Category: Personalities

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Moraa:I have worked hard for Penguin nomination

No Kenyan publisher has ever taken Moraa Gitaa seriously. And while they have generally given her manuscripts a wide berth, Penguin Books, one of the world’s most respected publishers, thinks otherwise.

Out of the 250 manuscripts received all over Africa for the inaugural Penguin Prize for Africa Writing, Moraa’s and five others became the eventual nominees in the fiction category. The awarding ceremony will take place in South Africa next month. And if she wins the award, she stands to take home a cool half a million shillings (R50,000).

The other nominees are Kenya’s Mukoma wa Ngugi, Ellen Aaku from Zambia, Chika Ezeanya from Nigeria, Shubnum Khan from South Africa and another South African Isabella Morris. “Of all the nominees, I am the only one based in the continent,” she says with a touch of pride.

The award seeks to highlight the diverse writing talent on the African continent and make new African fiction and non-fiction available to a wider readership. Apart from the prize money, the winners will also benefit from a publishing contract with Penguin Books South Africa, with worldwide distribution via Penguin Group companies.

Among other things, the judges will be looking for freshness and originality that represent the finest examples of contemporary fiction out of Africa. In the non-fiction category the judges will be looking for serious narratives that examine and explore African issues and experiences for both local and international audiences in an engaging, thought provoking and enlightening way.

Moraa, who is in her mid thirties, believes that her manuscript meets the bill and is confident of winning the overall prize. “I deserve it,” she says defiantly.

When she had earlier presented the same manuscript to a Kenyan publisher, it came back with a rejection note accusing her of having ‘an extremely wild imagination.’

Such a put down would have left an average writer utterly devastated and unable to continue writing, but evidently, Moraa is not your average writer. “I licked my wounds and decided that if no Kenyan publisher is interested in my work, I would look for a publisher outside the country,” she says with a determined look in her face. “I have gone through more trying times in the course of my writing and there was no way I was going to allow such a comment to break my spirit.”

Without elaborating Moraa, who calls herself a pro-women and children’s writer, says her writing gives ‘profound insights’ into the human condition, “and for that you are labeled a controversial writer.”

She explains that she started writing the manuscript way back in 1997. At some point, in 2003, while still writing the manuscript, she developed pneumonia, yet she was staying in Mombasa, the last place you expect a person to catch a cold-related ailment.

“I almost died while writing this manuscript,” she says with a rueful smile. Then, she was working as an administrator in a busy nightclub at the coastal resort city. And in order to get some quiet time to work on her manuscript, she would cover herself in what she thought was warm clothing and sneak into the cold room, where she would put pen on paper, literary.

The effect of those stolen moments in the cold room was the pneumonia she developed later. “The people who knew what I was doing at that time believed I was genuinely mad,” she says. “But if following my passion means that I am labeled mad then so be it.”

Not even the pneumonia could douse the burning ambition she had of becoming a writer. In 2007, she moved to Nairobi, where has been working as a part time editorial consultant. “I shifted from Mombasa as I thought that Nairobi held more promise in terms of getting published,” she explains.

It was not in vain as the following year another of her manuscripts won the National Book Development Council of Kenya (NBDCK) literary award, and with it came a modest cash award of Sh30,000.

When she could not get a publisher locally she took yet another of her manuscripts to Nsemia Publishers, based in Canada. Unfortunately for her the book Crucible for Silver and Furnace for Gold could not be accepted for the Jomo Kenyatta Prize for Literature, for the mere reason that it was published outside Kenya, never mind that Nsemia is owned by a Kenyan.

With the nomination Moraa now feels that her hard work and perseverance is finally being recognized. She adds that it should also serve as enough reason for Kenyans and East Africans for that matter to start dusting their long neglected manuscripts. “If you have a passion for writing you should not give up just because there are not enough opportunities in your home country,” she says.

That is the only way East Africans can ever hope to match their Western and Southern African counterparts, she adds.

If she wins the award, Moraa says that part of the prize money would go towards developing a centre for children with learning challenges. This has been motivated by the fact that her daughter, now fifteen, was born with dyslexia.

