Red Soil and Roasted Maize: Selected Essays and Articles on Contemporary Kenya

Contents

PREFACE

Part 1:

THE WRITER’S LIFE

So, you think it looks easy, huh?

Language is the ‘medium of our memories’

Ngugi in exile: Home is where the art is

A country betrayed by its own liberators

No, it’s not easy to write about ‘magical’ Kenya

In death, as in life, Bantu left an indelible mark

The music of Morrison

Women becoming nervous wrecks and other stories

WOMEN’S WORK

The female professional’s survival guide

Why men can’t talk while reading the newspaper

Join the lonely-heart whistleblowers’ club

The things that money can’t buy

TRANSITION

Daddy dearest

What my dying mother taught me about living

Part 2:

BEING KENYAN AT HOME

AND ABROAD

No blacks please, we are in a land called Kenya

Obamamania

All the president’s men

Is corrupt Kenya in the throes of moral bankruptcy?

A nation of hypocrites

Longing and regret define Africans’ experiences in America

Are the stars in the eyes of the Kenyan Diaspora waning?

Weeping for red soil and roasted maize

IDENTITY AND ETHNICITY

The myth of Kikuyu exceptionalism

Mungiki is merely a symptom of a deadly Kenyan disease

Corruption is the root cause of our poverty, not tribalism

On being gay and Kenyan

Divided loyalties: The African identity crisis

Hurdles to meaningful integration of Asians in Kenya

THE 2007/8 POST-ELECTION VIOLENCE

Kenyans are fighting inequality, not ethnicity

We may never know his name, but he will not be forgotten

To the world, Kenya is now in the league of war-torn states

Love’s indomitable spirit still alive and well in Kenya

Megaslums are a symptom of a hopelessly sick society

If African women do not tell their own stories,

no one else will

Part 3:

THE AID CHARADE

The development myth

Enough of these ‘Dying African’ images

Why adopt a baby when you can adopt a clitoris?

Poverty as entertainment

How the numbers game turned Kibera into

‘the biggest slum in Africa’

Did the aid industry fuel the mayhem in Somalia?

How countries are ‘shocked’ into adopting ‘disaster capitalism’

Lords of impunity

CITYSCAPES

City where flower pots are more valuable than people

A throbbing, vibrant, crumbling mess of a metropolis

Communist or capitalist? It’s hard to tell with China

A Kenyan in Kabul

Dedicated to my husband, Gray Phombeah, who stands by me through thick and thin

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Rasna Warah is a respected columnist with the Daily Nation, Kenya’s largest newspaper. For several years, she worked for the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) as a writer and editor. More recently, she edited Missionaries, Mercenaries and Misfits (2008), an anthology that critiques the development industry in East Africa. She is also the author of Triple Heritage: A Journey to Self-discovery (1998), a historical memoir that explores the role of Asians in Kenya’s politics and economy. She is currently based in the Kenyan coastal town of Malindi, where she lives with her husband.

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Through these carefully selected articles and essays, ranging from the author’s personal life experiences to those touching on topical and contemporary issues, the discerning reader will be exposed to Rasna Warah’s incisive, thought-provoking, humourous, candid and insightful writing style which over the years has made it possible for us to have a better understanding of ourselves and of our essence as a country. Rasna’s Red Soil and Roasted Maize is a must-read as Kenyans reflect on lessons from the past, critically examine the experiences of the present, and explore a future that provides redress for social and economic injustices. This is yet another enduring and significant literary contribution by one of Kenya’s most perceptive writers.—Francis Okomo-Okello, Chairman, Editorial Board Committee, Nation Media Group Limited.

"One writes out of one thing only—one’s own experience."

—JAMES BALDWIN

"(To write is) to die a little less when I die . . . to leave the children I did not have . . . to make people think a little more."

—ORIANA FALLACI

PREFACE

So much of what is written by journalists in Kenya is quickly forgotten and rarely archived or documented in books. As many print journalists in the country will tell you, newspaper articles are not valued so much for what they say, but for what they can wrap; as in many African countries, old newspapers in Kenya usually end up in informal restaurants and markets where they are used to wrap chips, mandazi, meat and other foodstuff.

