Two plump sweet potatoes wrapped in banana leaves were growing soft over steam; millet grains burst in boiling water and thickened into porridge. Although many of the women in the village across the river were adopting the European custom of eating three meals a day, Wachera still practiced the old tradition of sitting down to one huge dinner in the late afternoon. "The Children of Mumbi were tricked by the wazungu," she said, "into giving up their land. The white man didn't understand our ways. He saw forest where there were no huts, and so he took it because he said there was no one living there. He did not know that the ancestors lived there or that the forest would one day be cleared for the huts of our children's children. The white man does not think of the past or of the future; he sees only what is today." David gazed worshipfully at his mother. She was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. Now that he was approaching the threshold of manhood and would soon undergo the circumcision initiation, he was becoming aware of the way men looked at her; and women, too.