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Dreams in a time of war

As a little boy growing up in Limuru, writer Ngugi wa Thiong’o was, one night, woken up by his mother to meet some ‘visitors’. Young Ngugi was pleasantly surprised to find that one of the visitors was his elder brother Wallace Mwangi, also known as good Wallace.
Years back, Good Wallace had escaped to the forest, under a hail of bullets, to become a Mau Mau freedom fighter. Now Ngugi was about to sit his toughest exam yet, the Kenya African Preliminary Exams (KAPE), and his brother had risked capture, even possible execution, in the hands of colonial soldiers or their local home guard collaborators, to come and wish him success in the exams.


The risk was pronounced by the fact that Kabae, one of Ngugi’s many step-brothers, was now working for the colonial forces as an intelligence officer. A few days after Good Wallace’s visit Kabae also visited to wish Ngugi success, or had he gotten wind of Good Wallace’s visit?
Young as he was Ngugi had to learn to live with the conflicting emotions and contradiction in their large family. After all, this was in 1954, two years after a state of emergency was declared in Central Kenya, thereby marking the darkest period in colonial Kenya.
Ngugi, Kenya’s foremost literary personality, captures these experiences in Dreams in a Time of War: A Childhood Memoir. In this book, Ngugi once again asserts his reputation as a sublime story-teller.
With his creative power, Ngugi transports the reader into the mind of a young boy and lets them see things through the lenses of a child. Here, a child’s innocence and naiveté forms part of the narrative.
Only rarely does the grown-up and intellectually sophisticated Ngugi show his hand, in the narrative, often laced with subtle humour. Just as this is Ngugi-the-child’s show the author, as much as possible, lets Ngugi the child do the narration.
Just as a child’s universe is impressionable and full of imagination, so is this book.
Ngugi’s formative years coincided with the rise of African nationalism, which was informed by the participation of Africans the First and Second World Wars. This is where Africans realised that the white man, just like them, was mortal after all. This, in effect triggered the struggle for equal rights by demobilised African soldiers, who felt cheated after not getting land, like their white counterparts.
Then, Ngugi, in his childish imaginations, pictured the early nationalists in larger-than-life dimensions. To him, people like Harry Thuku, and later Jomo Kenyatta, and Mbiyu Koinange, were mythical, even magical characters.
He for example imagined the Germans, who at the defeat of the Second World War, surrendered to his step-brother Kabae, who had gone to fight, on the side of Britain in far off Burma, among other exotic sounding places.
As for Kenyatta, the author’s adoration for the mythical figure was to turn sour, when the man, as Kenya’s first president, consigned Ngugi to detention without trial, in 1977.
Much has been made about how Ngugi, in this book, has shed off some of his controversial views and opinions, but when you put into consideration that at that age Ngugi had not yet formed those opinions, then critics making those observations are jumping the gun.
By the time this book comes to an end, Ngugi has just stepped into Alliance High School for his secondary education, so you do not expect a person at that stage to know, let alone appreciate, ideologies like Marxism and other controversial ideas that make Ngugi what he is today.
Maybe critics, who have made careers attacking Ngugi’s every move, should practice some restraint and wait for that point when he tells how he came to embrace those controversial ideas, and why, only then can they take him on.
Apart from growing up under the horrors emergency rule, the author had other things to worry about. He for example had to go out in search of jobs in other people’s farms to supplement the little income his mother earned.
This was in addition to the fact that at a tender age Ngugi and his younger brother, Njinju, had to endure the ignominy of being chased away from home by their father to go and join their mother who had earlier escaped her matrimonial home to escape her husband’s beatings.
Maybe as a way of escaping from those difficulties young Ngugi sought refuge in books, and especially the Old Testament, which had the effect of transporting him to an enchanting world away from the reality of his suffering. Thus a long-life bond between him and the written word was formed.
And all this was as a result of a pact he made with his mother to go to school and do his best. “Was that the best you could do?” was the constant refrain from his mother whenever he brought home a result or the other from school. It also served to inspire him to work even harder.
By deciding to write his memoirs in instalments, Ngugi took the risk of turning off readers who might argue that there is nothing spectacular about a book dealing exclusively with one’s childhood.
His life was not much different from other children growing up at around the same time and under the same circumstances. But then, it takes a special writer to turn otherwise mundane details of growing up into a highly readable and entertaining book.
Most readers have a rough idea about Ngugi’s life story. They also know that the more interesting and controversial aspects of his life lie ahead of Dreams, which means that future instalments of his memoirs will be highly anticipated.
Maybe for future instalments, Ngugi’s Local publishers EAEP should consider releasing their local edition at around the same time as the American and British editions. That way, EAEP would take advantage of the international hype created on the book to move more copies.

