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Chapter 10
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Petals of Blood, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Colonialism and Capitalism
Education
Gender, Sexuality, and Exploitation
Religion, Hypocrisy, and Delusion
Land and Nature
Summary
Analysis
The Trans-Africa road is constructed, connecting Ilmorog to Nairobi and other cities. It is a perverted version of the revolutionaries’ dream of pan-African solidarity; instead of political solidarity, African elites seeking to impress white loaners enact a physical unity that allows for more efficient “international capitalist robbery and exploitation.” The older people wait to follow Nyakinyua; meanwhile, the children, not knowing any better, practice their spelling with the names of corporations and sing songs about different African cities the road could take them to.
This passage represents capitalism in Africa as a horrible parody of African unity: Africans are united across countries, not by shared goals or pride, but by their subjection to capitalist infrastructure like the Trans-Africa road and by “international capitalist robbery and exploitation.” The phrase about older people wanting to follow Nyakinyua implies that she has died.
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In a flashback, Wanja builds a restaurant and bar onto Abdulla’s shop that serves meat and Theng’eta. The men working on the road construction come to eat, drink, and talk there. Ilmorog’s sporadic market is institutionalized to sell to these men’s needs. Eventually, the road workers raze Mwathi wa Mugo’s house, which is in the way of their planned development—only to discover that Mwathi wa Mugo has been living on top of “an archaeological site,” which Nairobi academics fence in and the road workers are obliged to circumnavigate. Though the people of Ilmorog think Mwathi wa Mugo may take vengeance, he never appears.
The Trans-Africa road represents international capitalism, while Mwathi wa Mugo represents rural Kenyan spirituality and perhaps Kenyan traditional culture more generally. The road’s destruction of Mwathi wa Mugo’s house thus represents capitalism’s destruction of Kenyan traditions. That academics take over the “archaeological site” that Mwathi wa Mugo has been protecting suggests that systems of Westernized formal education are colonizing the informal education and cultural knowledge that Mwathi wa Mugo, Nyakinyua, and other elders represent.
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After construction in Ilmorog finishes, Abdulla and Wanja’s restaurant/bar becomes a stop for truck and car drivers. They add a small hotel to their other businesses. Then Nderi wa Riera arrives, along with his two henchmen who have visited Ilmorog previously. He gives a speech, saying that KCO will help the region. He takes credit for Ilmorog’s economic development and for the road passing through it, and he says that the town will be “develop[ed . . .] into ranches and wheat fields.” People will get loans to “develop their land,” but they’ll have to register and get “title-deeds” for their land first. Though the people don’t fully absorb Riera’s meaning, they decide to trust him because of the development they’ve already seen and scold themselves for having distrusted him before.
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Various developments Nderi wa Riera has promised occur. Herdsmen and farmers come to listen to a man from the African Economic Bank, who promises them loan repayment will never burden them—they just have to pay regularly. For the next year, everyone feels hopeful except Njuguna, whose sons all come back to Ilmorog and demand shares in his farms. The sons’ disputes with one another grieve Njuguna. Despite this sadness, the people of Ilmorog are proud of Wanja and Abdulla, who now legally own their land and have a fancy building. Trusting in Riera, the people of Ilmorog expect “flowers to bloom.”
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After five years’ absence, Karega returns to Ilmorog and visits Munira. Munira ponders all that has happened in Karega’s absence. Wanja has become a successful businesswoman in partnership with Abdulla—the only Ilmorog natives to become successful, as no one else had the capital to develop their land and had to sell to “outsiders.” Though Munira hoped Wanja would resume a romance with him after Karega left, she didn’t, and he felt she was intentionally tormenting him. He began drinking too much Theng’eta and reading horoscopes, applying each one to his life. For a while he carried on a sexual affair with an outwardly religious girl named Lillian who always pretended to be a virgin, but he ended things because he still wanted Wanja.
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Walking around the changing Ilmorog, Munira sees former herdsmen and farmers turned into wage-laborers because land development ended their “hitherto unquestioned rights of use and cultivation.” Suddenly, he has the idea to invent a hugely popular advertisement for Theng’eta and win Wanja’s love by increasing her profits. One night, drunk, he stands up at the bar and yells out a slogan about Theng’eta making you more sexually energetic. Wanja is unmoved; everyone else treats it as a joke. He goes home with Lillian, but when she pretends to be a virgin he’s raping, he beats her. They break up permanently.
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Looking at Karega, Munira muses how the school-building is much larger now and full of teachers. Mzigo frequently visits, though that’s more for his shop than the school. Nderi wa Riera and Rev. Jerrod also own shops in Ilmorog. Karega asks what happened to Joseph; Munira says he went to Siriana. There is a pause.
