The Return

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Ngugi wa Thiong’o
SHORT STORY

This version of the selection

alternates original text
As this story opens, a Kenyan man named Kamau is walking along a dusty road. He’s with summarized passages.
returning home to his village. He has been in prison for the last five years for joining the Dotted lines appear next to
Mau Mau Rebellion. The British government controlled Kenya at that time. The the summarized passages.
anti-British Mau Mau Rebellion by the Gikuyu ethnic group had resulted in more than
20,000 Gikuyu being imprisoned and more than 10,000 people losing their lives.
NOTES
The road seems unfriendly and hard to Kamau.

… he looked straight ahead as if he would, any time now, see a familiar

object that would hail him as a friend and tell him that he was near home.
But the road stretched on.

Kamau carries only a small bundle of personal items. Like his clothing, the bundle shows
wear from the hard years spent in a detention camp. The crops and land held by the
Gikuyu also seem worn-out and tired, as they did before the Mau Mau emergency. But
when Kamau approaches the valley that leads to his village, he feels more hopeful: He
sees green vegetation.

This could only mean one thing: Honia River still flowed. … A group of
women were drawing water. He was excited, for he could recognize one
or two from his ridge. …Would they receive him? Would they give him a
“hero’s welcome”? He thought so. Had he not always been a favorite all
along the ridge? And had he not fought for the land?

He greets the women. Some respond, but others simply look at him in cold silence.
He asks if they remember him. One woman addresses Kamau by name, but she stops
speaking suddenly. This leads Kamau to think that the women know something that
he doesn’t.

“Perhaps I am no longer one of them!” he bitterly reflected. But they told

him of the new village. The old village of scattered huts spread thinly over
the ridge was no more.

He left them, feeling embittered and cheated. The old village had not
even waited for him.
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Kamau next feels a strong desire to be home. He thinks about his parents and his
wife, Muthoni. He walks faster, eager to join them. Then, he recalls how others in the
detention camp had been like him: They had talked of nothing but their loved ones.

All of them longed for one day—the day of their return home. Then, life
would begin anew.

GRADE 9 • UNIT 5 • Accessible Leveled Text • The Return 1

 Kamau thinks about how his life might begin anew. He imagines that he will go to work NOTES
in Nairobi. He and his wife will have a child, a son. But he also wonders if people he
meets will ask him questions. He decides not to tell them about all of the ugliness, the
beatings, forced labor, and humiliation.

He had suffered many humiliations, and he had not resisted. Was there
any need? But his soul and all the vigor of his manhood had rebelled and
bled with rage and bitterness.

One day these wazungu1 would go!

One day his people would be free! Then, then—he did not know what he
would do.

However, he feels sure that no one would ever mock his manhood again. Entering the
new village, Kamau meets new faces. He finds his home. When he sees his father, he
notices that he has aged. Kamau’s father doesn’t seem to recognize his son at first—it’s
as if he can’t believe his eyes. But fear is also in his father’s eyes. Kamau’s mother and
brothers greet him, and his mother hugs him and cries. His father’s words help him
understand the way people have been greeting him.

“I knew my son would come. I knew he was not dead.”

“Why, who told you I was dead?”
“That Karanja, son of Njogu.”
And then Kamau understood.

A man named Karanja had told everyone that Kamau was dead. That explains why his
father and the women at the river reacted the way they did. But Kamau is puzzled—
Karanja was never in the same detention camp. He puts this aside for the moment.

He wanted now to see Muthoni. Why had she not come out? He wanted
to shout, “I have come, Muthoni; I am here.” He looked around. His mother
understood him. She … simply said:
“Muthoni went away.”
Kamau felt something cold settle in his stomach. He looked at the village
huts and the dullness of the land. He wanted to ask many questions, but he
dared not. He could not yet believe that Muthoni had gone. But he knew
by the look of the women at the river, by the look of his parents, that she
was gone.

Kamau’s mother says that Muthoni was a good daughter to them. She had waited
patiently for Kamau. But Karanja came and told the family that Kamau was dead. The
family believed him. Muthoni cried for a month. Karanja then became a constant visitor.
And, in the end, the family didn’t have the money or food to support Muthoni.
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“We could have kept her. But where is the land? Where is the food? Ever
since land consolidation,2 our last security was taken away. We let Karanja
go with her.”

1. wazungu (wah ZOON goo) n. Europeans

2. land consolidation British policy of seizing Gikuyu land to make large farms for cash crops.

GRADE 9 • UNIT 5 • Accessible Leveled Text • The Return 2

 Kamau feels betrayed by everyone. Karanja, he remembers, had always been his rival. NOTES
He feels bitterness against all the people, even his parents. Unable to speak, he hurries
away from his home, only stopping when he reaches the Honia River.

And standing at the bank, he saw not the river, but his hopes dashed on
the ground instead. The river moved swiftly, making ceaseless monotonous
murmurs. In the forest the crickets and other insects kept up an incessant
buzz. And above, the moon shone bright.

Feeling hurt, Kamau stands in the moonlight. When he tries to remove his coat, he
drops the small bundle that he had been holding onto so tightly. It rolls into the river
and is taken away in the fast current. Kamau is shocked at first. The bundle had
contained things that reminded him of his wife. But then he remembers that Muthoni
is gone.

And the little things that had so strangely reminded him of her and
that he had guarded all those years, had gone! He did not know why, but
somehow he felt relieved. Thoughts of drowning himself dispersed. He
began to put on his coat, murmuring to himself, “Why should she have
waited for me? Why should all the changes have waited for my return?”
“The Return” from Secret Lives by Ngugi wa Thiong’o. Reprinted by Permission of Ngugi wa’Thiong’o and the
Watkins Loomis Agency

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GRADE 9 • UNIT 5 • Accessible Leveled Text • The Return 3