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Should we expect a new book from Akinyi?

News that Judith Akinyi could have gone back to her old drugs trade did not exactly catch me by surprise. Although I did not interact with her on a one-on-one basis, after she was released from jail, I nevertheless saw her on many occasions during literary events when she was in the process of promoting her book Deadly Money Maker. The book detailed her experiences as a drug trafficker and on being jailed at the Lang’ata Women’s Prison for the same. Why do I say that it did not come as a surprise to me? First of all, seeing this woman at different events I always got the impression that something was amiss with her. She just did not look settled to me. Could it be that after the publishing of her book she expected ‘more’ from the society? Did she expect to become an instant millionaire from the sale of her book? Hadn’t someone told her in Kenya books don’t move that fast? Or better still hadn’t someone told her that Kenyan book publishers are not exactly good marketers of creative works? Well, after she came out of jail, she became a mini celebrity, what with every media outlet seeking to do an interview with her.

The Standard even made her their columnist. She might her gotten her publicity but the money did not come as fast as she would have expected, and she was starting to get anxious. Shortly after she was released, and the Nairobi literary scene could not get enough of her, I made the following observation on this blog: “All this hype will definitely do a lot of good to the book, which might boost its sales. Hopefully then, she might not be tempted to go back into crime. One thing though, all this hype risks getting into her head…” At that time I had called her with a view to interviewing her for the Sunday Nation, but she flatly refused, asking me to pay her first. That is when I knew that this woman was not genuine, and that she had not reformed. Save from the post on my blog, I never dared contradict fellow literary people who could see nothing wrong with Akinyi. Now that she has been arrested again for the same offence, my only hope is that she pens another book, this time, a blockbuster, from the ‘comfort’ of an European jail cell. I also hope that this time around afungue roho and tell it all. After reading Deadly Money Maker I got the impression that she withheld a lot of information…

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Is Tony Mochama Taban’s literary son?

Good people,

I came across this email, written by Prof Chris Wanjala, and posted in the Pen Kenya google group, and I thought it was interesting. Though Prof Wanjala shies away from comparing Mochama with Zimbabwe’s Dambudzo Marechera, I would be more incline to compared Mochama, aka Smitta with Dambuzo. Read on…

Dear Juba, Taban may be in Juba and getting entangled in administrative chores.But he left a genre of writing which ver few younger authors are exploiting.I dont like Tony Smitta Mochoma’s guts very much,but I secretly admire the way he enjoys an irreverence and iconoclasm which are decidedly Tabanic. You and I hated Taban because of his tendency to draw attention to himself in Meditations in Limbo and The Last Word. I see this streak in young and naughty Smitta.Taban is also good at dropping names: of politicians,the women he has courted and slept with, the coffee bars and entertainment places he has patronized, and media personalities he admires.I dont want to talk about Dambudzo Marechera at this juncture. Taban engulfs himself in controversies and self-deprecation.So does Smitta Mochama .Is Tony Smitta Mochama Taban’s literary son?

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Letter from Washington: The debate continues…

I decided to retrieve the following comment from the comments section, which is in response to the on going debate on Harare North. I felt that it the merits a post on its own. The author is Prof Maurice Amutabi, who teaches History at Central Washington University in the US. Share your thoughts on the comments section below.

Ngunjiri.

I recently came across a debate on Brian Chikwava’s debut novel Harare North sent to me by Joseph Ngunjiri. The issue at hand was that Brian Chikwava is Zimbabwean and his novel on Zimbabwe had been reviewed by a Kenyan. The quarrel seemed to be that a Kenyan cannot review a novel by a Zimbabwean, objectively. The reviewer Joseph Ngunjiri received a lot of flak and direct negative epithets from some Zimbabweans on the fact that as an outsider, he could review a novel by a Zimbabwean. The debate went even further to suggest that Joseph Ngunjiri’s hatred of Robert Mugabe accounted for his biased review of Brian Chikwava’s novel. Of course, I personally do not like or support Robert Mugabe’s autocratic policies, benign or malignant, but I have reviewed books on Zimbabwe and he has never come between. You cannot force people who do not like Mugabe. Zimbabwe is not a preserve for Zimbabwean scholars only. Jester Phiri and other Zimbabweans are wrong to condemn Ngunjiri for reviewing a novel on Zimbabwe.