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Then Karega asks after Nyakinyua. Munira thinks of how he’s still trying to come up with an advertisement to win Wanja—in the paper, he reads articles about the lawyer, who is now in Parliament calling for reform, but he mainly reads advertisements. Munira recalls how he was reading the newspaper, drunk on Theng’eta, when he came upon an advertisement for a public auction of Nyakinyua’s land and property. Such auctions were common, as many farmers and herdsmen couldn’t pay off their bank loans and were “driv[en] from the land.”
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Going to commiserate with Wanja and Nyakinyua, Munira found people gathered in Nyakinyua’s hut, wondering how a bank, which was “not a government,” could take someone’s land. They asked Munira to explain, but he could only babble about title-deeds. He went home, drank Theng’eta, and wondered what would happen to Nyakinyua, who was too old to become a wage-laborer like other dispossessed farmers. In the present, Munira bluntly declares to Karega that Nyakinyua died.
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Munira recalls how Nyakinyua tried to resist the bank’s theft of Ilmorog’s land. She walked all around Ilmorog trying to rouse the people to political resistance. Yet none of the people of Ilmorog were sure who they should oppose—the banks, Nderi wa Riera, the KCO, or something else. They ignored Nyakinyua or called her crazy. Nyakinyua declared that just as her husband had fought white colonizers, so she would fight “black oppressors.” Yet before Nyakinyua could journey to the city to protest, she died in her sleep. To keep Nyakinyua’s land from being publicly auctioned to outsiders, Wanja and Abdulla sold their own land rights to Mzigo, and Wanja used the money to buy Nyakinyua’s land.
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Wanja changed after she sold the rights to the land where her business was located. Though she continued to run the business, she also began building “a huge wooden bungalow,” with gardens and electricity, even though she already had a hut. Then, one night, as the band was playing at Wanja and Abdulla’s bar, Wanja began to dance emotionally and sensually toward Munira. Then she got on stage; when the music halted, she told the customers that the county government had said the bar must close. She insisted, almost hysterically, that for that night the band continue to play, and that people continue to dance. Then she went over to Munira and invited her to come to her new house the next night.
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When Munira, excited, arrived at Wanja’s new house the next night, she was wearing excessive makeup and a “flaming red wig.” It reminded him of wig advertisements. Wanja, noting Munira’s shock, asked whether he didn’t want her—wasn’t that why he got Karega fired? She said the county government had taken away her right to brew Theng’eta—the license was transferred to the new owner along with the land—and asked whether Munira knew who the new owner of Theng’eta breweries and the new tourist center would be. Without waiting for an answer, she took him to bed, stripped, and demanded 100 shillings, telling him that in Kenya, there were “no free things,” and that he was “a guest at Sunshine Lodge.” Though confused and humiliated, Munira paid Wanja and had sex with her.
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Munira tells Karega about changes in Ilmorog. Most of the former farmers are now laborers on farms owned by rich men who hire managers to do the on-site supervision. The town has split into a rich neighborhood called Cape Town, and an impoverished neighborhood called New Jerusalem. In the middle of these two neighborhoods are Rev. Jerrod Brown’s church and Wanja’s Sunshine Lodge.
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Additionally, Nderi wa Riera owns a tourist village and Mzigo owns Theng’eta Breweries, which has expanded into a massive factory employing hundreds. The Theng’eta packaging carries an advertisement boasting that the drink makes people sexually powerful. Although a U.S./U.K. business group owns many of the breweries, Africans are high-up employees “and even shareholders.” Mzigo, Chui, and Kimeria have become “leading local personalities.”
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Karega breaks into Munira’s story and asks after Abdulla and Wanja. Wanting to hurt Karega, Munira offers to take him to see Wanja. As they walk, Munira tells Karega all about which rich people now own which parts of Ilmorog. Then he pauses by a “mud-walled” house partitioned into apartments and asks whether Karega wants to see Abdulla before Wanja. Karega agrees.
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Munira knocks on a door and calls to Abdulla. Abdulla, sounding drunk, invites him in and offers him Theng’eta. When Munira and Karega enter, Abdulla doesn’t recognize Karega. Munira explains who Karega is, and the men make halting conversation. Abdulla seems exhausted and discombobulated. When Karega asks to whom the house belongs, Abdulla says he rents from an “important person in authority” who owns 10 blocks and deputizes his bodyguard to take people’s rent money. Karega exclaims that’s “on top of his official government salary.” Munira cynically suggests the man probably owns slums all over Kenya.
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When Abdulla tells Karega that he now sells fruit by the road, Karega—perhaps trying to cheer Abdulla up—mention’s Joseph’s admission to Siriana and hopes he doesn’t get expelled like him and Munira. Abdulla says that all poor people share the same fate and offers Karega Theng’eta, asking whether he’s tasted it. Karega says he tried it in Mombasa, “surprised to see it on sale . . . but it did not taste the same." He suggests that alcohol is widely distributed to pacify and weaken the oppressed.
