Is Chimamanda the new Achebe?

By Ng'ang'a Mbugua

First, a confession.
I have only read one of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's books; Americanah. And I came away thinking this is an important work not because it talks about Africans but also because it talks about Africans abroad, which puts them in a globalised context.
And now, to the question which was first raised by Dr Tom Odhiambo, who, in an article published last September in the Saturday Nation, a Kenyan weekly, argued that Chimamanda is the new Chinua Achebe.
It could well be that Dr Odhiambo meant that Chimamanda is the next big thing in African and Nigerian writing, which could all be very well. But this is a mixed metaphor. It is like comparing mangoes and oranges, as they say in the fruit market.
Both Chinua and Chimamanda are important writers. In my view, however, they only thing they have in common is that  they come from Nigeria (and are coincidentally both Igbo) but that is all that they share. Whereas Chinua seeks to explore the broad theme of what ails Nigeria, Chimamanda's spotlight is turned on the individual. That that individual is Nigerian is only coincidental because she comes from that cultural context. Her characters - at least in Americanah - could be from any African country. Indeed, the minor ones are from various African countries including one from Kenya and another from Senegal. Her pre-occupation with Africa and Africans is broader than Achebe's, whose spotlight only focuses on Nigeria. Chimamanda picks her characters from all corners of the continent and explores the world through their eyes, something that one does not see in Achebe.
Secondly, Achebe, like Ngugi wa Thiong'o, explored the intersection between a traditional past and a modern present and the dilemmas that this posed for their countries at that point in time. His writing was cultural. The same cannot be said about Chimamanda. Here is a modern writer. In fact, she is closer to the humanist school of literature which is pre-occupied largely with the individual who is trying to come to terms with the angst that characterises modern life. This comes through in the struggles of Ifemelu, her main character, to find love in a series of relationships that do not always work. Some of the entanglements are sexually satisfying, but that is all they offer in a world where women want much more than mere sexual satiation. Some are simply morally offensive, even to Ifem herself, such as her brief liaison with the weird sports coach that is devoid of any emotional attachment and makes Ifem feel dirty to the point where her romantic ideas - fueled by her memories of her romantic escapades with her first lover Obinze - are buried in a deep pit, filling her with self-loathing and denting her faith in love and relationships. Some are simply destined to fail, either because of cultural, racial, temperamental or geographical barriers or because those involved step on each other's toes in their awkward attempts to tango. This is not a world for Ogbwefu Ndulue, the character in Things Fall Apart, whose wife dies within minutes of realising that he, too, is dead. As young people say on Facebook, it is complicated.
Which means that whichever way you look at it, Chimamanda is not the new Achebe. She is a vibrant voice. She brings a different kind of nuance in her tackling of the existential challenges confronting the modern young African man and woman who finds herself in a multi-cultural and multi-racial society whether at home or in the Diaspora. She is not a cultural activist in the way Achebe is and does not seek to find out what is the problem with Nigeria or with African politics per se. Rather, her overriding concern is: What is wrong with this African man/woman who has been uprooted from her home, who is trying to figure out his/her place in a world without borders, who is trying to make sense - not of the big political issues, which are only mentioned where they affect the individual directly, like when an army general keeps a mistress - but of the mundane day-to-day issues that each one of us confronts: Will this hair-dresser make my hair the way I want her to? Will this cab driver give me space to dream my dreams or will he fill my space with his narratives? Will this man love me the way I want to be loved? Should I answer this e-mail or drag it to the trash can? Will my preferred candidate win the election?
For Chimamanda, Africa is just a canvass on which she paints her work. For Achebe, Africa was the work itself. No two writers could be so far apart in their thinking, even in their points of departure and in their aesthetic goals. Chimamanda is not the new Achebe, even if she wrote Half of a Yellow Sun and he wrote There was a Country, both of which explore the Biafran question.
Critics should just consider each of the two writers on their own merits.

Ng'ang'a Mbugua is the author, most recently, of This Land is Our Land, a poetry anthology.

Business biography of hawker who made good

By Ng’ang’a Mbugua

The motif of the poor boy who becomes a wealthy man is emerging as one of the most dominant narrative strands in self-publishing in Kenya.