Zimbabweans have been crying foul in Botswana and South Africa, for being called ‘foreigners’ or makwerekwere. In fact the concept of Bakwere or Makwerekwere is so disturbing that it is a form of apartheid by black South Africans and Batswana against non South African or non Batswana blacks and I find it utterly disturbing. Makwerekwere was originally used to describe non Tswana speakers, but now applies to Zimbabweans, Nigerians and Kenyans, and other Africans who have arrived in Southern Africa in large numbers in the recent past. I condemn the pigeonholing of Zimbabweans in Southern Africa when they are referred to as Makwerekwere, but find it interesting that Zimbabweans are exhibiting the same xenophobic characteristic which they are condemning. The emergence of hostility among and between Africans is worrying. It is interesting to see the fast rate at which these tags of ‘foreign-ness’ in reference to fellow Africans is increasingly becoming common in discussions in many parts of Africa. in Kenya for example, the hostility against Somali refugees has created negative energy against Kenyan Somali, who are now not differentiated from the ‘wariae’ tag that referred to Somalis on the other side of the border. Today, what used to be called ‘Somali Ndogo’ (small Somali) in many Kenyan towns are forced to endure constant raids by security personnel for illegal immigrants and search for ‘terrorist suspects’. In the past these settlements were regarded as part of Kenya’s urban sprawl, and normal. They were like Kisumu ndogo (little Kisumu) for Luos, Kiambu ndogo (little Kimabu) for Kikuyus, and Keroka ndogo (little Keroka) for Abagusii, and Kakamega ndogo (little Kakamega) for Abaluiyia, Masaku ndogo for the Akamba (founded by second hand Kamba used tire/tyre dealers throughout East Africa), and other ethnicities throughout the country and region.

There is no doubt that there are differences between some African nationalities but when the difference is based on hatred more than unbiased markers of identity, this becomes a point of concern. Why can’t scholars study other countries without being subjected to negative energy? It is quickly appearing as if someone from Kenya cannot study Uganda objectively or vice versa, or that a Tanzanian cannot discuss a Namibian issue or vice versa, impartially. This is negative for scholarship on Africa. It means that very soon, I will be told that I cannot study northern Kenya where the bulk of my research has been conducted on NGOs working among pastoralist, because I am not a pastoralist. This trend is likely to stifle academic freedom and creativity. I recall with nostalgia when in high school in Kenya we read books by writers from across the continent and critiqued them. They allowed us to have a continental perspective. We read Elechi Amadi’s The Concubine, Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s The River Between, Peter Abraham’s Mine Boy, Cheikh Hamidou Kane’s Ambiguous Adventure, Mongo Beti’s The Poor Christ of Bomba, Okot p’Bitek’s Song of Lawino, Cyprian Ekwensi‘s Jagua Nana, among others. These novels did for us what a textbook can never dream of doing.

I am therefore stunned to hear the emergence of ‘space’ and ‘turf’ wars among scholars. Not long ago, I saw the emergence of this wars among scholars in the Diaspora as well. I have been taking students from Central Washington University to Africa and most recently took them to South Africa (Kenya is under State Department advisory and CWU does not allow official travel there by students). I was surprised to receive two clearly hostile messages from two black South African scholars based in the US like myself, criticizing the itinerary of my trips (since rhe syllabus and itinerary was posted online). They were annoyed that I took the students to places they thought were demeaning to the good history of black South Africa. They were unhappy with the fact that I took my students to the Voortrekker Monument Museum, in Pretoria, which celebrates Afrikaner (Boer) history. I have never seen such a biased museum anywhere in the world, and in fact think that Voortrekker Monument is an aberration of the history of South Africa because of some of the lies in the museum. But after visiting the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg and the Hector Pieterson memorial in Orlando West, Soweto and the Regina Mundi church in Soweto, all of which celebrate Black resistance, I thought it was fitting for the students to visit the Afrikaner monument as well, in order to have a full perspective of what happened in apartheid South Africa. The students could tell the subtle differences in ways in between the places we visited were presented. The point I am trying to make is that as scholars we should be tolerant of others’ views and allow for multiple interpretations, even those we do not agree with.

