How we cite our quotes: All quotations are from Out of Africa.
Quote #4
FARAH: It's not good for tall people to know more than this chief. When these children are tall, then this chief can be dead.
It is very important in the Kikuyu tribe that the chief be the wisest. To Karen, the idea of denying an education to a child is unreasonable. Later, when Chief Kinanjui falls ill, he lifts the restrictions, allowing all children to learn. The world is changing, and even that chief has to acknowledge that he can't stop it.
Quote #5
DENYS: Masai. He was half Masai. That's what you remember about him. They're like nobody else. We think we'll tame them, but we won't. If you put them in prison, they die.
KAREN: Why?
DENYS: Because they live now. They don't think about the future. They can't grasp the idea that they'll be let out one day. They think it's permanent. So they die. They're the only ones out here that don't care about us, and that is what will finish them.
Karen wrote in her memoir about how super-cool the Masai were. They are people who lived lives of pure honesty, who truly existed outside the expectations of the colonials. The movie kind of plays them as an x-factor, something that the whites will never completely understand.
Quote #6
FARAH: This chief says, "British can read, and what good has it done them?"
The colonials try to re-create Europe wherever they go, which really doesn't work in a place like Africa. To a tribal person, perhaps the modern conveniences seem like more of a bother. It suggests that this culture—you know, the one that actually started here—follows a completely different set of rules.