... notes on other novels by Ngugi wa Thiong'o

Petals of Blood

Quotes:

• Out with foreign rule policed by colonized blackskins!  Out with exploitation of our sweat!
• Spurs, stirrups, metal horseback, rider in a cloud of dust.
• The road was as treacherous as those hags and brats and cripples, he thought, riding through ruts and bumps and ditches.
• He became a daily feature in Ilmorog, a guardian knight of knowledge for part-time pupils.
• It was a solitary red beanflower in a field dominated by white,blue, and violet flowers.  No matter how you looked at it, it gave you the impression of a flow of blood.
• To be made perfect, Munira started slowly, looking to the ground, absorbed in thoughts he did not know he had, speaking from a past he should have forgotten, crossing valleys and hills and ridges and plains of time to the beginning of his death, you must be able to scrub a dish to a shine brighter than the original, or as we would say in Siriana, out pray Jesus in prays of devotion.
• ... a lot of words is poison, a few words are sugar.
• We are all searchers for a tiny place in God's corner to shelter us for a time from treacherous winds and rains and drought.
• I can't believe it.  I can't believe that / our united strength, untried before / could move mountains where the prayers of / yesterday had failed. Still, he was not there: / he was not there any more at the blowing / of the horn and the raising of the flag - / our flag.  It is of three colours, / rightly sang the poet: Green is our / land; Black is black people, and / Red is our blood.
• I have a knot only you can untie.
• She was contemplating live mental images of places and scenes to which she had once been.  Though she tried to hide this to herself she knew that these scenes were indelibly embedded in her deepest memories of pain and loss, past victories and defeats, momentary conquests and humiliations, resolutions of new beginnings that were only false starts to nowhere.  
• Man's life was God's sacred fire that had to remain lit all the way from the ancestor to the child and the generations yet unborn.
• Gird your loins and always remember everything good and beautiful comes from the soil.
• The beginning so clear .... or was it an illusion?  And the end so hazy that the beginning and the idea behind the beginning were buried in a mist of bitterness, the recrimination, and cruel, blind vengeance. 
• He must have caught her big eyes resting on him; he seemed to be aware of her for the first time ...  They looked at one another in silence.     The constriction in my stomach tightened, for in that instant, in that minute, I knew that ... but what? A strange thing.  A burning pool in my stomach.  Fire-tongues of stinging nettles.  Spilt bile.  Water. I was alone. A spectator.   
• The labour of our hands is magic and the wealth that will change our world and end all droughts from our earth.  
• ... it was the exodus across the plains to the Big Big City that started me on that slow, almost ten-year, inward journey to a position where I can now see that man's estate is rotten at heart.
• (Mukami's suicide) My heart is heavy.  There is ulcerous pain in my belly.   How is it that small things, the screech of a cricket, the touch of a grass-hopper, make me suddenly start and look around me?  Why do I look at her, my soul-image of truth, and become frightened for tomorrow?  Why, why, why should I not be secure in the knowledge that once on the hippo hump of Manguo marshes two hearts refused to hate and beat each to each?
• For a woman, anyway, it is a good feeling when a thousand eyes turn toward you and you feel that it is your body that is giving orders to all those hearts.
• Whenever any of us is degraded and humiliated, even the smallest child, we are all humiliated and degraded because it has got to do with human beings.

Recipes:

Within a month Abdulla had added bar services to his supply of Jogoo Unga  and pepper and salt.

Munira entered the place through the back door and sat on the edge of a creaking bench.  It's strange, he muttered to himself again, recalling the encounter with the old woman as he waited for Joseph to bring him a Tusker beer.

Coal Roasted Potatoes: But he himself never forgot his childhood escapades to tea and to charcoal-roasted potatoes in Mariamu's hut.

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.

... they looked as if they were pilgrims resting on earth for a time, before resuming their journey to heaven, where they would eternally plough cotton-white fields, drink milky tea and eat vanilla cream chocolates.   

'I don't drink,' Karega said.  "Let me have Fanta , please.'

'Do you know what Fanta means?  Foolish Africans Never Take Alcohol.  You see I am an avid reader of advertisements.  Occasionally I even try my mind at a few slogans.'

He looked with conspiratorial eyes to the kitchen where Wanja was making ugali and vegetable soup.

Mixtapes:

They also sang: Kamau wa Njoroge ena ndutu kuguru: 

and thought of their own jiggers eating their toes and scratched them against the floor in earnest. 

Sometimes he made them sing nonsense songs like: Mburi niindo; ngombe ni indo, mbeca ni indo;ngai muheani. Sometimes he would give the children addition or subtraction sums and go out into the sun.

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.

... he had liked the hymn and he went over, put a shilling into the slot and pressed it.  

It was sung by the Ofafa Jericho Choir and the hymn was moving.

New (old) Words:

Bougainvillea - thorny ornamental vines, bushes, and trees with flower-like spring leaves near its flowers.

• POMPOSITY: the quality of being pompous; self-importance
• NGINYIRA: sandals made from old vehicle tyres
• IRIO: In the Kenyan tribal language of Kikuyu, irio just means food.But it usually refers to a simple, plain dish of mashed potatoes, maize, and peas or greens.
• NJOHI: any kind of alcoholic beverage
• SHAMBAS: An area of cultivated ground; a plot of land, a small subsistence farm for growing crops and fruit-bearing trees, often including the dwelling of the farmer.
• SCION: the heir to a throne, a guardian
• CALABASH: bottle gourd, or white-flowered gourd, Lagenaria siceraria, also known by many other names, including long melon, New Guinea bean and Tasmania bean, is a vine grown for its fruit, which can be either harvested young to be consumed as a vegetable, or harvested mature to be dried and used as a utensil.
• BHANG: an edible preparation of cannabis originating from the Indian subcontinent.It has been used in food and drink as early as 1000 BCE by Hindus in ancient India.

Books & Authors:

She could have been beautiful but too much righteous living and Bible reading and daily prayers had drained her of all sensuality and what remained now was the cold incandescence of the spirit.

... quoting from an English writer called William Shakespeare, ambition should be made of sterner stuff.     

 The sitting-room, like the rest of the house, was rather empty: one wooden bench, a table with huge cracks along the joints; two folding chairs and a shelf fixed to the walland graced with old copies of Flamingo, Drum, and African Film and torn school editions of  Things Fall Apart and Song of Lawino.