Another good example of this increasing intolerance is when a non Nigerian scholar, Dr. Saine travelled to Nigeria for few weeks and had the ‘audacity’ to comment about his visit to that populous (although it has never had an official census acceptable to all since independence, so we do not know if it has 90 million or 120 million people) African nation. Dr. Saine received a lot of negative criticism from Nigerian scholars and others, for simply writing about Nigeria. He was attacked by Qansy Salako, Valentine Ojo, Obododimma Oha and Pius Adesanmi. Ed Amatoritsero wrote, “He [Dr. Saine] is a professor who studies Africa but had never been in Nigeria until May of 2009. Then he did visit Nigeria and lived in VI (Victoria Island) – the Island jewel in the midst of Lagosian rot – according to his travelogue. I was in Nigeria at the same period – in May of 2009. I think we must have visited two different Lagos-es.”

Another scholar Dr. Valentine Ojo, MD wrote,

My take on this outburst then and now, was that this is academic violence of the highest order. This is a form of academic gangsterism that is increasingly becoming entrenched in African scholarship and should be condemned. Those who defended Dr. Saine were not spared. They were called names, bad names. One of them was Dr. Kwabena Akurang-Parry whose crime was to say that the he found the article by Dr. Saine to be insightful. Here below is what Dr. Valentine Ojo wrote:

Then Valentine Ojo launched into Kwabena Akurang-Parry for using the word insightful to describe Dr. Saine’s piece.

What bothered me about the attacks was that the Nigerians were undermining Dr. Saine’s report without presenting to us their own reports. It is not different from the attacks on the Kenyan reviewer Peter Ngunjiri, whose crime is that he reviewed Brian Chikwava’s novel Harare North. What one would have expected is a Zimbabwean scholar to point out to a review of the same novel by a Zimbabwean scholar and show the differences that he would have noted. So far, there is no review of the novel by a Zimbabwean. So, does it mean that the rest of the world should just sit and wait until a Zimbabwean reviews the novel?

Below are some of the extracts from the negative exchange on the review of Brian Chikwava’s novel Harare North by Joseph Ngunjiri:

Jester Phiri in Harare writes
I read Ngunjiri’s review of Chikwava’s debut novel, Harare North (October 14, 2009) with some irritation. It seems to miss the essence of a remarkable novel, pioneering in style and innovative in content.
Is Ngunjiri confusing his obvious distaste for Zimbabwe’s government with a novel that at least tries to deliver the realities of a country in turmoil? Or is he trying to get one up on the Zimbabwean writer? Is it possible for a Kenyan reviewer to fully appreciate what Chikwava has accomplished in telling the ‘Zimbabwean story’?
The Editor responds
To paraphrase a Kenyan novelist Ngunjiri might well say “I write what I like”. Is it not, after all, interesting to have an African perspective on a Zimbabwean novel?
• Saturday, 15 May 2010 09:48 posted by Joseph Ngunjiri
I think Jester Phiri misses the point when he claims that I am trying to get one up on Brian Chikwava. Why would I do that? And who says that I have an “obvious distaste” for the Zimbabwean government, which, he rather testily says I confuse the novel?
Why is Phiri being so defensive – on behalf on the author? His is a case of if you don’t like something, give it a bad name, or worse kill it – does that remind you of Mugabe? – Fact is you cannot divorce Harare North from issues surrounding Mugabe’s ZANU-PF, and the question of exile.
About whether a Kenyan can “fully appreciate” the “Zimbabwean story”, all I can say is we are now living in a globalised world, and oh, Chikwava is now a global citizen

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Harare North revisited

Hi there,

Yesterday I blogged about Marimba Media, the new Pan African arts journalist platform, which, to all you art lovers, promises to be an exciting forum where you can interact with cutting edge arts reporting from some of the best arts journalists across the continent. While I pointed you to the review I did on Brian Chikwava’s debut novel Harare North. I would also like to draw your attention to what promises to be a lively debate on whether a Kenyan  is qualified to review a book that addresses the Zimbabwean situation. You can follow the debate here, and if you feel like making a contribution, you have to log in first by creating an account.

