Petals of Blood

by Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong'o

  ‘Actually, some of us had not seen Dedan although we acted in his name. Our group operated all the way from Limuru, through Kijabe, Longonot, Nare Ngare, right to Ilmorog, these very plains. For four years our Limuru group, which had joined hands with the Ole Masai group, had, although diminishing in numbers, through hunger, forest weariness, enemy guns, fought with all the skills of survival we could muster. Our food supplies were cut when moats with death spikes planted in them were dug around many villages. You have heard of Kamiritho, Githima and other places. Now and then an old man, an old woman or even a boy might avoid the evil eyes of our brothers who through ignorance, bribery, torture, or promises of wealth and individual safety, had sold themselves as Home Guards – spear-bearers for the Foreigners – and would bring us food and news of what people were saying and doing. But such contacts were becoming rare. I confess that there were moments of quarrels, of doubt and of flagging of faith. But such acts of courage or the memory of them would make us know that our people had not forgotten us: how could they? We were their very arms, armed. This knowledge, that we were really our people, kept us going. We raided the settlers’ own homes, we burnt their houses, we cut their animals to pieces and almost wept because this, in truth, was our property. All the same, new recruits to swell our numbers were becoming difficult to find, for most of the youth had been taken to concentration camps and at one point we were reduced to twenty or so in our group.

  ‘It was at this time that news reached us of a great meeting of an All Kenya Parliament in Mount Kenya Forest. All the fighting groups or their representatives were expected to attend, for Dedan had new plans for the next phase of the war. He wanted us reorganized into different zones, and he wanted us to elect a military high command and a separate political and education high command to prepare us to seize and administer power. He also wanted us to make greater efforts in linking with other forces opposed to the British occupation in Ukambani, Kalenjin, Luo, Luhya and Giriama areas and all over Kenya. He also wanted us to spread our cause to the court of Haile Selassie and to Cairo, where Gamal Abdel Nasser had taken the Suez Canal and later fought the British and the French. I have told you we were without food. But we were determined to make the long journey through Olkalou, the Nyandarwa mountain ridge, across Nyeri plains to Mount Kenya. I wanted to see this man who was but a voice, a black power, and whose military genius was recognized even by our enemy. Look at it this way. He had fought and he had defeated generals like Lt.-General Sir Erskine, General Hinde, General Ladbury and their armies brought from England: the Buffs, Lancashire Fusiliers, the Devons, the Royal Air Force, the KAR and other forces that had seen action in the Canal Zone, Palestine, Hong Kong, Malaya, wherever the British had once reigned. We spoke of him with awe and his favourite places had become important shrines in our lives. We knew him as Knight Commander of the African Empire, our Prime Minister, one who could move for fourteen days and nights without food or water, who could move for seven miles and more on his belly, and we all tried to emulate him. There was also Mathenge, Karari wa Njama, Kimbo, Kago, Waruingi, Kimemia and others whose letters and messages we had often read but whom we had never seen. What united us was our cause.

  ‘And what a journey, my friends! Our ammunition was scarce. We had tried to make more bullets by splitting open one and sharing the powder into smaller shells, but it did not work. For meat, we often relied on traps, but what use was this on a journey? Sometimes we ate raw maize, bamboo shoots, anything: once we found some wild millet, and we rubbed it in our hands and carried the flour in our deerskin bags. Ole Masai would enliven us with stories of old Nairobi. He tried to tell us again the story he had told us a thousand times: how he had pulled a gun on European policemen, and how they had trembled against the walls of Khoja Mosque while Muslims prayed in the house, and it did not really excite us as much as it used to do in happier days. Now our animal skin clothes were tattered, but we pressed on, through the thick undergrowth, our skins torn by wild thorns, often running away from poisonous snakes. Sometimes, too, tempers would flare amongst us: and still we moved on toward the mountain, to hear words from his own mouth. Soon we reached the mighty mountain and the meeting-ground. My friends! What do they say in the good book? That to everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose in heaven . . . a time to love, and a time to hate. For us, that was a time to do both: hate and love. A great gathering I found there: not a tree, not a bush for a mile was without a man or woman leaning against it. They sang in defiant tones and their one voice was like a roll of thunder:

  And you, traitors to your people,

  Where will you run to

  When the brave of the lands gather?

  For Kenya is black people’s country.

  ‘My heart fell, my eyes were dry although I felt tears pressing. I went to the nearest bush and diarrhoea and urine came out of their own accord. Still sang the voices around me:

  Where will traitors run to

  When the clouds roll away

  And the brave return?

  For Kenya is an African people’s country.