One of the latest entrants in this multi-million shilling market that is changing the face of publishing as we have always known it is Churchill Winstones Ochieng with his business biography, From Hawker to Banker.

Churchill started life as a shoe shiner-cum fruit hawker at Nairobi’s Burma market. With time, he found himself playing for Premier League side, Gor Mahia FC, though this did not give him a direct ticket to a materially satisfying life. Through sheer grit, persistence and an uncanny combination of creativity and audacity, he landed a job as a cleaner with Barclays Bank. The job did not come on a silver platter for the hustler. After getting nothing but a pile of regrets from writing informal job application letters, Churchill - with the help of his sister - penned a personal letter to Gareth George, then CEO of Barclays, explaining his situation and extolling his own virtues as a worker. Pummeled to submission, Gareth hired him. Soon enough, Churchill was promoted to supervisor on account of his industry and later to a messenger and clerk. By the time he was leaving the bank after close to a decade of service, he was one of its senior managers.

When he landed an opportunity to work in an even bigger capacity at CFC Bank, he resigned from Barclays to take up his new posting, which, as he explains in his 132-page book, lasted only two years. The adventure bug bit him again and he quit to Join Faulu Kenya where he is now head of retail banking.

His story, published in 2012, is certainly one of the more compelling in the genre. Churchill has the narrator’s gift and since he is more than familiar with the subject, he keeps the reader – even the skeptical reader – engrossed. That is, until he gets to the ninth and last chapter which takes the oomph out of the otherwise enchanting coming-of-age story of self-actualisation. Unlike the athlete who saves the best kick for the last lap, Churchill fails in his attempt to congeal the wisdom he has gathered over the years in pithy generalisations.

Of course, one understands that his is an attempt to impart advice that could encourage his readers to lift themselves by their bootstraps and make something of their lives. But his life story does that effortlessly. One sees how his effort is rewarded; how his willingness to take risks pays off; and how his experience as a school prefect prepares him for leadership in the workplace. However, he simply cannot resist the temptation to become a motivational writer. After all, he is a motivational speaker. For all it is worth, that chapter on “Secrets of Success” lacks the urgency, fluidity, vivacity and lucidity that characterise the rest of the book and that also make up Churchill’s DNA. In all honesty, though, he can be forgiven for spotting the hunger for motivation that is the curse of our time and going out to satiate it.

If, by any chance, you are tempted to judge the book by its cover, perish the thought. Plough right in and start with the forward which is written by Churchill’s most famous customer, Raila Amollo Odinga.

An author's tribute to his grandmother

By Ng’ang’a Mbugua

At the height of the struggle for freedom, my grandfather, Samuel Munyiri, was arrested by the colonial and detained at the Manyani Detention Camp. The following day, very early in the morning, my grandmother, Margaret Wambui, knocked on the door of the white district commissioner's residence in Nakuru.
When he answered the door, she said to him: "Since you have detained my husband, I have come to live with you".  Embarrassed, no doubt, about how to explain his predicament to his memsahib, the DC asked my grandmother to go back home and wait for her husband to be released from detention. Sure enough, my grandfather, who had been detained for supporting the Mau Mau, was released soon after.
To ensure that my grandmother did not put him in yet another spot of bother, the DC relocated the couple to Kiambu where my grandfather found a job as a milking man at the farm of a white settler that he only identified as Lord Gordon. My grandmother's recollection of his service there was that her family had plenty of milk. As a result, she used to encourage her children, my mother included, to drink a lot of milk with little blobs of Ugali (maize meal).
Years later, when my grandfather bought a one-acre piece of land near the present day Lanet Barracks, this mantra was to be turned on its head. Because my grandmother had to sell milk to her neighbours, she had to ask her children to drink little sips of milk with large blobs of Ugali because the family budget was tight. Wanyororo, by the way, was a nickname for the white settler who broke the virgin land with “nyororo-propelled” earth movers which glided on chains.
The luxuriance of the forest adjacent to the farm was to inspire my most recently published reader, The Bird Boy. Incidentally, the character of the grandmother in the story was inspired by my own grandmother. The destruction of the forest, occasioned by a decision to use the trees to provide polls for the Kenya Posts and Telecommunication Company, inspired my other reader, Susana The Brave. Thankfully, just as I had dreamed it in Susana The Brave, there have been concerted efforts to rehabilitate the forest in recent years. Other social and cultural influences that I imbibed at this time often show up in my other creative works, including some of the nostalgic passages in Terrorists of The Aberdare.
Growing up, my grandmother - a jovial, tall, energetic and slim woman with a ready smile and a hearty laugh - taught me many important cultural and historical lessons through her fireside stories. But I did not know that she was illiterate until one day when I gave her my math book and asked her to help me with a sum. I was a young boy then. When she told me "I don't know how to read", she made me wonder then and many times later how it felt to be unable to read and write. 

