Petals of Blood Read Free

Ilmorog by Wanja, granddaughter of Nyakinyua, a heroic old woman who was an active participant in the fight for freedom. Wanja forges a relationship with Munira that promises much but hardens into something rank and nebulous that can neither address the past fully nor navigate the present. She is a woman of mystery and secrets, tormented, with a big burden to carry. She has suffered much in life, like many other women, starting with the sugardaddy who jilted her; she has sold herself in many a bar, but Ngũgĩ does not allow us to despise her because that would be despising a huge section of Kenyan women or Kenya itself. We find out that when the sugardaddy, one of Ngũgĩ’s hairy-chested old hogs who seem only to find peace of mind between the thighs of young women, abandoned her, she threw her child in a latrine. Unlike the exploiters, she has repented. Wanja, like Kenya itself, has to fight to stay alive and destruction is never too far away. Ngũgĩ uses Wanja and Nyakinyua to showcase the plight of women, their contribution to the struggle and their deserved status as equal partners in the share of glory.
    The cast of migrants is fortified by Karega, whose mother was a squatter on Munira’s father’s land. Munira and Karega share much history but it does not make for a deep relationship. Karega has fled the ‘soulless, corrupt Nairobi’ whose slums with their ‘ditches full of shit and urine, dead dogs and cats, dangerous gases and hellish beer’ are the definition of hell on earth, at least the hell that concerns Ngũgĩ. Karega is consumed by bitterness because as a school drop-out he has failed himself, his mother, his society. A man of his energy and commitment won’t settle for long in teaching; he wants to change not only Ilmorog but the whole country. He is the doer, the one who feels called to change the status quo of the peasant and worker. To begin with Karega saves a donkey’s life and gets Ilmorog on the wayto the city to demand answers from the local MP. Karega is also the man who asks the big questions. Questions which seem unanswerable and relentless: ‘Where went all the Kenyan people who used to trade with China, India, Arabia long before Vasco da Gama came to the scene and on the strength of gunpowder ushered in an era of blood and terror and instability?’ ‘What has the black man done to attain the true kingdom of his earth? To bring back his mind and soul and body together on his piece of earth?’ ‘How . . . ? Why . . . ? When . . . ?’
    Another migrant who says little but sits on a ton of secrets is Abdulla, the one-legged shopkeeper who owns the donkey and knew Karega’s brother back in the days of the Mau Mau. He is gnawed by his failure to avenge a fallen comrade’s death. He is the representation of the ‘positive contribution Kenyan workers of Asian origins made to the struggle for independence and the deliberate attempt by the ruling class and some intellectuals to downplay it’. He is a war hero, who participated fully in the post-independence struggle to liberate the downtrodden. He confirms Ngũgĩ’s multi-ethnic approach to politics as the way forward for Kenya.
    In a book of journeys and returns Ilmorog makes its journey to the city. The city is a beast with gaping jaws: it swallows youths, it demands taxes, it sends thugs to demand money for bogus oathing ceremonies. It is an inhospitable place for the pilgrims. The identity of its inhabitants, especially the ruling class, has become deformed. One such man tells in
Devil on the Cross
, ‘a car is a man’s identity. I met my wife once on foot. I did not recognize her.’ ‘Come to think of it,’ another says, ‘his face is beginning to assume the shape of a Peugeot 504.’
    Unsurprisingly, the city does not roll out the red carpet for the pilgrims, but welcomes them with empty biblical texts, flatulent speeches, the explosion of guns, the crack of whips and the yellowed fangs of vicious guard dogs.