All the best.

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Q&A with Abidemi Sanusi

The author in a book signing session

Abidemi Sanusi, a Nigerian author, will launch her book, Eyo later this evening, April 7, 2010, at the Nairobi Serena. Eyo, was nominated for the 2010 Commonwealth Writers Prize for Africa. It tells the story of Eyo, a young Nigerian girl who is taken to the UK where she is turned into a sex slave. This book exposes the evils of human trafficking and it is a call on readers to make steps to bring an end to this vile trade. The book is published by WordAlive an indigenous Kenyan publisher. Maisha Yetu sent some questions to Abidemi and she graciously answered them below

Maisha Yetu: What does the Commonwealth prize nomination mean to you?

Abidemi Sanuni: The Commonwealth Prize means a great deal. It’s a prestigious Prize and to be nominated is an honour in itself.

The author in a book signing session

MY: In terms of modern literature Kenya is way behind Nigeria, especially in creative writing, yet you were published by a Kenyan, how did this come about?

AS: I wouldn’t say that Kenya is behind Nigeria in literature or indeed in anything! I facilitated a writing workshop at the University of Nairobi yesterday courtesy of the Department of Literature and I can honestly tell you Africa has a new generation of writers with experimental and innovative ways of bringing African literature to the global marketplace. In terms of meeting Wordalive, this was done through my literary agent. He submitted my manuscript to them and they liked it. The rest, as they say is history.

MY: Is there any hope of eradicating human trafficking especially child prostitution in Africa?

AS: There is always hope and a way to eradicate child trafficking in Africa. A wise person once said that evil thrived when men do nothing. As long as we do nothing about childtrafficking, it will continue to thrive.

MY: It took you seven years to write Eyo, why was it so important for you to write this book?

AS: Eyo was inspired by my time in the field as a human rights worker and also, child trafficking is a real problem in Nigeria. It’s a pandemic and writing Eyo was my way of raising awareness of the issue.

The book cover

MY: Reading Eyo one can tell that you put in a lot of research into this book, what would you tell up-coming authors who think they can dispense with research and yet expect their books to be well received.

AS: Research adds depth to a writer’s work. Without it, a book doesn’t quite satisfy and leaves the reader unfulfilled.

MY: How has Eyo been received in Nigeria?

AS: Eyo is not yet available in Nigeria

MY: Eyo was the only book, among the Commonwealth nominees, published by an indigenous African publisher, what does this say about African publishing – does it mean that African writers have no faith in their publishers?

AS: African publishing has suffered a great deal in the few decades or so but there is a new generation of publishers such as Wordalive in Kenya and Cassava Republic in Nigeria who are doing amazing work to restore African publishing and put African literature back where it belongs; with the people and accessible to the rest of the world.

MY: What do you think hinders the marketing of African books within Africa, yet books by Western writers are readily available all over Africa?

AS: There used to be a disdain for local literary talent caused in part by bad writing, atrocious editing and poor quality printing. Within this context, you can see why Africans didn’t support local writers. International writers are backed by well heeled western publishers who have the funds to market and promote their authors well in Africa and that is why you see their books in the African marketplace. But that is changing with people like Wordalive who are restoring African literature to its former glory.

MY: Any plans for writing a sequel to Eyo?

AS: There are no plans for a sequel.

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Eva Kasaya: The Mboch who wrote her story

So you have that house girl and you have been mistreating her. Are you that man who steals into the househelp’s panties when the missus is asleep? You thought that you would get away just because you fired her, and that she will keep quiet about it. Well, you’ve got another thought coming. Yes, your days are numbered…

Soon, house-helps will be telling their stories and exposing what a bad society we live in. They will reveal all and you will have nowhere to hide, nowhere!