Abdulla repeats that the same bad things happen to all poor people. Joseph is his only joy—Joseph who “isn’t really” Abdulla’s brother. When Munira asks Abdulla what he means, Abdulla becomes thoughtful and says Joseph is neither his brother nor his son, though he’s like a son to him. Abdulla explains that after he was released from detention just before independence, he went to Limuru looking for his family and discovered British soldiers and Home Guards had massacred them all.
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Then one day, while moving goods with his donkey, Abdulla discovered a homeless child scrounging for food who told him he couldn’t remember his own name and that his parents and brothers had all gone away, though he hoped they’d come back. Abdulla called the child “Joseph Njiraini” and told the child that he, Abdulla, was his brother. Though Abdulla couldn’t tell whether Joseph believed him, Joseph stayed with him and did errands for him until Wanja convinced Abdulla to send Joseph to school.
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Without responding to Abdulla’s story, Munira and Karega walk on to Wanja’s wooden house. When they arrive, a girl serves them alcohol and plays music for them. On the walls hang English landscape paintings, Christian religious art, and “Akamba carvings of giraffes and rhinos.”
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Wanja appears in a revealing dress and sophisticated makeup. She and Karega stare at each other, shocked; Munira savors their discomfort. In a halting way, Wanja asks Karega where he’s been. Karega explains that after leaving Ilmorog, he worked for the lawyer, who had become a politician and was trying to help the poor despite KCO opposition. But though the lawyer and Karega agreed on the social problems that needed fixing, Karega thought the lawyer “had too much faith in the very shrines created by what he called the monster” and eventually left his employ.
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After leaving the lawyer, Karega became a dockworker in Mombasa. When Wanja interjects that dockworkers are well paid with “responsible union leaders,” Karega disagrees—too many union leaders are themselves businessmen, and “you cannot serve two opposed masters.” After leaving Mombasa, he worked on plantations and tried to convince the impoverished, exploited workers to organize; inevitably, the owners would find out what he was doing and fire him.
Eventually, Karega began working in western Kenya for a sugar mill owned by the UK’s McMillan sugar, which had land all over Africa. The company relied on immiserated indigenous farmers encouraged to grow sugar rather than food for themselves. In Kenya, Africans occupied McMillan’s “middle-level managerial positions,” while European workers took the high-level technical jobs and mistreated African technical trainees. One day, while Karega was helping an African trainee, a European worker came over and demanded something. When Karega told him to wait, the European worker called him a rude word in Swahili. Karega threw a bearing at the European’s face and was fired, after which he decided to travel back to Ilmorog.
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Wanja and Munira sense Karega has somehow become unlike them. Wanja asks Karega whether he plans to stay in Ilmorog, and Karega says workers are homeless, traveling wherever employers buy labor. As Munira and Karega are about to leave, Wanja—struck by resonances between Karega’s story and what has happened in Ilmorog since Karega left—asks them to stay. She tells them that “this Africa knows only one law. You eat somebody or you are eaten.” Then she says that she’s longed for a child; when she went to Mwathi wa Mugo, he told her to confess—but she felt unable to tell him that she’d once been pregnant and had tossed her newborn into a latrine.
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To the speechless Karega and Munira, Wanja says she can’t excuse what she did, but she didn’t know what else to do because she couldn’t have supported a baby. Since then, she’s prayed to God and hunted for real love, which she found with Karega—until he left.
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After Nyakinyua died, Wanja sold her business to keep ownership of her grandmother’s land. She visited Nderi wa Riera at Ilmorog’s tourist village and saw him with another owner—the German man who terrified Wanja one night in Nairobi. The German man didn’t even recognize her. Afterward, she went to Mzigo to ask for help in getting another brewing license, and he admitted the government had given him a patent on Theng’eta.
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Wanja knew Mzigo, Chui, and Kimeria were the directors of the Kenya branch of Theng’eta Breweries. It infuriated her that Kimeria, who had been a Home Guard, impregnated her as an adolescent, and forced sex on her as an adult was the one making money off of Ilmorog’s new prominence. She concluded that in the world as it is, women’s only choices are marriage or sex work. Deciding to do nothing “for free,” she built a brothel and procured various types of girls for men’s various preferences. She used sex to get revenge against Kimeria, Chui, and Mzigo—they all pay to have sex with her, and she pits them against one another. She declares she’ll “never return to the herd of victims.”
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Karega, believing Wanja doubts her words, examines her and sees “countless other faces” from Kenya. Though he’s seen people across the country enact her dog-eat-dog view, he declares that there must be another way. If it’s not possible in this world, they should make “another world, a new earth.” Wanja scoffs. Munira declares that they have to go and bolts outside. Karega, following, glances back and sees Wanja seemingly dragged toward the earth by her heavy jewelry. He walks outside but doesn’t see Munira. Back at home, in bed, Munira feverishly murmurs to himself Karega’s words about a new world.