This book is not just an attempt on my part to preserve my writings, but is, more importantly, an endeavour to chronicle Kenya’s recent history. Because so much of what journalists write is about how people live, work, love and think, journalists are often the best chroniclers of a nation’s zeitgeist—the defining spirit or mood of a people in a particular period in their history. As the late Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci noted, A journalist lives history the best of ways, that is, in the moment that history takes place.

Kenya has witnessed dramatic political events in recent years. The last decade saw major changes in the political and social landscape, including a transition from authoritarianism to democracy, which was both exhilarating and traumatic. This period was also marred by mega corruption and other scandals that threatened to reverse any social, economic and political gains. Because I am not a historian, I cannot put these events into historical perspective, but I believe that what I have written in recent years does present a slice of Kenya’s history. I have tried to capture this slice in this book, which covers a range of issues that have had a deep impact not only on Kenyan society, but on my own life.

The book is divided into three parts:

Part One is introspective and personal, exploring issues such as the role of the writer in modern Kenya and my own evolution as a woman living, loving and working in one of Africa’s most diverse and unequal societies.

Part Two focuses on issues that have dominated the political, social and economic spheres in contemporary Kenya, including corruption, the re-emergence of ethnic chauvinism and the 2007/8 post-election violence. The reader may wonder why I have chosen to highlight the worst, rather than the best, of Kenya. This is intentional, because I believe that it is only when we examine our failures that we can move on to work towards a better society.

Part Three focuses on a phenomenon that has become an integral part of the discourse on Africa—aid and development. The articles in this Part provide an African perspective on the growing development industry, which often gets it wrong when it comes to assisting the neediest people on the continent, and which has increasingly come under attack for being paternalistic and completely ignorant of the reality of poor people’s lives.

I must emphasise that all the selected articles and essays in this book, many of which were first published in my column in the Daily Nation, are my personal opinions and do not in any way claim to represent the truth about Kenya, nor do they pretend to be impartial. In my view, this is their strength, not their weakness. I hope you will enjoy reading this collection as much as I enjoyed writing and compiling it.

Finally, I would like to thank all those readers and editors who encouraged me to write, and who re-affirmed what I have always believed—that the written word is more powerful than the machete or the gun, and therefore more dangerous.

Rasna Warah

Malindi, March 2011

Part 1:

REFLECTIONS

THE WRITER’S LIFE

So, you think it looks easy, huh?

No self-respecting columnist will admit it, but I have to honestly say that I often don’t know what to write about every week. I know what you’re thinking. You’re probably saying to yourself, How is it possible? Of the dozens of events that take place in Kenya every week, surely this columnist can select one to criticise and condemn?

But do you really believe it is that simple? Do you think it’s easy to tear people apart in writing, to ridicule the ridiculous and to have an opinion about everything under the sun? Well, let me tell you, it ain’t a piece of cake.

Writing is like dancing—the easier it looks, the harder it is. Writing a column is even harder—not only do you spend a large part of your life avoiding the people you have criticised in your column, you also have to have an ideological position on everything ranging from the state of roads in the country to the prospect of world peace. This often requires painstaking research, which is a pain when you have to meet a deadline in half an hour.

Many people ask me how I became a columnist. Okay, so I’m lying. People don’t ask me how I became a columnist, but how they can become columnists. So I’ll tell you what I tell them:

Rule One: State your case clearly and develop your argument so that the conclusion seems logical. A clear head is a prerequisite to column-writing, so avoid writing your column on days when you have a hangover.

Rule Two: Respect your readers. Do not be patronising or simplistic. Always assume that your reader is as intelligent as you are. Conversely, do not talk above your reader’s head. Do not use foreign-sounding words, such as argumentum ad absurdum when all you want to say is, Nonsense.

Rule Three. Be consistent. If you hate artichokes or homosexuals today, you must hate them ten years from now. You may have forgotten by then, but some reader somewhere will remember, and you will lose your credibility forever.

Rule Four: Hang around interesting people. I get many of my ideas for my column from conversations with friends or people I meet at parties (who later accuse me of having stolen their ideas, but that doesn’t bother me because I’m the one who has a column, not them).

