Petals of Blood

The second chapter is a flashback to when Munira first arrived in the village of Ilmorog 12 years earlier, leaving his wife and children behind in the city. He comes to the village to be a teacher, and his arrival is marked by comments about “another” teacher arriving; the others have come and gone, and he is met with apprehension and uncertainty. One elder woman confronts him, telling him that their youth are leaving the village to go to the city and asking why he is really there. Additionally, given the village’s poverty and the need for farm workers—particularly during the ongoing drought—the idea of schooling is often rejected. All of this leads to poor attendance at the school, and Munira struggles to establish himself.

Ultimately, Munira questions his idea to come to Ilmorog in the first place and returns to Ruwa-ini to speak with Mzigo, his employer, about his position. In doing so, he begins to think of the villagers’ poverty, curiosity, and sincerity, which contrasts with the city and the privilege of its people. He decides to remain in Ilmorog, where he feels that he can make a difference despite the villagers’ guarded reception to his arrival.

Although Munira continues to be an “outsider” and feels “sad and a little abandoned” during the farming season (25), he passes time with Abdulla and begins to fit in more and more with the people. He makes conscious decisions to connect the children’s schooling with their labor and slowly brings more students into the classroom. During one such lesson, as the students are outside looking at beanflowers, one student exclaims that it is “a flower with petals of blood” (26). Munira attempts to explain that blood is not a color and return the conversation to the scientific structures of the flower, but he is instead bombarded with philosophical questions. These make him uncomfortable and uncertain, leading him to keep the class in the school and avoid such discussions in the future.

Six months into his time in Ilmorog, he meets Wanja for the first time; she arrived back from the city the day before. When he meets her over drinks with Abdulla, she expresses interest in his school, even joking that he and Abdulla should come learn from him.

This leads Munira to tell a story from when he was in school at Siriana. A student named Chui was academically and athletically talented and popular. When a new headmaster, Cambridge Fraudsham, came to the school, he made the children dress down and eat poorly to keep them subservient, respecting both God and the British Empire. In response, Chui led the children on a strike, refusing to salute the British flag and protesting their treatment, until Munira, Chui, and others were expelled and the riot police arrived. Munira explains that this episode caused him to realize that leading a rebellion and strike is not for him, as his stuff is not “stern” enough. Instead, he wants a simple classroom with pupils to educate. Munira later regrets telling this story and revealing this weakness to Abdulla and Wanja, but ultimately, it leads to Wanja offering to work for Abdulla so that his young worker, Joseph, can go to school.

As time passes, Munira, Wanja, and Abdulla grow closer and often meet together at Abdulla’s bar to gossip. One such discussion involves the arrival of a land surveyor, who comes to measure and scout the land for the highway that would eventually be built through Ilmorog. Munira begins to think of Wanja often, even having dreams of her and developing an attraction to her.

The chapter ends with Wanja telling Abdulla and Munira about her past. In school, she began a secret relationship with a wealthy man who came to the village, skipping school to see him. She ended up pregnant, and when she went to him, he laughed in her face and refused to take her in, causing her to run away from home and contemplate suicide. This story, she explains, is the reason she wants Joseph to attend school and have the chance to graduate and make a better life than hers.

In the present, after telling the story from the previous chapter, Munira deals with the frustrated police as they try to talk about the arson rather than tell stories of his past. Munira reflects on their lack of understanding that it is all connected, as well as their struggle to trust in the brotherhood of God rather than human law. The next day, the police bring in Inspector Godfrey to try to get Munira to speak. He is considered good at his job due to his ability to work under whoever is in charge instead of choosing to always serve law and order. Godfrey instructs Munira to record whatever information he has, and Munira flashes back in time again.

Munira begins by reflecting on his inability, at the time, to see the direction in which things were headed. He feels bitterness toward Wanja as she does not return his love for her, and he feels she is only after power. He considers Karega’s path toward labor struggles and strikes, where Munira himself had almost gone.

Returning to the day after Wanja told the story of her past, Munira meets Karega in Ilmorog and learns he had previously been Karega’s teacher. He gave him a recommendation to be admitted to Siriana, and Karega recounts to Munira how he succeeded in removing Cambridge Fraudsham from the school, though he was, in turn, expelled. Additionally, Karega recounts meeting Munira’s sister, Mukami, and how she told him about Karega’s brother, Nding’uri, who was hanged during the Mau Mau Rebellion. Hearing these things unsettles Munira, but he fails to find a way to bring the subject up to Karega to hear more about it.

Meanwhile, Wanja, recovering from her injuries in the fire in New Ilmorog Hospital, also thinks back to that same day 12 years earlier. On her first day of work for Abdulla, she takes stock and makes repairs. When there are no customers in the afternoon, she decides to put up a sign saying everything is on sale and that the shop will be closing, bringing in a handful of customers. It is revealed through her workday that Wanja enjoys the power her beauty gives her over men but that using them often leaves her feeling empty. In the city, she started trying to become impregnated by these men but failed, and she returned to Ilmorog for advice from her grandmother. A village elder, Mwathi wa Mugo, told her that this night—with a new moon—would be her opportunity.

At Wanja’s home, Abdulla, Munira, Karega, and Wanja drink and talk until Abdulla begins to tell a story from the Mau Mau Rebellion. However, the lights go out, and he stops and leaves. This, in turn, allows Wanja to invite Munira to go for a walk, leaving only Karega behind. Wanja tells Munira about her cousin, who left her husband and became incredibly wealthy and used to visit Wanja’s house with gifts. One day, however, her cousin’s home was burned down, and her aunt died in the fire. Wanja contemplates how death by fire is a sort of “cleansing,” and she has thought about what it would be like for herself to burn to death. When Munira asks what happened to her baby, she does not answer and instead returns home with him. When they get there, Karega is gone. The moon comes out, and Munira stays the night with her.

