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Kwani?
Editorial by Binyavanga
Wainaina Lately I seem to meet all kinds of interesting
people. Mostly young, self motivated people, who have created a
space for themselves in an adverse economy by being innovative.
I have met a guy who engraves glass with exquisite skill;
another guy who designs clothes, bags and other products for
factories. I have met people who never studied music, but who
have created a style of Hip Hop that is completely Kenyan;
writers who never studied literature who are writing at a level
I did not know existed in this country.
I have met a film director who managed to make a film in
three weeks, with virtually no budget, who made another in Sheng
using unknown actors. I have met an artist who is twenty one
years old, and who must have Kenya's largest art exhibition --
all around the streets and alleyways of Eastleigh and Mathare.
His name is Joga. I have met a writer, who has the power of
words to evoke place like no Kenyan I know. He works as a
gardener in Nairobi. His name is Stanley Gazemba.
To me this says we are finally becoming a country. When art as
expression starts to appear, without prompting, all over the
suburbs and villages of this country, what we are saying is: we
are confident enough to create our own living, our own
entertainment, our own aesthetic. Such an aesthetic will not be
donated to us from the corridors of a university; or from the
ministry of culture, or by The French Cultural Centre. It will
come from the individual creations of thousands of creative
people.
It is only a matter of time before this country is known
around the continent as a country of creative energy. It is
about time.
Breaking new ground always provokes ridicule. When I
interviewed Kalamashaka, they told me people would boo when they
attempted to sing in Kiswahili. In the old Kenya, people with
new ideas were ridiculed. They threatened the position of those
who had stopped having new ideas.
So I shall call this new generation, the Redyculass Genration.
This is the Kenya that kwani? is about. We are a
magazine of ideas. We seek to entertain, provoke, and create. We
are open to all Kenyans, wherever they may be, who want to say
something new.
Between these covers, you will visit some interesting worlds:
the world of a pot-bellied Kenyan mayor who suspects that he is
about to lose his power; the world of an expatriate European
desperate to become a macho Kenya Cowboy; the world of a
young girl pondering the implications of womanhood in a salon in
the 1970s. You will meet a UN worker who falls in love with a
smell; you will enter the minds of three great Kenyan icons. You
will rise and fall with Richard Onyango.
Kwani? would not be in existence if it was not for the
time, and work and monetary support of so many people who shared
the dream. I would like to mention them here. . . .
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Kwani? is a registered Trust
For subscription, visit website www.kwani.org
for more information. Source: Kwani 2003 / published by Kwani Trust /
P.O. Box 75240 00200 / City Square, Nairobi. * * * *
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Your African characters may include naked warriors, loyal
servants, diviners and seers, ancient wise men living in
hermitic splendour. Or corrupt politicians, inept polygamous
travel-guides, and prostitutes you have slept with. The Loyal
Servant always behaves like a seven-year-old and needs a firm
hand; he is scared of snakes, good with children, and always
involving you in his complex domestic dramas. The Ancient Wise
Man always comes from a noble tribe (not the money-grubbing
tribes like the Gikuyu, the Igbo or the Shona). He has rheumy
eyes and is close to the Earth. The Modern African is a fat man
who steals and works in the visa office, refusing to give work
permits to qualified Westerners who really care about Africa. He
is an enemy of development, always using his government job to
make it difficult for pragmatic and good-hearted expats to set
up NGOs or Legal Conservation Areas. Or he is an Oxford-educated
intellectual turned serial-killing politician in a Savile Row
suit. He is a cannibal who likes Cristal champagne, and his
mother is a rich witch-doctor who really runs the country.
—Binyavanga
Wainaina. “How to
write about Africa.”
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The Moi regime had told us if you deal with your issues we will
become like our neighbours, like Somalia, we will fall apart –
so keep quite, don't ask questions.
That was the most damaging thing, more than
the economic problems for me. Forty years of people telling you
who you are, what to do and how to behave. If you didn't behave
in the right way, you were a non-person.
Living in South Africa and periodically
coming back to Kenya, my relationship with officialdom in Kenya
was just insane. Unfortunately Moi's personality and the way Moi
did business became Kenya's way of doing business. We took our
cue from him. I remember I had left my passport in a pair of
jeans in the washing machine and everyone was telling me that I
was going to be arrested because the passport was a privilege
and not a right.
I remember
going to get my birth certificate and going through all sorts of
problems from people who wanted me to cringe and crawl because
of their perverted sense of self-importance, of "Mtukufuism"
(Holiness). It was still a who you knew, who you are, sort of
thing. It was as if you wanted to do anything in Kenya, you
needed a godfather, who you would bow to and say, "Your
holiness, please help me." Everywhere was broken down into small
feudal spaces.
—Binyavanga
Wainaina.
Voices of Kenya’s Voters
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Children were in school, long lines of
spittle reaching their desks, as they tried to keep awake. Even
Daniel Arap Moi, Kenyan the president, who usually woke up at 4
am, was now taking his nap – trying to summon his favorite
dream: that the entire nation of Gikuyus were standing in line
at his gate to await execution, cash and title-deeds in hand, to
hand over at the gate.
Idi Amin Dada hunched over Mrs. Gupta Shah like an insistent
question mark, jabbing. She was chewing hard at a bit of
blue-gold and red sari, trying to keep from screaming out loud;
they had put on a movie on the video and set it loud to muffle
the sounds: some Bombay song: Chal Chal Chal Merihethi….on the
screen Idi could see a pouty maiden at the edge of a cliff, and
a man with a giant quiff of hair, and sideburns sang in a shrill
voice.
She leapt off the cliff, and he followed her in a few
seconds…they lay draped elegantly at the bottom of the valley;
their fingers touched and they died, then the nasal Hindi music
escalated in intensity, went beyond drama, beyond melodrama, and
achieved genuine Bombay Belodrama. Idi Amin Dada jabbed deeper
into Mrs. Gupta, his plantain sized fingers digging deeply into
the folds of her stomach, which usually undulated serenely
between two wisps of sari as she hummed her way through the day.
—Binyavanga
Wainaina
A Day in the Life of Idi Amin Dada (short story)
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updated 15 October 2007
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