At some point, she enrolled in an adult education class and learnt to spell her maiden name.

And she would sing: "W na A, waaa; M na B, mbuu; U na E." It sounded like fun to her but she dropped after some time to take care of important stuff in her life, including her livestock and shambas.

Learning to read and write reminded her of her youthful days. Though her father did not allow her to attend school, she wanted to write love letters just like the girls who had some education. 

One day, she told me, she and her sister wrote letters to their boyfriends, put them in envelopes and walked a long distance to the nearest telephone pole. There, they dug a small hole, buried the envelopes and beseeched the telephone lines to dispatch their missives to their loved ones.

Interestingly, my grandfather, who was barely literate himself, would speak English "through the nose" as we used to say, on account of having spent countless hours with Lord Gordon. As to whether he could write as well, I never got to find out largely because in my formative years, he spent most of his time in Milili, near Narok town, renting land and growing potatoes. My eldest uncle would later join him in the trade whose fruits we only enjoyed when my grandfather returned him on Christmas eve every year carrying a kilo of beef and a loaf of bread.
Once, one of my uncles claimed, after having had a heavy evening meal that he would not eat anything else for the day "even if someone comes with meat". No sooner were the words out of his mouth than we heard a knock on the door. Grandfather had made a surprise visit. And he was carrying meat. Brethren, he ate some time despite his vow.
Anyway, I was telling you about my grandmother. To disguise her deficiency in English, my grandmother and some of her friends invented a language but was basically imitating English albeit light heartedly.
"Bos Gwas," she would call me.
"Wis mwes gas?" she would ask by way of greeting.
"Yes!" I would answer.
"Das this mus gus das. Nis gus kas." meaning she was going to the farm and would be back. Trouble was, I could not call her name, cucu, in kiuknglish because the 's' sounded odd if repeated.
But I loved it when other women her age would chat with her and call her "Nyis nas was Ngas is".

Hearing her say "Yeees!" one would have thought she knew the white man's language through and through.
In those days, I used to live with my mother in Bangladesh, a small estate in the outskirts of Nakuru town, and would go upcountry to live with my grandmother during school holidays. Then, she had a large family: My and uncles, all of who were in their early twenties or late teens and occasional distant relatives.
In the evening, we would sit around the hearth, telling folk tales, swapping riddles and other word games. I was always amazed that my grandmother knew so many stories. Hearing her rendering them as the fire crackled and sent ominous shadows into the dark night air that seeped through the cracks of her timber kitchen, I could imagine the villains lurking in the shadows. Invariably, all the heroes in her stories were young boys. This made me brave. It also made me want to become a story teller. Years later, when I would join Egerton University to study English and Literature, I always chuckled that I would get a degree that my grandmother so richly deserved. Indeed, one day, my maternal great grandmother, an equally gifted story teller whose two-room house was not too far from my grandmother's asked me what I was studying at the university.
"Story telling," I told her since I had no other way of explaining it. She too could not understand how the stories we told in the evenings could be the subject of a university degree. But when I wanted to do my oral literature "research" I could always count on their rich repertoire of stories. She was, in her own way, an oral artist, a repository of cultural, family and historical knowledge.
My grandmother was a strong and courageous woman. Once, when my grandfather was involved in a drunken brawl with two men in Banana Hill, he went him bleeding, if my recollection of the tale is correct. On learning who had bloodied my grandfather's nose, my grandmother set out to look for them. By the time she was done bloodying their noses with her knuckles, they had learnt the importance of keeping a safe distance between themselves and my grandfather.
Another time, when I was a teenager, a neighbour called "Macho" on account of his tendency to steal anything he set his eyes on, made away with all my grandmother's cookery and cutlery. Not long after, he pretended to be passing by. When my grandmother saw him, she started punching a banana stem as she chastised him for his thievery. Macho took to his heels when the banana tree keeled over and fell with a thud. You could see my grandmothers' molars as she laughed her head off retelling that tale. My father once faced her monumental wrath -never I - but the story, which my grandmother loved to retell, sounded like a comic adventure. And she embellished it every time she recalled the incident. 

