Munira is Headmaster of the new primary school in the African village of Ilmorog.
Munira took the children out into the field to study nature, as he put it. He picked flowers and taught them the names of the various parts; the stigma, the pistil, pollen, the petals. He told them a little about fertilisation. One child cried out:
"Look, a flower with petals of blood."
It was a solitary red beanflower in a field dominated by white, blue and violet flowers. No matter how you looked at it, it gave you the impression of a flow of blood. Munira bent over it and with a trembling hand plucked it. It had probably been the light playing on it, for now it was just a red flower.
"There is no colour called blood. What you mean is that it is red. You see? You must learn the names of the seven colours of the rainbow. Flowers are of different kinds. different colours. Now I want each one of you to pick a flower . . . count the number of petals and pistils and show me its pollen. . ."
He stood looking at the flower he had plucked and then threw the lifeless petals away.
Yet another boy cried:
" I have found another. Petals of blood – I mean red . . . It has no stigma or pistils . . . nothing inside."
He went to Munira and the others surrounded him:
"No, you are wrong," Munira said, taking the flower. "This colour is not even red . . . it does not have the fullness of colour of the other one. This one is yellowish red. Now you say it has nothing inside. Look at the stem from which you got it. You see anything?"
"Yes," cried the boys. "There is a worm - a green worm with seven hands or legs."
"Right. This is a worm-eaten flower . . . it cannot bear fruit. That’s why we must always kill worms."
He was pleased with himself. But then the children started asking him awkward questions. Why did things eat each other? Why can’t the eaten eat back? Why did God allow this and that to happen? But he had never bothered with those kinds of questions and to silence them he told them it was simply a law of nature.
What was a law?
What was nature?
Was he a man?
Was he a God?
A law was simply a law and nature was nature.
What about men and God?
Children, he told them, it’s time for a break.
Man – law – God – nature: he had never thought deeply about these things, and he swore he would never again take the children to the fields. Enclosed in the four walls he was the master, aloof, dispensing knowledge to a concentration of faces looking up at him. There he could avoid being drawn in.
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