In Petals of Blood, the boys’ high school Siriana represents how British colonial education indoctrinated Kenyan students in racist, Europe-centric, and capitalist beliefs and how successive generations of Kenyan students educated this way must “decolonize” their minds. The novel first mentions Siriana when the schoolteacher Munira tells his friends Abdulla and Wanja that when he was a teenager, Siriana expelled him and his classmate Chui for organizing a strike. The strike was protesting their white headmaster Fraudsham, who refused to let the Kenyan students eat decent food or wear shoes except on Sundays, because Fraudsham wanted them to be not “black Europeans but true Africans.” As Fraudsham’s idea of “true Africans” involves hunger and poverty, Munira and Chui’s student strike is clearly protesting racism, demonstrating that Siriana hasn’t fully indoctrinated them. Yet Munira and Chui seem offended that Fraudsham thinks they can’t be “black Europeans,” which suggests they have absorbed Sirana’s Europe-centric worldview. Later, Karega—a former grammar-school student of Munira’s who went on to attend Siriana after Kenya became independent from Britain—tells Munira that he, too, participated in a student strike against Fraudsham. The strikers were demanding to learn about Africa, instead of only European history and European literature. After Fraudsham retired, Chui replaced him as headmaster. Karega thought Chui would sympathize with the strikers’ demands—but Chui insisted on a Europe-centric curriculum too, showing that he had not succeeded in “decolonizing” his mind after his own indoctrination at Siriana.
At the novel’s end, Abdulla’s young ward Joseph is attending Siriana after Kenya’s independence. Joseph mentions to Abdulla that Chui’s murder interrupted a strike the students were planning to protest Chui’s business interests, to improve conditions for teachers and staff, and to demand a curriculum “related to the liberation of our people.” With each successive generation of Siriana students, the strikers demand more and so decolonize their minds more: Munira and Chui’s strike rejects outright racism; Karega’s strike rejects racism and a Europe-centric worldview; Joseph’s strike rejects racism, a Europe-centric worldview, and capitalist exploitation of staff and teachers. Thus, the characters’ interactions with Siriana show gradual, generational progress in “decolonizing” the mind after colonialism.
Siriana Quotes in Petals of Blood
‘We must always be ready to plant the seed in these last days before His second coming. All the signs—strife, killing, wars, blood—are prophesied here.’
‘How long have you been in Ilmorog?’ asked the tall one, to change the subject from this talk of the end of the world and Christ’s second coming. He was a regular churchgoer and did not want to be caught on the wrong side.
A man, believed to be a trade-union agitator, has been held after a leading industrialist and two educationists, well known as the African directors of the internationally famous Theng’eta Breweries and Enterprises Ltd, were last night burnt to death in Ilmorog, only hours after taking a no-nonsense-no-pay-rise decision.
Kenyan people had always been ready to resist foreign control and exploitation. The story of this heroic resistance: who will sing it? Their struggles to defend their land, their wealth, their lives: who’ll tell of it?
‘To understand the present . . . you must understand the past. To know where you are, you must know where you came from, don’t you think?’
‘I saw in the cities of America white people also begging . . . I saw white women selling their bodies for a few dollars. In America vice is a selling commodity. I worked alongside white and black workers in a Detroit factory. We worked overtime to make a meagre living. I saw a lot of unemployment in Chicago and other cities. I was confused. So I said: let me return to my home, now that the black man has come to power. And suddenly as in a flash of lightning I saw we were serving the same monster-god as they were in America.’
He did not therefore want to hear any more nonsense about African teachers, African history, African literature, African this and that: whoever heard of African, Chinese, or Greek mathematics and science? What mattered were good teachers and sound content: history was history: literature was literature, and had nothing to do with the colour of one’s skin.
‘Are there pure facts? When I am looking at you, how much I see of you is conditioned by where I stand or sit; by the amount of light in this room; by the power of my eyes; by whether my mind is occupied with other thoughts and what thoughts. […] Even assuming that there were pure facts, what about their selection? Does this not involve interpretation?’
‘The junior staff—the workers on the school compound—were going to join us. And one or two teachers were sympathetic. They too had grievances, about pay and conditions of work and Chui’s neglect. This time we were going to demand that the school should be run by a committee of students, staff and workers . . . But even now we are determined to put an end to the whole prefect system . . . And that all our studies should be related to the liberation of our people . . .’
Siriana Symbol Timeline in Petals of Blood