Because I received nothing but favours from her for as long as I can remember, she became my closest friend, confidante, tutor, mentor and ally even when our family was rocked by stormy feuds. In later years, she became my neighbour when I bought a small parcel next to her. She became the manager, collecting rent, running the farm and keeping the accounts, modest as they were. In a strange twist, our relationship would become more complicated in her twilight years as she helped me navigate the curious world of cultural obligations.
In all the years that I have known her, I have never seen my grandmother taken ill. Sometimes I would complain of a headache and she would rub onion leaves on my forehead and the headache would go away. When I came down with a fever or some other condition, she would boil concoctions mixed with chicken soup and viola! I would be well again. But never once was she taken ill... until about two years ago.
One day, my grandfather's brother brought her some honey he had bought from some bee keepers in the neighbourhood. She shared the honey with her eldest son, my uncle. But as they were eating it, she complained that a bee sting had lodged itself in her tongue. My uncle tried to look for it but the poor light from the tin lamp and hearth flame was not enough. A week later, she went to see a doctor and repeated her tale.
"It is not a bee sting," the doctor said after examining her. She did not believe him. A few months later the pain was back and thus began her intermittent trips to hospitals, including admissions. She was later diagnosed with cancer of the throat area, the same condition that had led my grandfather to die of starvation over a decade earlier.  One doctor recommended that my grandmother's tongue be cut off. She refused. Her tongue was her life. She was talkative to the point of being garrulous. How could she live without it?
Desperate to heed the doctor's advice, my uncle called me.
"What do we do now and your grandmother is adamant?"
"Respect her wishes," I said. She kept her tongue but as the disease devoured it and throat, it became increasingly harder for her to eat or drink or even talk. When I saw her alive the last time, she looked nothing like the most favourite woman that she had been in my life. She managed a crooked smile but even lifting her hand to reach mine was a struggle. I held her calloused palm in mine.
"Be strong," I said to her but my words sounded hollow. How could she be strong in the face of such monumental pain and helplessness? A day before the world marked the World Cancer Day, she passed on.
If, by some miracle, I were to see her in less painful circumstances I would call out her name in Kiuknglish: "Shosh shosh."
And if she could speak she would answer in that singsong that was her voice all the years I have known her: "Yes, Bos gwas!"
And I would say to her: "Nis wes gas... Ngas is as kos ras this mes."
And she would say: "Yes!"

A book worth reading in the new year

By John Wafula

Fast-paced and fascinating, The Man in Green Dungarees is a story of grinding poverty and two young people’s efforts to escape it as they grapple with failure and alcoholism, love, rejection and hypocrisy. But it is also a story about crime and punishment; enterprise and success.

Ng’ang’a Mbugua, the author, weaves the plot around the rise of John Benjamin, also known as Kemau Wajoroge, a bright young man who fails to secure a university place by a single point. Like the entire Imenyi Village community, John Benjamin expects a lot of himself while his father, Kama Wakambo, expects even more of him.

John Benjamin, the book’s hero, is one of the best students at Imenyi High but that was not enough. As the narrator says: “Everyone expected John Benjamin to be the top student.’’ The unreasonably high communal and parental expectations and the simplistic definition of academic success, pile pressure on the young John Benjamin. Worse still Hilda, his opportunistic childhood sweetheart, dumps him after he fails to meet these expectations. He finds solace in traditional brews, often drinking himself into a stupor. Soon, alcohol enslaves him. John Benjamin sinks so low that the narrator, after rescuing him from a ditch, says: “Had he died by the roadside, even dogs would have needed courage to devour him.’’