  ‘Dedan had been caught, delivered to our enemies by our own brothers, lovers of their own stomachs, Wakamatimo. May their names, like that of Judas, ever be cursed, an example to our children of what never to be! We were now awaiting the outcome of the mockery they had called a trial. Plans and attempts to rescue him had failed. The hospital where he lay was heavily guarded, with armoured vehicles, troops on horses, soldiers on foot and on motorcycles patrolling the streets and jet fighters circling in the sky. Scared indeed they were that somehow Africa’s God might intervene from above! They say that in every European settler’s home that week was held a party in celebration of the Temporary victory of Colonialism over liberation struggle. But in the mountain we sat and waited for our own spies sent to Nyeri. They were expected any day, any minute.

  ‘And when they finally came, early on the morning of the fourth day, we needed no words from their mouth: how shall I tell it? You know when there is an important death. It is hot and it is not hot. It is cold and it is not cold. A lone bird flies in the sky, you don’t know where it is going because it is going nowhere. We all returned to our places determined to continue fighting and the struggle but things were no longer the same! My friends . . . no longer the same.’

  3 ~ They did not know it, but that night was to be the peak of their epic journey across the plains. It was true that Abdulla’s feast, as they called it, had leased them new life and determination, and the following day, despite the sun which had struck earlier and more fiercely than in the other days, as if to test their capacity for endurance to the very end, despite indeed the evidence of the acacia bush, the ashy-furred leleshwa bush, the prickly pears, all of which seemed to have given in to the bitter sun, they walked with brisk steps as if they too knew this secret desire of the sun and were resolved to come out on top. Abdulla’s story had made them aware of a new relationship to the ground on which they trod: the ground, the murram grass, the agapanthas, the cactus, everything in the plains, had been hallowed by the feet of those who had fought and died that Kenya might be free: wasn’t there something, a spirit of those people in them too? Now even they of Ilmorog had a voice in the houses of power and privilege. Soon, tonight, tomorrow, some day, at the journey’s end, they would meet him, face to face. It would be the first time that they would be demanding anything from him and they, in their different ways, felt awed at the novelty and daring of their action. During the last election campaign, some recalled doubtfully, he had promised them many things including water and better roads. It would take time, he had warned them. Maybe, they thought, taking heart, maybe he was still involved in intractable negotiations with Kenyatta’s government. Recalling, too, Abdulla’s heroism in the past and also yesterday – how good, how fortunate, that God had brought them Abdulla, Wanja, Munira and Karega – they walked with eyes fixed on a possibility of a different life in Ilmorog, if not for them, at least for their children. They ev
en made up a song in praise of Abdulla, Munira, Wanja and Karega, but also touching on their new hopes and visions. But in the next three days, they increasingly became quiet, listless.

  Some, led by Njuguna, once or twice let words edged with contempt and derision at a hasty journey, undertaken at the advice of children, drop from their mouths. Karega remembered Wanja’s warning of a few nights before and avoided her eyes. They were now without food and without water. At one stage their thirst became so intolerable it almost threatened their will to proceed: Abdulla led them to a place where once flowed a stream and they dug up some stones, turned over some rocks and put their tongues on the sides hidden from the sun to cool the fire in their tongues. No herds of antelopes came their way: only a carcass of an eland newly dead. The children clambered back to the cart – how fortunate, every one thought again, that they had brought the donkey, so that the children need not feel the teeth of the sand and the needle stems of the grass – and they continued their journey, with hawks and vultures flying high above them, maybe hoping . . . Nyakinyua, was encouraging them. ‘Don’t despair when you have already done over half the journey. It is said that once in Muranga a child who had bravely put up with hunger a whole day fatally gave up just when his mother was throwing the last mwiko into the pot to mash the irio.’

  And then suddenly one morning they came to the bottom of the hills and valleys of the escarpment and the beginning of a green belt of spotted bush and forest trees.

  They rested at the foot, exhausted, but not without pride at the many miles they had covered to put the vast plains behind them. One heave, one more heave and the rock will be moved, Nyakinyua encouraged them after they had rested a bit, pointing out that they were bound to find water and wild fruits further up the slopes. Where did she get the strength, this old woman who, like Abdulla, had refused a ride in the cart?

  A surveyors’ team had cleared some kind of road that zigzagged through the bush and trees on the side of the slopes. And on either side of the road, the forest department had cleared off wide avenues, treeless belts to arrest the unmitigated spread of bush fires. They resumed their journey along this highway, their hope and faith renewed. A mile or so on, they came to a valley and Abdulla said there was water down there. They went down the shallow valley and indeed there was water. They all knelt to drink, and others, especially the children, stripped to bathe. The elderly people chose more hidden spots. They also found gooseberries, guavas and other wild fruits.

  Karega saw to the donkey which drank and ate wildly. Wanja sat with the children. At the voices of children, Wanja often felt a wound inside her smart so sharply that tears would press against her eyelids. She felt an excruciating love for them and she would have liked, at such moments, to embrace and give milk to all the little ones of the earth. Lord forgive us our sins, Lord forgive us our trespasses, and let the children come unto me. She brushed aside the voices of prayer murmuring in the heart and looked more closely at Joseph, the only one who had not bathed.

  His face had fallen, he was breathing with difficulty and he was obviously trying to hide his pain from her. She rose and felt his chest and it was hot.

