Today I have the single unenviable task of writing about Ngugi when everyone has written what is to be written about Kenya’s foremost writer, who went to join his ancestors on Wednesday last week.
So where do I start?
Well, I will start from the very beginning. Growing up, I didn’t encounter much of Ngugi; my elder siblings were studying texts like Ayi Kwei Armah’s The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born and Peter Abrahams’ Mine Boy.
However, towards the end of the 1980s, as I was about to clear my primary school education, the Moi government started a ‘big fight’ with ‘dissidents’, who included Koigi wa Wamwere, writer Ngugi wa Thiong’o, among others. The dissidents were said to be members of group called Mwakenya, and that they wanted to overthrow the government and ‘destabilise’ the country.
That is the first time I encountered Ngugi. It is also the first time the word effigy entered my dictionary. To prove their loyalty to the government, politicians would make effigies, which would then be burnt in public, or thrown to the sea, in the case of Mombasa.
Then, Nakuru, my hometown, was home to many rabid politicians, who would come up with the nastiest things to do or say, just to be seen to be on the side of the government. We had Kariuki Chotara, who was the Nakuru Kanu branch chairman then – being a district Kanu branch chairman was a very powerful position.
There was also Kihika Kimani, father of the current Nakuru governor, and later Wilson Leitich, who inherited Chotara’s seat.
This bunch of politicians from Nakuru had to be extra ‘active’ since Koigi, one of the dissidents, hailed from Nakuru. In fact, Koigi had at one point represented our constituency (Nakuru North) in Parliament.
Alongside dissident and effigy, two other words also found prominence of place in my growing dictionary; exile and subversive.
Newspapers reported that the dissidents were planning subversive activities and that they were in exile. Koigi was in Norway and Ngugi was in the UK, before he went to the US.
One of my elder brothers had recently been posted as primary school teacher and he religiously bought newspapers, which I enthusiastically dug in. The editors and journalists provided background information on the dissidents and that is how I learned that Ngugi was a writer, that he had taught at the University of Nairobi. He was detained without trial, just like Koigi and that while in detention, he wrote a whole book on toilet paper.
I was fascinated and impressed.
Then I learned that as part of his ‘subversive’ activities, Ngugi had written a play in Gikuyu and staged it in his Kamirithu village in Nakuru. People from all over the country, who spoke Gikuyu, would be ferried in lorries and buses, to go and watch, Ngaahika Ndeeda (I will Marry when I want).
To my young mind, after watching the play, the people would come back home angry with the government and wanting to overthrow it.
Ngugi, to me, was like a book and movie character; I found it hard to believe that a human being could do the things he was said to have done. Yaani the man was not even afraid of Moi and Kanu!
Ngugi was, for me, a mythical figure; defying all odds to do what he did.
Then I read that the man had written another book titled Devil on the Cross. I knew, through Christianity, that the Cross was associated with Jesus but now Ngugi was putting the devil there as well – What was this man not capable of?
As if that was not enough, I read that Ngugi had written yet another book, where a character known as Matigari was going around villages inciting people by asking them very difficult questions. It got so bad that policemen and detectives were despatched to go and arrest this Matigari man; a mere character in a book!
I told you, this Ngugi man was something else.
Whenever newspapers wrote about Ngugi, they used a black and white photo of the man wearing a full neck sweater, taken from a sideways angle.
This iconic photo was burned in my memory, much like one where the imprisoned Nelson Mandela was pictured with a stylish cut running through his hair.
In the early nineties, when the country was agitating for Multi-party politics, and I had just joined high school, matters to do with Ngugi had somewhat cooled down.
This coincided with Ngugi’s fallow period when he didn’t write much, but I kept tucked his memory somewhere in my archives.
The man that properly reintroduced me to Ngugi and his works, now on an intellectual level, was US based scholar, Prof Evan Mwangi. I really looked forward to his delightful articles published on the Literary Forum, in the Sunday Standard. By then, I had just joined The Standard as a newbie features correspondent.
That is about the time that I appreciated how big Ngugi was; his name had become a cottage industry among people who wished to remain relevant in the literary domain.
Many, including university professors, wrote to praise Ngugi, others wrote to criticise him; some on very flimsy grounds, like one who wrote that Ngugi was the ‘father of Mungiki’, simply because he wrote on aspects of Gikuyu culture,
How demented!
At around 2003, we heard that Ngugi was about to release his newest book, Múrogi wa Kagogo, which he would later translate into Wizard of the Crow.
I had really polish my written Gikuyu in order to be able to read the book, which came out in instalments, published locally by East African Educational Publishers (EAEP).
Unlike Kikuyus who were born and educated in the Mount Kenya region, I did not have the benefit of learning to read and write Gikuyu up to Standard Four. But I coped.
It was then announced that Ngugi would be coming back to Kenya, after 22 years in exile. This piece of information got me excited and sad at the same time.
I was excited that I would somehow see the subject of my intense fascination and hear his voice in close quarters. I was however sad that I was in between jobs – having been retrenched at the Standard at the age of 28! – and as budding literary journalist, I would not enjoy a ringside seat in the whole Ngugi homecoming business.
Then came the horrible news that Ngugi and his wife had been attacked and his wife raped. I could not wrap the news around my head. I shut it down altogether.
One day, while the case was being investigated, I had gone for lunch at the Central Police Station canteen, when I saw Ngugi with a number of plain clothes police officers in tow. I reckoned he had probably gone to identify some suspects.
I was struck by how fragile and frail he looked, with his signature shaggy hair; he an oversized coat a pair of baggy trousers and open shoes. He looked sad and tired.
I tried to figure out what was going inside his mind at that moment and I again shut it down.
This was not the fire-eating Ngugi I had stored in my mind all those years; just like the equally frail Mandela who came out of prison after 27 years.
A certain John Kiragu, a cousin of Ngugi’s first wife, the late Nyambura, was tried in court for planning and financing the attack.
For context, Kiragu, the current Limuru MP, is suspected to have planned and financed the attack on Rigathi Gachagua, when he attended a funeral in Limuru, shortly after he was impeached.
Make of that what you will.
In one of his subsequent returns to the country to attend the court case, I got the opportunity to interview Ngugi. I had joined Sunday Nation as a literary correspondent, when I got in touch with EAEP and they set up the interview.
That evening, I got a call asking me to get downstairs, where I got into a vehicle which would take me to where Ngugi was. That time, his location was top secret and he was being guarded round the clock.
We arrived at a house in Westlands, where I found Ngugi and his wife Njeeri. The owner of the house, a matronly woman fixed me a severe gaze and warned me of unspecified consequences should I misquote Ngugi in my story.
Her warnings did not register much as I was too preoccupied, to finally meet and sit down with my literary hero. Although I remember asking some questions, I must have been too star-struck I quietly drank in every word the man said.
I was however struck by how humble and down-to-earth he was. Was this the man, with his stuttering voice, that had given Kenyatta and Moi’s governments walking nightmares?
Well, that is the power of the pen for you; and our Ngugi knew how to wield it.
I had more opportunities to interview Ngugi and on one occasion, I asked him who, in his view, would inherit his giant literary shoes. It turned out to be a fascinating encounter, but that is a story for another day.
Fare thee well Ngugi, you will never be forgotten.
