ABSTRACT
The narrator in Ngũgĩ’s A Grain of Wheat begins chapter nine with these prophetic words: “Learned men will, no doubt, dig into the troubled times which we in Kenya underwent, and maybe sum up the lesson in a phrase. Why, let us ask them, did the incident in Rira Camp capture the imagination of the world?” (127). The chapter digs into this euphemistically labelled “troubled times” by focusing principally on Mugo, a character traumatized by the detention experience at Rira. The chapter probes Mugo’s struggles to find a frame of reference that would make the three overlapping layers of his traumatic experience comprehensible, underlining the inadequacy of a phrase to sum it up. It further explores a social turn in trauma-witnessing by connecting to a community of fellow victims, that is, characters in the text. The chapter, ultimately, concludes by pointing out that the public performance that Mugo is forced to stage on Independence Day only lifts the burden of guilt for Kihika’s betrayal without articulating the experiences that produced victims still acting out their trauma and crying to be heard.
