Waiyaki Sleeps with Nyambura

In Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s The River Between, Waiyaki and Nyambura commits a sexual affair. This is arguably one of the most debatable and interesting subjects among literary enthusiasts, inclusive of students. It’s hard for one to divine this. However, after keen reading and re-reading of the novel, we realize that the writer brings out this fact with his successful efforts of painting his writing aspects the African way through suggestive hints.  

When a man and a woman have a crush on each other, it’s normal for the body to experience some feelings especially of excitement and acute yearning.
After Muthoni’s death, Waiyaki and Nyambura get attracted to each other. Waiyaki gets restless and his body gets sexually alert and excited. He roams along the Honia River to find somebody understanding to discuss his ambition; his yeraning which wouldn’t leave him alone, where he bumps into Nyambura.

Chapter 15, page 71 says; “Now his muscles and everything about his body seemed to vibrate with tautness. Again, he was restless and the yearning came back to him. It filled him and shook his whole being so that he felt something in him would burst.” After meeting with Nyambura, “he did not fill like seeing anybody else that night.” His heart is satisfied after meeting who he had been yearning for. “Suddenly Waiyaki felt as if the burning desires of his heart would be soothed if he only could touch her, just touch her hand or hair,” Ngugi writes in page 75.

Nyambura herself gets excited, which her mother notices and asks her, wondering whether her fake stomachache had healed (page 87). (She had faked stomachache to skip church and meet with waiyaki). Later in Chapter 19 Waiyaki confesses his love for and proposes to Nyambura who turns downs his offer for marriage due to their strained ways (Waiyaki being a traditionalist, and Nyambura a christian).

Sex is the greatest emotion in man during which partners are united and their consciousness lost to them. Nothing can destruct them. Nyambura and Waiyaki sit down near Honia in Chapeter 24, after her father Joshua disowns her. After sitting down, the last paragraph of page 133 illustrates; “they lay on the grass and the Honia River went on with its throb. Waiyaki and Nyambura did not hear it, for a stronger throb, heart-rending, was sweeping away their bodies. Their souls joined into stillness; so still that their breathing seemed to belong to another world, apart from them.”

After sex, especially if the partners’ hearts are troubled, they come out of the whole thing re-energized to face their problems. Waiyaki feels new strength come to him after rising to go. Waiyaki’s best friend, Kinuthia, even wonders how their faces are bright, despite being together.
The yearning in Waiyaki’s soul flattens due to Nyambura’s presence (page 134). One doesn’t need to find sexually-oriented terms such as “touching here and there” to ascertain Waiyaki having an affair with Nyambura. The African hints of symbolism are what is important in the novel.

© 2013 Peter Ngila