But John Benjamin’s life takes an about-turn when he rescues a stray dog, Poppy, and builds a kennel for it. From that point on, he immerses his energy and passion in building kennels and marketing them, eventually stashing away a tidy sum of money. In about four years John Benjamin rises from a useless village alcoholic to the owner of a company, Dogs Reloaded, a farm in Thika, and is on his way to becoming a real estate magnate. All these from the humble background of hawking cockroach killer on the city’s streets with his childhood friend, the unnamed narrator whom John Benjamin only calls “Sir”.

The Man in Green Dungarees, which derives its title from the green overalls that John Benjamin buys after selling his first kennel and which become ubiquitous with him and his employees, is unique in many ways.

The informal and friendly conversational style which the narrator - John Benjamin’s childhood friend who is a failed farmer-turned-city hawker - adopts is captivating and infectious.

“Where were we before we were rudely interrupted?” the narrator asks as the storyline opens. The words create an aura of informality and friendship, hooking in the reader. Further, the use of phrases such as: Let me tell you something, my friends; By the way…; Are you listening… create familiarity that keeps the reader turning pages.

Another unique aspect of the book is that it is told by a hawker amid the hassle and bustle of the city’s streets and the hazards that come with the job. Fear of council askaris and police officers who harass them pervades the narrative. One hears the hawkers’ rhyming chants as they market their wares and feels their perpetual hunger, all of these providing a backdrop for the story.

The well-thought out names of places, institutions and people in The Man in Green Dungarees stand out in the reader’s memory long after reading the book. Characters such as Parmenus Marifoti, Sleeping Joram, and Kama Wakambo; institutions such as  Imenyi High and the Church of Jacob’s Ladder, and place names such as River Thabia and Emma’s Inama Boutique are laden with symbolism.

On John Benjamin’s rise from poverty to prosperity lie myriad obstacles. The author demonstrates that commitment to one’s innovative idea (building kennels), honing marketing skills and attracting customers are not enough ingredients for success - one needs support.

John Benjamin’s father introduces him to Sleeping Joram who loans him building materials; tycoon  Permenus  Marifoti buys his first kennels and introduces him to a huge urban market; his girlfriend Emma nominates him for a business incubation course which in turn leads to his TV appearance that exposes him to a huge market; a Thika farmer offers him land and introduces him to bank loans. Lesson? To prosper, an entrepreneur must build and nurture a supportive network.

Finally, the narrator is so inspired by John Benjamin’s rise from a wretched life to prosperity that he vows to return to the village and begin rebuilding his life afresh.

“Do I admire him? A great deal. Do I envy him? Maybe. Do I feel challenged by him? A whole lot,’’ he muses.

Read the book, be challenged, and act.

The book was published in September by Oxford University Press, Kenya. It costs Sh250 a copy.

Final curtain falls on Francis Imbuga

Francis Imbuga, whose play, Betrayal in the City, became one of Kenya's most iconic works of literature died on Sunday night after a stroke, the Daily Nation has reported via twitter.
Imbuga, who died at the age of 65, has had an illustrious writing career, emerging as one the most prolific playwrights in Kenya alongside the late Wahome Mutahi, who died after a botched surgery nine years ago.
As a literature lecturer, Prof Imbuga contributed to debates on culture and shaped a generation of scholars, teachers and writers who studied at Kenyatta University where he taught for many years.
Earlier this month, the Kenya Institute of Education (KIE) reselected Betrayal in the City as a literature set book for secondary schools. This was the third time that the play was being used as a study text for students sitting the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education. Also reselected a second time was The River and the Source, a novel by the late Dr Margaret Ogola.
Betrayal in the City was a popular book during the repressive years of the Moi administration, firing the imagination of young readers who yearned for change in governance. The play's conflict was resolved in a bloodless coup lead by a disgruntled university student, Jasper Wendo, whose brother had been shot dead during an earlier protest by students. The play had high resonance especially because, in the years of the Moi repression, university students were at the forefront of championing democracy, human rights and other freedoms. Some of them would later ascend to positions of political leadership nationally.
On November 9, 2012, in an interview with the Saturday Nation, Prof Imbuga said that he would have preferred to have his newest play, The Return of Mgofu, selected as a set book, arguing that it had more contemporary themes. However, the book published by Longhorn Publishers Kenya Ltd, was not among those submitted to KIE for consideration.
Among his other books are Aminata, Man of Kafira (a sequel to Betrayal in the City), Shrine of Tears and Miracle of Remera among others.
Prof Imbuga's widow, Prof Mabel Imbuga, is vice-chancellor of the Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology.

