Nettie and Samuel travel to England to petition on behalf of the Olinka

Nettie and Samuel travel to England to petition on behalf of the Olinka after the community’s last remaining savings have been spent on corrugated-tin roofing and colonial pressure has made their position increasingly desperate. Their appeal to the church’s English leadership fails: the bishop turns from the Olinka’s grievances to insinuations about Nettie and Samuel, and they leave without even discussing the community’s problems. The journey exposes the limits of missionary authority while forcing the couple to weigh resistance against the needs and differing choices of the people they hope to help.

Background and Decision

The journey follows a devastating material defeat. A truck arrives at the compound carrying corrugated tin, which the Olinka have had to buy. The purchase exhausts their meager savings and nearly wipes out the money Nettie and Samuel had set aside for the children’s education when the family returned home. Those plans had been postponed year after year as the couple became more involved in the Olinka’s difficulties. The tin roofs are a visible change to the village, but not a sign of progress freely chosen: the women’s ululation of sorrow marks the day the Olinka acknowledge at least a temporary defeat.

Afterward, the Olinka no longer ask Nettie and Samuel for anything beyond teaching their children. They can see how powerless the missionaries and their God are against the forces bearing down on the village. At the same time, people close to the family begin leaving to join the Mbeles, who live deep in the jungle and refuse both work for white people and rule by them. Nettie and Samuel decide that they must act against the latest outrage rather than accept the situation as settled. They take the children and go to England, seeking a hearing from the church whose mission has connected them to the village.

The Journey and Appeal

The voyage carries Nettie and Samuel away from the compound and back into a world of ships, coal fires, streetlights, and oatmeal, things that had receded from their attention during their years in Africa. A retired white missionary is also aboard, traveling to England with a little African boy whom she introduces as her grandchild. Their presence cannot be ignored: groups of white passengers fall silent as the two walk alone around the deck. The scene places racial assumptions and social scrutiny in view before Nettie and Samuel reach the church authorities they hope will listen.

In England, Nettie and Samuel present the Olinka’s grievances to the bishop of the English branch of their church. He is a youngish man wearing spectacles, and as they arrive he thumbs through Samuel’s yearly reports. Yet he does not ask about the Olinka’s circumstances. Instead, he asks how long Corrine has been dead and why Nettie did not return to the United States as soon as she died. His concern shifts the meeting away from the petition and toward Nettie’s conduct and the appearance of her life with Samuel.

The bishop makes that implication more pointed by invoking appearances and what the people he calls natives might think. Samuel answers that he and Nettie behave as brother and sister. The bishop smirks, and Nettie feels her face grow hot. The encounter makes the disparity plain: the church official has the reports and the opportunity to hear about the Olinka, but he directs his attention toward judging the missionaries’ personal arrangement instead. The petition receives no answer because it is never seriously addressed.

Refusal and the Choice Ahead

Nettie declines to burden her letter with every detail of the exchange, but the outcome is unambiguous: she and Samuel leave without a word about the Olinka’s problems. Their journey has taken them to the institution that might have supported their appeal, only for its representative to displace the community’s urgent needs with suspicion about the petitioners. The failure is therefore not simply an unsuccessful meeting. It reveals how little access the Olinka’s grievances have to the authority that might speak for them, even when missionaries carry reports and travel across the sea to present their case.

Samuel is so angry that Nettie is frightened. He concludes that, if they want to remain in Africa, the only thing left for them to do is join the Mbeles and encourage the Olinka to do the same. His proposal gives the trip a new direction: an appeal to a church authority has led him toward alignment with people who refuse white rule and labor. But Nettie immediately measures that proposal against the different conditions within the community. Some Olinka are too old to move back into the forest; some are sick; women have small babies. Others, especially the young, want bicycles, British clothes, mirrors, and shiny cooking pots, and are willing to work for white people to obtain them.

That disagreement keeps the choice from becoming a simple division between resistance and surrender. Samuel’s disgust at the material goods does not erase the needs and desires Nettie identifies, while her account of those differences does not undo the pressure that has forced the question. The journey ends with no successful petition and no settled course for the Olinka. Instead, it leaves Nettie and Samuel facing a community under strain, in which resistance carries real costs and colonial rule shapes even the choices people make about work and possessions.

Narrative Significance

Because Nettie recounts the action in a letter, the failed visit becomes part of her continuing effort to report what has happened to the Olinka to someone far away. Its movement from the altered roofs of the village to the bishop’s office links physical dispossession with institutional indifference: the people losing their homes and resources are not heard, while the visitors seeking help are themselves made the subject of scrutiny. The contrast between the bishop’s access to Samuel’s reports and his refusal to address their contents sharpens the failure of the appeal.

The encounter also distinguishes religious affiliation from effective solidarity. Nettie and Samuel go to a church authority because they hope to make the Olinka’s grievances heard, but the bishop’s response offers neither acknowledgment nor assistance. The resulting proposal to join the Mbeles grows directly out of that refusal, while Nettie’s attention to the villagers’ varied circumstances prevents the proposal from becoming an easy solution. The episode ends not with resolution but with the obligations and divisions that remain after an appeal has been ignored.