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Kimeria
Nderi wa Riera is Ilmorog’s MP (representative in parliament). Early in life, Riera is a freedom fighter. Yet after Kenyan independence, foreign corporations co-opt him, bribing him with directorships on their boards. He becomes a rich entrepreneur in the tourist industry, commodifying “African culture” for European consumption. Thus, Riera represents how capitalism subverts Kenya’s political independence by corrupting progressives, turning them into economic elites, and pitting them against Kenyan workers. Riera founds the KCO, the organization that makes various characters “drink tea” (swear an anti-communist government loyalty oath) to bolster “ethnic unity” and smother class struggle between elites and Kenyan workers. When Ilmorog sends a delegation to Riera asking for help with a bad drought, Riera assumes it’s a plot by his political enemies to make him look bad. He gives a speech to the exhausted delegation suggesting they travel on to Gatundu. Outraged, the delegation throws things at him. Riera convinces the police to arrest three delegation members, Munira, Abdulla, and Karega, but the lawyer who gave the delegation shelter while they waited to meet with Riera successfully defends them in court. Riera concludes the lawyer was behind the “plot” against him and vows revenge. Thus, when the lawyer is later assassinated while fighting for political reforms, the novel implies that Riera was behind it. Much later, Riera convinces Ilmorog’s farmers and herdsmen to take out loans as part of an economic development scheme. When the people of Ilmorog are unable to pay back the loans, banks repossess their land, and Riera and other elites buy it up. This incident shows how capitalist economic development, supposedly a good thing, can benefit the already rich to poor people’s detriment. Riera starts a tourist center in Ilmorog that may be sex-trafficking Kenyan girls to Europeans, demonstrating how women suffer specifically sexual economic exploitation under capitalism. Near the novel’s end, it is implied that Riera has been assassinated while collecting rents in buildings he owns in Nairobi—suggesting new revolutionary fervor in the fight against Europe-backed elites’ economic exploitation of Kenyans.
Nderi wa Riera Quotes in Petals of Blood
The Petals of Blood quotes below are all either spoken by Nderi wa Riera or refer to Nderi wa Riera. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 5
Quotes
We can imagine the fatal meeting between the native and the alien. The missionary had traversed the seas, the forests, armed with the desire for profit that was his faith and light and the gun that was his protection. He carried the Bible; the soldier carried the gun; the administrator and the settler carried the coin. Christianity, Commerce, Civilization: the Bible, the Coin, the Gun: Holy Trinity.
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The Journey
Quotes
‘Why should we fail, though? We are now going as a community. The voice of the people is truly the voice of God. And who is an MP? Isn’t he the people’s voice in the ruling house?’
‘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?’
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The others surrounded the sculpture and commented on the fighter’s hair, the heavy lips and tongue in open laughter, and the sword around the waist. But why did he possess breasts, somebody asked: it was as if it was a man and a woman in one: how could that be?
They were arguing about it until Nyakinyua almost silenced them with her simple logic.
‘A man cannot have a child without a woman. A woman cannot bear a child without a man. And was it not a man and a woman who fought to redeem this country?’
‘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.’
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Chapter 11
Quotes
This was the society they were building: this was the society they had been building since Independence, a society in which a black few, allied to other interests from Europe, would continue the colonial game of robbing others of their sweat, denying them the right to grow to full flowers in air and sunlight.
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Nderi wa Riera Quotes in Petals of Blood
The Petals of Blood quotes below are all either spoken by Nderi wa Riera or refer to Nderi wa Riera. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 5
Quotes
We can imagine the fatal meeting between the native and the alien. The missionary had traversed the seas, the forests, armed with the desire for profit that was his faith and light and the gun that was his protection. He carried the Bible; the soldier carried the gun; the administrator and the settler carried the coin. Christianity, Commerce, Civilization: the Bible, the Coin, the Gun: Holy Trinity.
Related Characters:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
The Journey
Quotes
‘Why should we fail, though? We are now going as a community. The voice of the people is truly the voice of God. And who is an MP? Isn’t he the people’s voice in the ruling house?’
‘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?’
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Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
The others surrounded the sculpture and commented on the fighter’s hair, the heavy lips and tongue in open laughter, and the sword around the waist. But why did he possess breasts, somebody asked: it was as if it was a man and a woman in one: how could that be?
They were arguing about it until Nyakinyua almost silenced them with her simple logic.
‘A man cannot have a child without a woman. A woman cannot bear a child without a man. And was it not a man and a woman who fought to redeem this country?’
‘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.’
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Chapter 11
Quotes
This was the society they were building: this was the society they had been building since Independence, a society in which a black few, allied to other interests from Europe, would continue the colonial game of robbing others of their sweat, denying them the right to grow to full flowers in air and sunlight.
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