Free Petals of Blood by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Moses Isegawa

at this leg: I can’t run round the shop on one leg. I’m not a magician.’
    Unpleasant memories seemed to be interfering with an evening which had started so well.
    ‘Listen, Abdulla,’ Wanja said after minutes of silence. ‘I’ll be here for some time. Let him go to school. I will help in the shop. I’ve done this kind of work before. Now I must go. Mr Munira, I am scared that I might meet a hyena in the dark. Walk me to my grandmother’s place.’
    Abdulla remained at the table and didn’t look up as the two said kwaheri and left. He called out to Joseph.
    ‘Go and shut the door. Bring me another beer and retire,’ he said in a softened voice and this time he did not curse him.
    4 ~ Within a week she too had become of us, the new object of our gossip. She was Nyakinyua’s granddaughter, this we knew – she often helped the old woman in the daily chores about the house and in the fields – but she remained a mystery: how could a city woman so dirty her hands? How could she strap a tin of water to a head beautifully crowned with a mass of shiny black hair? And what had really brought her to the gates of Ilmorog village when the trend was for the youth to run away? We watched her comings and goings with mounting curiosity: for there was little else to do in the fields beyond breaking a few clods of the earth as we waited for the beans and maize to ripen so that we could start harvesting. She would go away, we all said.
    One day she disappeared. We were sure that she would not come back, despite the enigmatic smile on the old woman’s face whenever she was asked about it. It’s strange because we all talked as if we wanted her to stay away: but really we were all anxious that she should come back. This was clear on the people’s faces when after a week she returned in a white matatu Peugeot car loaded with her things. We surrounded the vehicle. It was the first time we had seen a real car stand by the door of any Ilmorog homestead and we felt that something was stirring on our ridge. We helped her unload. The driver was all the time cursing the road and saying that had he known, he would not have agreed to the deal. At least not for that kind of money. Why couldn’t they build even a track fit for a cattle wagon? We stood aside to let the car pass. We waved and waved until dust buried it in the distance. Then our interest was taken up by Wanja’s things, each item in turn becoming the centre of gossip and speculation: the Vono spring bed, the foam mattress, the utensils, especially the pressure stove which could heat water without the aid of charcoal or firewood. But it was the pressure lamp that later in the evening really captured our hearts and imaginations. Ilmorog star, we called it, and those who had travelled to beyond the boundary said it was very much like the town stars in Ruwa-ini or the city stars that hang from dry trees. She moved to a hut not far from Nyakinyua’s, andeven a week later people still hung about the courtyard just to see her light the lamp. Still the question remained: why Ilmorog? Maybe now all our children will come back to us, for what’s a village without young blood? But for that night of her return we stayed wakeful outside her hut. Nyakinyua broke into Gitiro, for which she had once been famous in Ilmorog and beyond: she sang in a low voice in praise of Ndemi and his wives, long long ago. The other women chimed in at intervals with ululations. Soon we were all singing and dancing, children chasing one another in the shadows, the old men and women occasionally miming scenes from Ilmorog’s great past. It was really a festival before harvest-time a few months away, and the old only regretted that they had not prepared a little honey beer blessed by the saliva of Mwathi wa Mugo to welcome these promises of new beginnings.
    The other women nodded their heads in appreciative understanding.
    ‘Nyakinyua has found a helper in earthing up crops and later in harvesting,’ they