And I am not talking about the future here. I am talking about Eva Kasaya, who felt that she needed to tell the story of her life as a house-help. Read on…

House-helps occupy a parallel space in society, where their services are much sought after, yet they are rarely appreciated.
Little wonder then that you will always hear employers bad-mouthing them, yet they readily acknowledge that they cannot do without them.
To appreciate how lowly most employers rate their house-helps, you only need to read in the media how they get routinely mistreated. The most recent case that comes to mind is the Kenyan girl, who was thrown from a storied building in Saudi Arabia, by her employer.
Yet, in all these instances, no one, apart from close relatives and friends, bothers to listen to their side of the story. Well, one former house-help has sought to change all that and has actually penned down the story of her life.
And you can trust Kwani Trust, who are always experimenting with different styles of writing, to be the ones to publish the book. Tales of Kasaya: Let us now Praise a Famous Woman, is a book that will probably get other house-helps rushing to tell their stories.
And if Eva Kasaya’s life story is anything to go by, boy do house-helps have stories to tell? “It is apparent that you have quite some information, only that you lack an audience,” thus goes a popular Kikuyu saying that would readily apply to Kasaya and any other house-helps out there who would be willing to pour out their hearts.
Told in the first person, Tales of Kasaya puts the reader in the turbulent world of house-helps. It is rendered with the freshness and simplicity of an impressionable village girl. Like most house-helps will testify, circumstances beyond their reach, mostly poverty back at home, lead them to take up such jobs.
Kasaya, who hails from Maragoli could not continue with her education beyond primary school, as her peasant parents could not afford it. After a stint as a house-help back in her rural home, she thought is was time she upgraded and sought employment in the big city of Nairobi. Her adventurous trip to Nairobi is a must-read for every person has a house-help. So are the trials and tribulations she undergoes from one employer to the other.
While the book makes for interesting reading, I am not sure about the bit about praise for a famous woman. Clearly, there is nothing in the narrative to make one think of the narrator as a famous woman.

UPDATE: A newer edition of the book was released with a changed title: Tale of Kasaya

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The Alembi I knew

Dr Alembi, (right) during the launch of his book The People's Banker In Bunyore on December 19, 2009. James Mwangi is third from right. This was Daktari's last public function

Saturday, January 16, and I am relaxing in the house minding my business, when at around 7.40 pm a text message bursts into my phone. “Ati Alembi is dead?” Was the terse message from a colleague in the office. WHAT! This can’t be! I say to myself reading the message again. Dr Ezekiel Alembi had been admitted at the Mater Hospital on Tuesday, January 12, in critical condition. I hadn’t gone to the hospital as I was waiting for him get out of ICU, that way I reasoned I would be able to chat with him, and maybe joke him out of getting off the damn hospital bed. I suddenly remembered that heavy rains had prevented me from a new year’s party he had invited me at his house in Kahawa West. You see Daktari was very faithful and generous to his friends – Yes, I considered myself his friend – and would occasionally throw parties at his house. These parties were occasions where daktari and his friends ate a lot of food and drank a lot of tea – it was always tea, and maybe juice or soda – told stories and jokes and generally laughed at levels that would not amuse the chaps at NEMA. Daktari had his seat facing the rest of the people in the living room. Actually, it was a three-sitter, which he occupied all alone, er and his many books and papers. That was his office in the house. The mass of books and papers had a clattered disorderly look about them. “You know there is order in disorder,” Daktari would defend the state of his ‘office’. “I know where I have put each and every item, and it will not take me a second to retrieve it. But if someone arranges them I will have a hectic time finding things.” His explanation made perfect sense to me. Before I got married, my house had a very disorderly look about it, but then it was convenient for me as I knew where each and every item was, even in the dark. Enter the missus and the house became very clean, neat and ordered. Problem is that I have to keep asking where everything is… I am not complaining though By failing to attend the party, I missed the opportunity to be with Daktari for probably the last time. It turned out to be the last time he shared a meal with his friends, more like the last supper, because I am told the earliest person left his house at 8pm, for what was supposed to be ‘lunch’. He called me twice after that to tell me how much fun I had missed. Oh how I really missed! But then I comforted myself with the thought that from December 18 to 20, which by the way, is less than a month before his death, I was with Daktari at his rural Ebwiranyi home, in Western Province. It had been an occasion to launch his latest book, James Mwangi: The People’s Banker. I think this was book number 40, authored by the man. Now you see why he is so important.