In the present, Munira reflects on this night and considers how Wanja’s actions that night are “yet another example of [her] cunning and devilry” (78), as he realizes that she manipulated him into staying with her in the hopes of becoming pregnant.

Munira reflects on his first time having sex with a woman; he paid her two shillings and had an embarrassing experience. This, coupled with Wanja’s changing moods and distance after they are together, causes Munira to question his relationship with her.

On one such occasion, Wanja brings up Abdulla and asks Munira what he is running from and why he came to Ilmorog. She makes a comparison between her pain and suffering and Abdulla’s missing leg and trauma. She asks Munira about his reasons for coming to Ilmorog, and he lies to make himself seem stronger than he is, explaining that he was seeking a new life after independence and felt he was “obeying the call in [his] own way” (87). Wanja responds that she knows his story about Siriana and that his belief that he is too weak for true resistance is untrue.

Wanja fits in with the village women, throwing herself into the work and gossiping with them, even telling them of her “man” in the city. At the same time, as the harvest is poor due to drought, she often mocks the village and its people. Her eyes “[are] more and more turned away from Ilmorog” (89). Her frustration and annoyance build until she turns her anger toward Abdulla and complains of working too hard for little pay. She then recounts how it was in the city, where she lured men in for money and took advantage of them. Abdulla offers to allow her to own the business with him instead of working for him. As she calms down, she realizes that she must leave.

Joseph is called from school the next day to go back to work for Abdulla, and Wanja’s grandmother comes to tell them she has left. However, she has not taken all of her things, so she could be coming back.

The chapter begins with the political assassination of a man from Asia who fought for Nigerian independence and continued to resist imperialism. It brings up discussions of the agrarian revolution, the end of poverty, and communism. It also brings fear to the people of Nigeria. Meanwhile, Ilmorog continues to struggle as drought affects the harvest for another year.

The elders meet regularly at Abdulla’s to discuss the drought and the past, reflecting on how it used to rain regularly before they were colonized. They discuss how the sons continue to leave for the city, yet they find it difficult to blame them when there is less land, and it produces so little. They’re hopeful that “now that [they] have an African Governor and African big chiefs, they will return some of the fat back to these parts” (99). For now, they come to Abdulla and request that he slaughter his donkey as it eats too much grass, but he adamantly refuses.

Meanwhile, the village receives two visitors from the government. The first is a tax collector, from whom all of the men in the village hide to avoid paying taxes. The second are two men from the government, who say they were sent by Nderi wa Riera (the Ilmorog representative in parliament). They demand that men and women from all regions go to Gatundu for the Kamwene Cultural Organization to create peace among the cultural groups of the area. The people of Ilmorog refuse, especially the women, who yell at and threaten the men until they leave.

Although the incident with the government men shocks Munira and he considers what “madness” overcame the women to resist, he also reflects on his dislike for the city of Ruwa-ini—and its wealth. He asks for more teachers for his school to help with his increasing number of classes. Instead of receiving more teachers, he is named Headmaster of Ilmorog Full Primary School and is given a letter inviting him to the delegation of the Kamwene Cultural Organization. He is proud and excited, feeling as though he has finally made something of himself and will impress his father. He returns home to Limuru and goes with his wife to Gatundu for tea. However, he is shocked when they are taken past Gatundu, put into two lines, and forced to swear a loyalty oath under the threat of a machete.

Devastated, Munira decides he must speak with his father. Despite his shame at not living up to his expectations, Munira respects his father’s decision to stand up for his faith and the church despite opposition throughout his life, and he hopes to learn how he found the courage. Instead, his father expresses his disappointment in him, encourages him to stop drinking and go back to teaching, and tells him that the Kamwene Cultural Organization is a good thing that will soon be working with the church.

When he stops in Kamiritho on his way back to Ilmorog, Munira runs into Wanja at a bar. She informs him that she is on her way back to Ilmorog because of what had happened to her in the city: While working at a golf course as a sex worker, many of the women were taken to “tea” as Munira was, but she was able to avoid it. As a result, she returned home one night with a man to find that her apartment had been burned. This scared her enough to make her realize that she should return to Ilmorog, as the city continues to change and become more dangerous.

Wanja and Munira go from bar to bar throughout the city, eventually running into Karega, whom they had not seen since he left Wanja’s house. He recounts how after being expelled from Siriana, he lived in poverty and was angry and resentful toward the school and the wealthy. He agrees to come back to Ilmorog with them.

On their journey to Ilmorog, Munira, Wanja, and Karega each reflect on how they ended up where they are and what they will do going forward. Munira feels a sense of guilt over taking the invitation for “tea” and once again failing to live up to the courage needed to resist oppression and control. Wanja feels humiliated over what she went through in the city and decides that she needs to discover herself in Ilmorog and stop romanticizing the city and the poor decisions she made there. Karega is optimistic about getting a job teaching with Munira while also questioning his feelings for Wanja and the idea of “fate.”

Back at the school, Karega struggles to help the children understand the history of their people—in their village, district, Kenya, and Africa as a whole—as they understand it as an abstract concept but cannot grasp what it truly means, something that he learned by living in the world outside the village. Additionally, he wonders what their education will do for them if they ignore the larger problems of their poverty and the drought.

Meanwhile, the discussion over whether to kill Abdulla’s donkey continues among the elders. One day, Wanja informs Munira and Karega that Mwathi wa Mugo has decided the donkey should be sent away and a goat sacrificed. This prompts Karega to consider a way to help the village, ultimately deciding that they should send a delegation to the city to see their parliamentary representative for help. After a debate among the villagers, they decide to use Karega’s plan and leave on their journey for the city.