  ‘How long has he been ill?’ she asked them. Some turned their faces away, and she had to ask again.

  ‘Since yesterday and through the night,’ one said. ‘But he told us not to tell on him. I mean, he did not want to add to your worry and hardship.’

  The naïveté – well, the selfless fortitude – touched her and she hurried to where Munira, Karega and Abdulla were talking.

  ‘Joseph is ill,’ she announced without ceremony.

  They went to where Joseph was. They were joined by Njuguna and Nyakinyua and soon the whole procession knew of it. Abdulla and Njuguna went into the bush and came back with roots and some green leaves. They gave some to Joseph to chew. But what was needed, Abdulla explained, was for the leaves and the roots to be boiled and Joseph covered together with the pot under a heavy blanket to sweat out the fever and the illness from the joints. So the best thing was for them to move on and go to the nearest farmhouse and seek aid in medicine or a place they could sit and treat Joseph themselves.

  They led the donkey back to the road and reharnessed it to the cart. Although the highway ran along the slopes, it was still steep and the donkey’s hooves kept on slipping. Munira, Karega and Wanja helped push the cart, and this way, panting and sweating, they eventually came to the top and joined the tarmac road.

  But for Joseph’s illness, they would all have felt immeasurable happiness at the sight. For they could now see the city below them. Wanja could even recognize the Hilton and the Kenyatta Conference Centre dominating the city centre.

  They hurried down the road and it was almost dark by the time they finally reached the first farmhouse. Karega and Munira were about to open the iron gates when a European woman came toward them, told them that there were no vacancies, hakuna kazi, and ordered them off the premises without waiting for an explanation. Karega and Munira could not help laughing as they continued down the road. ‘Why did she think we would go to her house in the evening to seek employment?’ Karega wondered, and he was going to say something about white people when he remembered his own struggle in the city and kept quiet.

  At the next iron gate they took care to first read the signpost. Their hearts beat with hope and indecision. Rev. Jerrod Brown, Karega read again. They would have preferred an African but then a man of God under whatever skin was a soul of goodness and mercy and kindness. They sent Karega and Munira and Abdulla. Abdulla’s bad leg would be evidence of their good intentions.

  The driveway leading to the house had a very neatly trimmed cypress hedge on either side. Beyond the hedges spread very neatly mowed grass lawns. Here and there on the lawns stood single cypress trees whose leaves and branches had again been nicely trimmed and brought together into beautiful cones as if in perpetual supplication to heaven. A well finished application of sweat, art and craftsmanship over a number of years, so much energy and brains wasted on beautifying trees, Karega reflected. The house itself was a huge bungalow with red tiles and steep gables, so imposing.

  Suddenly two dogs came rushing toward them. The volume of their combined barking was enough to make one halt and take to his heels. But a man emerged from behind a pine tree and ordered them to halt. A watchman, they thought: he had a blue uniform and a white cap on which the words Securicor Guards were written. Another man, with a green kanzu, a red fez on his head, and a red band to match, around his waist, emerged from the big house and joined the Securicor guardsman who was now holding the two Alsatians by their collars.

  ‘Who are you and what do you want?’ asked the man with the red band who was obviously the Bwana’s cook. The Securicor guardsman was patting the fat panting animals, at the same time raising his eyes as if he would only be too glad to let them loose on the vagabonds.

  ‘We have come from afar and we would like to see the owner of the house. We are in a little trouble.’

  ‘You look it,’ said the Securicor guardsman, ‘and you may be in more trouble unless you can state your business quickly.’

  ‘But what is it that you want?’ insisted the man with the red band. ‘You see, Reverend Brown is praying and after prayers he generally retires to his study to prepare a sermon or something. He is a very busy man and he hates to be disturbed.’

  ‘We are in difficulties,’ reiterated Munira. ‘There are more of us at the gate. We have a sick child. We certainly do not mind waiting until the Reverend Bwana has done with prayers.’

  ‘You can come and wait in the verandah,’ he said, once again giving each one of them a thorough look-over. And really it occurred to Karega that they must indeed be a sight to see: what without a proper bath and without a change of clothes, for so many days.

  They stood in the verandah. From there Karega could just manage to see the workers’ houses of mud-walls and grass thatch in two lines. And all along Abdulla was thinking: and we fought to end red fezes and
red bands on our bodies. Munira was imagining his own father in fervent prayers of devotion.

  Soon the Reverend came out and stood just outside the door, and they could hardly believe their eyes. Rev. Jerrod Brown was a black man. Munira’s heart missed a beat. He recognized the man: he had, once or twice, seen him at his father’s house. But at home he was known as Rev. Kamau. Jerrod Brown were his Christian names. He was one of the most respected men in the Anglican hierarchy: he was even considered a possible candidate for a bishopric.

  ‘How are you?’ he asked them in a squeaky voice.

  ‘We are well,’ they chorused, hopes rising.