worked on the donkey-cart to make it ready for the great trek of the village to the city.

Abdulla especially seemed to have gained new strength and new life. His transformation from a sour-faced cripple with endless curses at Joseph to somebody who laughed and told stories, a process which had started with his first contact with Wanja, was now complete. People seemed to accept him to their hearts. This could be seen in the children. They surrounded him and he told them stories:

‘Once upon a time Ant and Louse had an argument. Each boasted that he could beat the other in dancing Kibata. They threw challenges at one another. They decided to name a day. The coming contest of dancing feet became the talk of the whole animal community and none was going to miss the occasion. Came the day and early in the morning Ant and Louse went to the river. They bathed and oiled themselves. They started decorating themselves with red and white ochre. Ant was the first to dress, and he wanted to kill all the ladies’ hearts. He had a special sword which he now tied to his waist. He tied, and tied, and tied it so tight that his waist broke into two. When Louse saw the plight of his rival, he laughed and laughed and laughed until his nose split into two. And so because Ant had no waist and Louse had no nose, they never went to the arena and Kibata was enjoyed by others.’

He told them how Chameleon defeated Hare in a race; why Hyena limped; how Death came to the world; of the woman who was lured into marrying a wicked ogre – and the children were insatiable in their cries for more.

He also made them small gadgets like spinning tops and paper windmills and fans. But what they loved most were the catapults he made for them out of Y-twigged sticks and rubber straps. The boys were excited and they tried to bring down birds from the sky, but without much success.

‘You’ll take them with you on the journey,’ he told them, ‘and try them out there.’

They looked forward to adventures on the journey: but more so to their visit to the city that was a hundred times bigger than Ruwa-ini – a city whose buildings touched the sky and where people ate nothing but sweets and cakes.

Throughout the preparations people, especially the elderly ones talked of nothing but the Journey and this young man who had suggested it. God sometimes puts wisdom in the mouth of babes. Of a truth, wisdom could not be bought.

And then suddenly the day of the trek came: it was the first time that they had dared such a thing and they were all struck by the enormity of their undertaking!

It was the journey, Munira was later to write, it was the exodus across the plains to the Big Big City that started me on that slow, almost ten-year, inward journey to a position where I can now see that man’s estate is rotten at heart.

Even now, so many years after the event, he wrote, I can once again feel the dryness of the skin, the blazing sun, the dying animals that provided us with meat, and above us, soaring in the clear sky, the hawks and vultures which, satiated with meat of dead antelopes, wart-hogs and elands, waited for time and sun to deliver them human skins and blood.

The journey. The exodus toward the kingdom of knowledge . . .

But most thro’ midnight streets I hear

How the youthful Harlot’s curse

Blasts the new born Infant’s tear

And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse.

William Blake

Pity would be no more

If we did not make somebody Poor.

William Blake

1 ~ Ilmorog, the scene of the unfolding of this drama, had not always been a small cluster of mud huts lived in only by old men and women and children with occasional visits from wandering herdsmen. It had had its days of glory: thriving villages with a huge population of sturdy peasants who had tamed nature’s forests and, breaking the soil between their fingers, had brought forth every type of crop to nourish the sons and daughters of men. How they toiled together, clearing the wilderness, cultivating, planting: how they all fervently prayed for rain and deliverance in times of drought and pestilence! And at harvest-time they would gather in groups, according to ages, and dance from village to village, spilling into Ilmorog plains, hymning praises to their founders. In those days, there were no vultures in the sky waiting for the carcasses of dead workers, and no insect-flies feeding on the fat and blood of unsuspecting toilers. Only, so they say in song and dance, only the feeble in age and the younglings were exempt from the common labour: these anyway were carriers of wisdom and innocence. Sitting round the family tree in the front yard the aged would sip honey beer and tell the children, with voices taut with prideful authority and nostalgia, about the founding patriarch.