How Beautiful We Were

To advance its theme of Protest and Rebellion, the novel juxtaposes self-motivated action and collectivity in these chapters. Kosawa’s traditional culture frowns on acting out of self-motivation—a value embodied by the umbilical cord bundle for making collective promises. The culture of collectivity in Kosawa is shown most distinctly through the villagers’ conviction that rather than putting only the Four on trial, “if any of them had committed a crime, then all of Kosawa had committed a crime, and we could pay for our crime as one people. We would never allow our own to suffer singularly for our collective deeds” (187). However, desperation forces individual members of the village to act individualistically. Woja Beki joins the village rebels to save his position. He pretends to be acting under the guise of collectivity, but this façade only fools the naïve children. Thula rejects collectivist ideas about women’s social responsibilities and demands to go to school. The belief in collective actions also makes it hard for villagers to understand outsiders. The children ascribe selfless motives to Austin, admiring him for not betraying the villagers to Pexton; however, Sahel’s chapter makes it clear that he only says nothing about his uncle’s death to avoid persecution by the country’s dictator. This cultural divide cannot be easily bridged; as the children experience the massacre at the hands of the soldiers, their first-person plural narration emphasizes how although only some people are killed, everyone feels these deaths.

The motif of traditional mythologies continues here with the children’s song about “the three little fishes who escape the belly of a monstrous creature by itching the insides of its stomach for so long that the monster got a stomachache and vomited them out” (138). The song is an allegory: The people of Kosawa are the fish, and Pexton is the monstrous creature whose stomach they must itch. While Konga suggested irritating this stomach through rebellion, the Restoration Movement is confident that educating the youngest generation is the better solution. Village parents are skeptical, comparing themselves to the trapped leopard in the village origin story: “We had fallen into the trap of animals” (155). They do not see any reason for children to have more than basic schooling, asking why “learning beyond how to read and write and do simple arithmetic [would] cause our captor’s hearts to change so they might look at us and see something of worth” (155). The Restoration Movement’s focus on education oversimplifies a complex situation, ignoring everyday material needs and long-held socio-cultural ideas.

Sahel carefully performs womanhood, despite the fact that she desires to break out of Kosawa’s restrictive gender norms. In Kosawa’s tradition, widows cannot remarry, frustrating Sahel’s desire for sex and romance. As Sahel tries to convince fathers to allow their sons to go to school in Lokunja, we see her commitment to conforming to gender expectations:

They ask me questions and I respond in a manner that suggests I don’t know much about what I’m trying to say. I nod while they speak, limiting eye contact. They have to see how much I revere their wisdom. […] I cannot argue or defend my choice; I’m not allowed to, for the sake of respect (162).

In contrast, Thula’s embrace of education goes against Kosawa’s traditional gender roles, as she chooses reading over pursuing boys. While tradition asks women to be without opinion and meek, Thula refuses domesticity and formulates her own worldview.