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In Nairobi, Celebrating Literature And History

December 20, 2010

I arrived in Nairobi, Kenya on December 11 to take part in a week-long literary festival organized by Kwani? Trust. As I told a Kenyan television host, this was my first physical visit to Kenya, even though I had made numerous spiritual trips to the East African nation through the fiction, drama and essays of its foremost writer, Ngugi wa Thiong’o.

I arrived in Nairobi, Kenya on December 11 to take part in a week-long literary festival organized by Kwani? Trust. As I told a Kenyan television host, this was my first physical visit to Kenya, even though I had made numerous spiritual trips to the East African nation through the fiction, drama and essays of its foremost writer, Ngugi wa Thiong’o.

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It was a perfect time to pay my visit.

For one, the literary festival was extraordinary on so many levels. Ngugi, one of the bravest writers produced by Africa, lent his intellectual depth and creative energy to the event. Four years ago, Ngugi and his wife visited their homeland, his first trip since twenty years of exile. The trip’s triumphant note was marred when armed gunmen attacked and assaulted the couple. Till date, the Kenyan police have not identified the perpetrators.

The harrowing experience might have led a man of weaker constitution and fiber to foreswear ever visiting his country. Not Ngugi. He not only agreed to headline the Kwani? Litfest, but also demonstrated a generosity of spirit uncommon for many people of his stature. He attended every event, listened attentively to young Kenyan writers, asked questions, and awoke early some mornings to do the round of television as well as radio interviews in order to drum up publicity for the festival.

When the ambassador of the Netherlands threw a party to fete Kenyan writers and celebrate Kwani? (a Swahili word that means, “So what?”), Ngugi stayed till close to 10 p.m., dancing and conversing with other guests. In his keynote speech, he retraced his intellectual and activist role at the University of Nairobi. He also used the opportunity to once more mount a case for African writers and intellectuals to use indigenous languages in their work.

I’d met Ngugi on many occasions – dating back to the mid-1980s when I was a young journalist and he spoke at a then prestigious annual literary festival at the University of Calabar. But in Nairobi, I was fortunate to have three long breakfasts with him. It was at these breakfasts that he displayed the passion of his commitment to African languages as expressive tools. He made the point that, at the very least, African writers ought to devote time and energy to enable them to achieve proficiency in their indigenous languages. A raconteur, he also shared anecdotes from his rich life as a writer, activist and intellectual figure.

Ngugi’s presence and the power of his presentations were matched by the intellectual reach and oratorical genius of Micere Mugo, a poet, dramatist, activist and professor at Syracuse University. Micere Mugo’s presence was particularly resonant for at least two reasons. One was the fact that, like Ngugi, she had paid a huge price for her activist activities. At various times, previous Kenyan regimes had had her beaten, detained, stripped of her academic post, and forced into exile. Through all these travails, her spirits remained unsullied. The second reason had to dow with the well-known fact of her recent battles with cancer.

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Professor Mugo’s participation in the Kwani? festival was, she told me, the first time she’d set foot in Kenya since 1982. In a public lecture last Wednesday, she used an engaging, interactive mode of presentation to tell the story of her odyssey as a robust intellectual and crusader for democratic and gender rights in Kenya.

Both Mugo and Ngugi demonstrated a point that they, and others, pointed out. That point was that the struggles they and their other compatriots waged helped open up democratic spaces in the new Kenya. That point deserved to be underscored. It is, above all, a corrective to those who are too quick to dismiss struggle as an inherently hopeless and impotent activity. It was at once a rebuke to those who, seeking dramatic change but finding little or none, succumb to despair, declaring any and all struggle futile, as well as a reminder to those afflicted with amnesia that progress hardly happens without the triggering impetus of enlightened action.

It was fitting that Ngugi wa Thiong’o and Micere Mugo were in Kenya the same week Luis Moreno-Ocampo, a prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), announced the names of six Kenyans accused of orchestrating acts of murder, rape, torture and transfer of population following the 2007 elections. Among the indicted are Uhuru Kenyatta, son of Kenya’s founding President, Jomo Kenyatta, Major General Hussein Ali, a former police chief, and Francis Muthaura, head of the country’s civil service.

In a televised interview, Ngugi wa Thiong’o was asked to comment on the indictment – which was the focus of every Kenyan newspaper as well as radio and television. He reminded his viewers that ordinary Kenyans, whatever their ethnicity, have no quarrel with their fellows from other ethnic groups. Instead, Ngugi stated, it was the elite who often hatched plans to instigate one group of poor Kenyans to take up arms against another group. If the ICC indictment means anything, it is a warning that cruel politicians may no longer get away with their crimes.

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