When Rain Clouds Gather

"Makhaya laughed. 'Well-educated men often come to the crossroads of life,' he said. 'One road might lead to fame and importance, and another might lead to peace of mind. It's the road of peace of mind that I'm seeking." (20)

"You just could not see through tradition and its safety to the amazing truth you were starving-- and that tough little plants existed that were easy to grow and well able to stand up to rigorous conditions that could provide you with food." (43)

"He was a little repelled at first by the generosity of the strange old woman. It was too extreme. It meant that if you loved people you had to allow a complete invasion of any kind. And yet, this isolation he was treasured had often been painful, because he too felt this eternal human need to share the best and worst of life with another." (73)

"Perhaps Paulina was not a very beautiful woman. She was tall, thin and angular, with a thin, angular face. She was also flat-chested and like all flat-chested women, this was a sore point with her." (78)

"She wasn't sure of anything morally definite. In fact, the word 'moral' was meaningless to her. She simply wanted a man who wasn't a free-for-all. No doubt, the other women longed for this too because intense bloody battles often raged between women and women over men, and yet, perversely, they always set themselves up for sale to the first bidder who already had so different materials in his shop that he was simply bored to death by the display." (112-113)

"Every protection for women was breaking down and being replaced by nothing." (120)

"It wasn't a new freedom that he silently worked toward but a putting together of the scattered fragments of his life into a coherent and disciplined whole." (123)

"'Are you religious, Mma?' he asked lightly. Mma-Millipede looked at him with an alert glance. 'If you mean, am I good, I can right away say no, no, no,' she said. 'Goodness is impossible to achieve. I am searching for a faith, without which I cannot live....[Faith] is an understanding of life,' she said gently. He looked at her for a moment and then placed one long black arm on the table and pulled up the sweater sleeve which was the same pitch black coloring as the skin on his arm. 'Do you mean this too?' he asked, quietly. 'Do you know who I am? I am Makhaya, the Black Dog, and as such I am tossed about by life. Life is only torture and torment to me and not something I care to understand.'" (129)

(after Mma-Millipede "confirmed his view that everything in life depended on generosity") "He hadn't expected anyone to tell him that generosity of mind and soul was real, and Mma-Millipede sustained this precious quality at a pitch too intense for him to endure. He could give up almost anything, and hatred might fall away from him like old scabs, but he could never stop putting people away from him. He would never let them rampage through his soul because, unlike Mma-Millipede, he had not God to clear up the rubble." (133)

"The contradictions were apparent to Makhaya, and perhaps there was no greater crime as yet than all the lies Western civilization had told in the name of Jesus Christ. It seemed quite preferable for Africa if it did without Christianity and Christian double-talk, fat priests, golden images.... People could do without religions and Gods who died for the sins of the world and thereby left men without any feelings of self-responsibility for the crimes they committed. This seemed to Makhaya the greatest irony of Christianity. It went that white man could go on slaughtering black men simply because Jesus Christ would save him from his sins. Africa could do without a religion like that." (135)

"Loving one woman had brought him to this realization: that it was only people who could bring the real rewards of living, that it was only people who give love and happiness." (163)

So, his decision to requite the love of Paulina was out of generosity, and that led him to a (somewhat flawed) understanding, or faith. "If he loved Paulina now and admitted it to himself, it was because he sensed that she might be facing tragedy, and that she could not face it alone. He swung his legs off the bed, stood up, and walked out of the farm to the home of Paulina Sebeso." (157)

"Even Solomon's wisdom took secondary place to his material possessions and dazzling raiments. Then came a God who was greater than Solomon, but he walked around with no shoes, in rough cloth, wandering up and down the dusty footpaths in the hot sun, with no bed on which to rest his head. And all that the followers of this God could do was to chronicle, in minute detail, the wonder and marvel of his wisdom." (184-185)