Dr Alembi, (right) during the launch of his book The People's Banker In Bunyore on December 19, 2009. James Mwangi is third from right. This was Daktari's last public function

However, during our time in Ebwiranyi, I could tell that Daktari was unwell. He got exhausted quite often. During other times he would excuse himself saying that he needed to rest as his blood pressure was giving him trouble. It was really sad to see Daktari reduced to such a weakling. The Daktari I knew was a bundle of energy waiting to be unleashed into the various projects he undertook with so much vigour. At some point on the dinner table, and in the middle of a conversation, he just switched off and dozed off, for about five seconds. And when he came to he had this look about him that told me that all was not well with the good Daktari. Still, he put on a very brave face, in spite of all the pain and suffering – I was later told that he was in a really bad shape. During the event, Daktari with James Mwangi, the CEO of Equity Bank, launched the Ebwiranyi Community Library, in honour of his late parents Mzee Musa and Mama Selifa Alembi. He had build a brand new house, at the cost of around Sh700,000 – he told me this – to house the library. This got me thinking, why in the face of such suffering, would he insist on pulling off such a massive project, in such a hurry. Now, with the benefit of hand sight, I think Daktari had a premonition of his death, that he wanted to get the project out of the way before he passed on. Daktari was really keen on having well-wishers donate books to his library, and asked me for ideas. Luckily I had carried two copies of my book Henry Wanyoike: Victory Despite blindness, and promptly donated them to him. I guess the best way I can homour Daktari’s memory is by organising a campaign to have people donate books, the best way I know how. Despite being a very busy man, Daktari always had time for his friends. He would invite me for lunch at KU, where we really discussed many issues. Our lunches ended up being four to five hour affairs. And Daktari was a dramatic and funny man. I remember that whenever we went for lunch at the senior common room at KU, Daktari would feign annoyance on finding that there was no ugali on the menu. “I want real food! (ugali),” he would say. “I am not a bird to eat grains (rice).” To Daktari, nothing came before a good meal. “Aah Josefu, let us eat,” he would time and again me. “Why should we starve ourselves when there is food.” And I always daid amen to that. I think it was Unoka, Okwonkwo’s father, in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, who said that whenever he saw the mouth of a dead man, he saw the folly of not eating what one had during his lifetime… I met Daktari sometime in 2001. Then I had started writing a column I called Book World, in the Sunday Standard. Then he was plain Mr Alembi, as he had not yet gotten his doctorate degree. It took him close to eight years to get his doctorate degree, and it was not for lack of effort. During that time he time and again presented his proposals to the vetting committees at Kenyatta University, and they always managed to frustrate him. During our many talks Daktari confided in me how these individuals, who shall remain unnamed for now, frustrated him to a point where he was on the verge of losing his teaching post at KU. Then KU administration issued a circular to the effect that lecturers who did not hold doctorate degree would lose their jobs. And this was precisely the point when his tormentors had upped their tempo in frustrating my poor guy. At some point his salary was suspended, and for someone with a young family, this was really cruel. Meanwhile he had to think fast. He registered for his doctorate at the University of Helsinki in Finland, which he got in 2002. Yet this is the same person who went on to head the Literature Department at KU. This goes to prove that you cannot put a good man down. At the time of his death Daktari was the director of KU Radio services.

Whence comes another like Daktari Fare thee well Esekia.

You fought a good fight.

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Shape of things to come…

Friends, I have waited for this moment for a very long time (sounds rather cliched eh?) Ok let me rephrase it; I’ve always longed to be a published writer and the dream is almost coming to fruition. My very first book a biography/autobiography – someone tell me what to call it as it is written in the first person – of the celebrated blind athlete Henry Wanyoike ,Victory Despite Blindness (Sasa Sema/Longhorn), should be out today – that is what the publishers told me – and I can’t wait to lay my hands on my copy, er, copies.

wanyoike

They however sent me an image of the book cover, which I am sharing with you. If all goes according to plan, the book should be on sale during the Nairobi International Marathon on Sunday – remember Wanyoike is an ambassador for the race – I will also try my hand at running the 10 kilometer race, purely for selfish reasons.

You can grab yourself a copy from next week at leading bookstores and online on www.enrakenya.com

Now the Swahili have a saying to the effect that Kinyozi hajinyoi – loosely translated to mean that the barber cannot shave himself – I can’t review my own book. I am looking for someone to review it for me to be published here. Any offers?