The story begins with Michael Obi’s appointment as headmaster of Ndume Central School. He is an enthusiastic teacher who believes that his appointment by the Mission proves that his excitement and progressive ideas are valid. The school he is appointed to has a reputation for being conservative and is therefore in need of someone young and passionate to point it in a new direction. Due at least partly to his youth, Obi is scornful and skeptical of other headmasters who are not as forward-thinking as he is. He is excited to show the differences he can make with new ideas. Along with his teaching methods, he and his young wife also plan to plant gardens for the school. 

Obi’s wife Nancy is happy to participate in the new enterprise. During the course of their relationship, she has come to share his beliefs about modernity and the importance of progress. She cannot help but imagine herself sharing the accolades that will shower down upon her husband when his instruction methods produce positive results. She imagines herself as setting the tone for the wives of other teachers to follow, but she is disappointed to hear that none of the school’s teachers have wives. Obi insists this is for the best, as the men will be able to dedicate all their energy to the school.

The pair settle into the school, and both pursue their endeavors wholeheartedly. Nancy’s gardens bloom and grows, setting the school’s grounds apart from the surrounding plant life. One evening, Obi sees an old woman cut through a flower bed making her way across the school grounds, annoying him. When he investigates, he sees signs of an old, mostly neglected footpath. He asks a teacher who has been at the school for three years about it and is told about the footpath’s importance to the village. It connects the village shrine to their burial grounds. The teacher also tells Obi that the school tried to close it once before, but there was pushback from the people in the village. For Obi, this is the kind of old belief that he is trying to educate the village’s children to reject. He worries that allowing the village to use the path will reflect poorly on him when inspectors from the government come to visit the school. He puts up fences at the borders of the schoolyard and enforces them with barbed wire.

Three days after the fence is installed, the village priest comes to visit Obi. The priest informs Obi that the path is vital for the village. It is a path by which the dead depart from the village, and it is used by ancestors to return and visit the village. It is also the path that babies travel to be born, which is its most important function. Obi dismisses the priest’s concerns, insisting that the priest’s beliefs are not only absurd, but precisely the kind of beliefs that his school is trying to eliminate through its educational practices. The priest leaves, unwilling to press the issue, but tells Obi about the importance of the village’s adherence to the practices that have guided them for generations. Obi says that the village will just have to make a new path around the school yard, and even offers the labor of his students to help.

Two days after their conversation, a villager dies in childbirth. A local seer says that the fence has angered the dead and insists that there must be sacrifices made to appease the ancestors. The next morning, Obi finds that all of his gardens have been ripped out or trampled. Additionally, one of his school buildings has been ripped down. The inspector Obi was desperate to impress arrives. He writes a scathing report that is critical of the state of the school yard. However, the official is even more concerned about the deteriorating relationship between the school and the village due to Obi’s unyielding approach.