Rule Five: Cultivate an attitude. Be cocky, arrogant, weird, obnoxious, nyayoist, fascist, anything, as long as you are definite about it. Nobody wants to read a column that sounds wimpy, apologetic or unsure.

Rule Six: Avoid life-saving words, such as maybe or sometimes. There are no grey areas in a column; things are either good or bad, they’re never in-between.

Rule Seven: Make yourself conspicuous. If you’re a man, develop a distinctive nervous twitch and wear a beard or a trench coat. If you’re a woman, try not to be a fashionista. Instead develop a particular style that does not need updating. For instance, you could shave your head, or wear a nose ring. Avoid office suits like the plague.

Rule Eight: Ask everyone you meet if they’ve read your column. This is a sure way to boost your readership.

Like I said, it ain’t easy, but if you are determined, who knows, you may have a column of your own someday. Good luck!

First published in Now magazine, Sunday Standard, 4 October 1992

Language is the ‘medium of our memories’

In January 2007, Kenya’s most celebrated literary icon, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, gave a series of lectures entitled Re-Membering Africa at the University of Nairobi. This was a historic moment, marking Ngugi’s first lecture in his homeland in nearly three decades, delivered at the very institution that stripped him of his professorship after he was detained without trial in 1977. It was this experience that eventually forced him to take the long road to self-imposed exile in 1982, first in Britain, then in the United States.

It has been nearly a quarter of a century since Ngugi left Kenya. In that time, various myths and misconceptions have grown around him. Critics argue that his emphasis on promoting his native Gikuyu language is yet another manifestation of the tendency of Kenya’s largest tribe, the Kikuyu, to impose their hegemony on the country. Others argue that his arguments are from the old school of literary discourse, not in tune with the reality of a globalising, increasingly English-speaking world. Why, many Kenyans wonder, is our prodigal son advocating the use of an African language that people in the country of its origin are themselves discarding in favour of the lingua franca Kiswahili?

Well, because, according to Ngugi, language is more than just a means of communication; it is the essence of our being, the very core of our soul as an African people, the medium of our memories, the link between space and time, the basis of our dreams.

The Kenyan author’s insistence on using his mother tongue as the principal medium of his writing is not simply a reaction against Anglicisation; it is more about resurrecting the African soul from centuries of slavery and colonialism that left it spiritually empty, economically disenfranchised and politically marginalised. Ngugi believes that when you erase a people’s language, you erase their memories. And people without memories are rudderless, unconnected to their own histories and culture, mimics who have placed their memories in a psychic tomb in the mistaken belief that if they master their coloniser’s language, they will own it.

Since he began writing in the 1980s, Ngugi has always resisted colonial labels and Christian doctrine. In 1976, he changed his name from James Ngugi to Ngugi wa Thiong’o. He stopped writing in English in 1981 after the publication of the highly acclaimed social critique Decolonising the Mind, which he described as my farewell to English as a vehicle for any of my writings. Six years later, his novel, Matigari, written in Gikuyu, was published. His latest offering, Wizard of the Crow, or Murogi wa Kagogo, which he launched in January 2007 in Kenya, has been variously described as a masterpiece, the crowning glory of his life and an epic farce that pokes fun at the excesses and idiocies of dictatorships in Africa.

Ngugi is convinced that by adopting foreign languages lock, stock and barrel, Africans are committing linguicide, which, in effect, has killed their memories as a people, as a culture and as a society. Because erasure of memory is a condition for successful assimilation, the burial of African languages by Africans themselves has ensured their assimilation into colonial culture. He calls this phenomenon a death wish that occurs in societies that have never fully acknowledged their loss—like trauma victims who resort to drugs to kill the pain.

Because post-colonial Africa has never properly buried slavery or colonialism, argues Ngugi, it is committing psychic suicide by producing an entire class of African bourgeoisie who view their own languages as shameful, inelegant, incapable of expressing scientific or intellectual thought, and too crude to be exported to other lands. So Africans write their stories in foreign languages, adding to the vast pool of literature written in English, rather than contributing to the growth of literature in African languages.

Ngugi is not promoting the use of African languages to the exclusion of others; on the contrary, he believes multilingual societies are better placed to deal with the complexities of this world. What he is against is the exclusive use of