The River Between by Ngugi wa Thiong'o

Author:Ngugi wa Thiong'o
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2015-03-31T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

He could not sleep. Thin rays of the moon passed through the cracks in the wall into the hut and fell at various spots on the floor. It was no good staring blankly at the hazy darkness in which every object lost its clear edges. Waiyaki wanted to talk to someone. That was what oppressed him: the desire to share his hopes, his yearnings and longings with someone. His plans in education. The desire for assurance and release. Twice he had tried to tell his mother, to ask her something. But each time he stood in front of her and he heard her shaky voice, he found himself talking of irrelevant things. It was strange that the tremor in her voice should set doubts darting in his soul.

After all, what was the longing, what was the something for which he yearned? Did he know it himself? Yet the hopes and desires kept on haunting him. They had followed him all his life.

He did not want to think. But thoughts came and flooded his heart. Strange chapters of his life unfolded before him. His young sister who had died early was the only person with whom he had been intimate. He had loved her, if that sort of closeness could be called love. He thought he loved the hills and their people. But they did not give him that something he could get from her. Then he had been very small, many seasons before his second birth. He wondered why he remembered that time. But she was dead. And death was the end of everything, on this earth. After you were buried, you turned into a spirit. Waiyaki wondered if his sister was a spirit. A young good spirit. Was she watching him? He turned round, rather frightened. He felt guilty.

Waiyaki was superstitious. He believed the things that the people of the ridges believed. Siriana Mission had done nothing effective to change this. His father had warned him against being contaminated by the ways of the white man. Yet he sometimes wondered. Was the education he was trying to spread in the ridges not a contamination?

He wanted to sleep. From side to side he wriggled on his bed, trying to close his eyes and shut away these thoughts that would not let him alone. He thought: There is something unexplainable in the coming of the white man. He had found no resistance in the hills. Now he had penetrated into the heart of the country, spreading his influence. This influence could be disruptive. Muthoni had died on the high altar of this disruption. She had died with courage, probably still trying to resolve the conflict within herself in an attempt to reach the light. Since her death everything had gone from bad to worse, and probably conflicting calls and loyalties strove within the hearts of many. Not many were like Muthoni in courage. Waiyaki wondered where he was. Was he trying to create order and bring light in the dark?

The

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