Writer shares session with Daystar University students

Yesterday, I spent the afternoon in a literary discussion with students from Daystar University's Athi River campus.
It was an enriching experience for me and I enjoyed sharing with the group at the invitation of their two lecturers, Dr Wandia Njoya and Mr Larry Ndivo.
Click here for a report on the discussion.
Thank you very much to the Daystar fraternity for their support and the students for the engaging interaction.

KIE Picks River and The Source as new KCSE set book

Out goes Prof Ngugi wa Thiong'o's The River Between and in comes The River and the Source by Dr Margaret Ogola.
The Kenya Institute of Education has picked the late Ogola's family saga as the new Kenya Certificate for Secondary Education set book to be studied in schools for the next five years.
Also making a comeback to the secondary education curriculum is Prof Francis Imbuga's play, Betrayal in the City, which was a set book in the late 1980s.The play is a story about how a university student, Jasper Wendo, helped topple an African dictator in a bloodless coup following the killing of his brother, Jere.
This is the second time that the institute, which determines the national curriculum has used Dr Ogola's novel and the third that is using Prof Imbuga's play as set books. The first time that the novel was studied was between 1998 and 2001. The book, published by Focus Books in 1994, won the Jomo Kenyatta Prize for Literature in 1995 and the Commonwealth Writers' (Africa Region) Best First Book prize the same year.
The author died of cancer in September, 2011, the same month as the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize Laurette and fellow countrywoman Wangari Maathai.
The school edition of Prof Ngugi's book was published by East African Educational Publishers five years ago. The original novel by the same title was published by Heinemman in 1965 under the African Writers Series pioneered by Nigerian author Chinua Achebe's whose ground-breaking novel, Things Fall Apart, has also been a set book twice in the Kenyan curriculum, the latest being between 1988 and 1991. The school edition was re-edited to make it conform with changing cultural and education realities, including re-writing the sections on female circumcision, also commonly referred to as female genital mutilation.

Dr Ogola's novel is a story of three generations of women from the same family and traces their journeys through life at different stages of Kenya's history and how they confronted the challenges of their time, from lack of education to living with HIV. Dr Ogola was a pediatrician at the Kenyatta National Hospital. 
Also picked by KIE this year is Bertolt Brecht's The Caucasian Chalk Circle to be studied under "Plays from the rest of the world category". The school edition of the book is published by Target Publications. Wikipedia describes the play as "a parable about a peasant girl who rescues a baby and becomes a better mother than its natural parents".
Brecht, who was born in Germany in 1898, wrote play in 1944 while he was living in the US. He died in August 1956.
Target is publishing the play under license from Penguin Books. The publisher's swahili book, Kidagaa Kimemwozea, by Prof Ken Walibora, was also picked in the Kiswahili category. Prof Walibora teaches in the US.
Kidagaa Kimemwozea replaces Utengano (authored by Prof Said Ahmed and published by Longhorn) while Caucasian Chalk Circle replaces EAEP's An Enemy of the People by Henrik Ibsen.
Betrayal in the City, meanwhile, replaces John Ruganda's Shreds of Tenderness, which was published by the Oxford University Press, Kenya.
The new books will be taught and examined alongside Witi Ihimaera's novel, The Whale Rider, which was selected last year. Prof Ngugi's book was to have been replaced at the same time but the decision was deferred until this year.
According to the New Zealand Book Council, Ihimaera, 68, is the first Maori writer to publish short stories and a novel. His book has been described as "a magical, mythical work about a young girl whose relationship with a whale ensures the salvation of her village.