Kwani Litfest Featured on Africa Journal

This year’s litfest is certainly not about to fade into our distant memories. Reuters have just released a feature for the Africa Journal entitled, “Is anyone reading in Kenya” which takes its story from this year’s Kwani Litfest.

Click on image above to watch the full documentary.

Rasna Warah comments on Ishmael Beah

“As part of the Kwani Listfest, the writers engaged with a cross-section of Kenyan society, from diplomats to students, about a subject that is still fresh in the minds of most Kenyans – the causes and consequences of the mayhem witnessed during the first two months of this year.”

Click HERE to read full story

Sunday Nation, August 10th

Ishmael Beah talks to Kwani

Ishmael Beah talks to Kwani about life and literature. Please click the arrow above to listen to the podcast. Alternatively you can download it to listen to on your computer or mp3 player.

Ideas, Words, Markets…

Click HERE for lots more pictures…

Photos by Kirstie Wielandt and Aurelie Journo (two of the coolest volunteers you can come across!)

A Braver New World for children

By Aurelie Journo

Bravely conquering the cold and damp Nairobi weather, and making their way to the lush green gardens of the Lower Kabete Junior Academy, over 40 school children, joined by their parents, teachers, writers and volunteers, spent a colourful and inspiring afternoon combining work and play.

The kiswahili translation of ‘The Unlikely Burden‘, sponsored by the World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA) was launched by award winning author Stanley Gazemba, reading the title story of the book written by him. The launch was an opportunity for children, parents and teachers alike to remember the importance of animal welfare in their daily lives.

This was followed by the launch of author John Sibi Okumu’s latest book ‘Tom Mboya, Master of Mass Management‘ (A Sasa Sema/Longhorn Publication). After reading a short passage from the book, John talked poignantly about the importance of documenting Kenyan political history. Generations met and exchanged ideas, as Mr Wamalwa, a protagonist in the book and permanent secretary to Tom Mboya, shared with the audience his early days by his side.

But the day would not have been complete if books were the only focus. One look around the garden, with the colourful faces, adorned with flowers, butterflies or animals, one look at the joyful gait of children stepping out of the bouncy castle and heading for the swings, were the perfect illustration of the proverbial saying “all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy”. No dull boys or girls at the children’s day indeed.

Storytelling has various facets that should not be limited to their written form. Simiyu Barasa led the audience into the world of animated stories. From words highlighted in the Kenyan school curriculum, he created a story that was then turned into an animation film, proving that stories don’t only entertain but also teach. Mediae presented the workings of the transformation of a text into a storyboard and then an animation picture, conjuring images from words, and movement from images. The animation, The hyena and the ostrich, was then shown, as a première, the children being the first viewers of a cartoon that will be featured in the TV show ‘The Know Zone’, and the film itself being the first cartoon written, drawn and created in Kenya.

The exciting day ended on a thought provocating workshop by Storymoja, around the story of ‘In the land of the kitchen’. The adults were asked to sit back and observe while the discussion went on between the children. After a lively and highly entertaining storyteller told the story of antagonism and destruction in the kitchen community, the children were led to reflect on the meaning of key terms such as community, stereotypes, conflict, and eventually peace. In the light of the post election turmoil, the workshop showed that stories are not only an end in themselves but also the beginning of other stories that seek to question the ideas and terms we take for granted.

The day was long and full, but as they walked towards the school buses that were to take them home, the children were certainly not only tired, but also inspired to become, who knows, the future great storytellers of Kenya.

Revisioning Kenya

Revisioning Kenya, the highlight of Kwani Litfest 2008 hosted by RaMoMA gallery on Friday afternoon, was a climax of highs and lows. We arrived to find organizers Dipesh Pabari and Shalini Gidoomal scuttling around with a hunted look in their eyes, as though this were January 2008 all over again and we were in Kibera, not Parklands. But they sorted out the electrical snafus that threatened to nix the whole show at the last minute, and about seventy of us crammed into the presenting room to listen to fifteen ‘visionaries’ from every field of endeavor talk about the future. (The idea came from Bill Gates, who a while back invited the most innovative thinkers on earth to Arusha to give him an eight-minute presentation about their next big idea.)

Unlike the previous day’s event at the University of Nairobi, almost nobody stuck to their time limit. Sometimes we didn’t notice, like with Judy Kibinge’s movie Coming of Age, which took us on a moody romp through post-independence Kenya – starting with the early Kenyatta days, “when a carjack was a thing you used to change a tire”; through post-coup Moi, when Kenyans learned what it was like to live under a dictatorship: “at night, people drew the curtains shut and whispered rumors about rumors in the dark”; following the euphoric “second liberation” of Kibaki’s election in 2002, and finishing with his stolen victory last year, when “Kenya began to burn, and we wondered, what is democracy? Do we even want it anymore?”

Same kind of roller coaster that characterized our little event. I hate to hate, but in the spirit of constructive criticism I can’t help wondering why Alfred Omenya, who actually is a visionary architect, felt it necessary to talk about himself for eight minutes before getting round to the subject at hand. By then, moderator Wambui Mwangi had no choice but to yank the mic on him. And John Kiarie, the former Redyculass comedian who these days is trying to prove Beth Mugo rigged him out of victory in the race for Dagoretti’s parliamentary seat – great speech, John, we laughed and cried, but where were the new ideas?

Rob Barnett, Kwani?’s first sponsor back in the day (thanks Rob) gave an interesting talk about Diffusion Theory, basically, how do bright ideas take root in society and become widespread? I’m all for spreading the love, but can’t help wondering about the NGO-esque philosophy underpinning the concept: ‘we know what’s good for you, now LISTEN.’

But that’s what Revisioning Kenya was all about after all – if more of us listened to the good ideas stored in the minds inside that room, maybe Kenya and the world would be a better place. For instance why is it, as former Olympian Ole Munyai asked us, that Kenya’s pyrethrum farmers are only earning $16 million in a world market that is making $600 million off their harvest? Why don’t we set up a distribution company in the US, where most of the global trading takes place, and channel Kenyan pyrethrum through that? As Ole said, “we could pay our farmers five times what they currently earn and still make a profit.”

Now that’s what we came to hear. More good stuff came from Kevit Desai, who talked about the potential for ICT to improve just about everything, and Dr. Moses Musaazi, who broke down the alternative technologies we have at our fingertips (ranging from solar water heaters, which everyone’s heard of, to papyrus sanitary pads, which I bet you haven’t). Tony Mochama represented the poetic outlook, and though I’m not sure exactly what it was he said, I know it wasn’t bad.

The best came last. Ishmael Beah, the child soldier from Sierra Leone, stirred us up with some of the lessons learned by his country’s civil war. He finished by describing a village tree where he and his fellow soldiers used to kill prisoners. Back then, its bark had been hacked up by overzealous machetes and blackened by the blood of so many victims; but when Beah recently revisited the spot, he found “the tree had healed completely and now bloomed a bright, clean green.”

Tough act to follow, but Ambassador Bethuel Kiplagat did so tremendously. Looking like a 70-year-old version of Ishmael Beah, Kiplagat is the kind of fellow whose dignity fills the whole room. So does his deep bass of a voice. He described for us the battles he’s fought not just for Kenya, but all of Africa over the course of his illustrious career. “I realized one day that all these problems this continent suffers are not just political, they are my own personal problems,” he said, leading up to an admonishment against reliance on foreign aid. “Don’t ever let anyone take your problems away from you, because then you will not devote every last minute and mobilize every resource you have to solving it.”

In 1984, Kiplagat became Kenya’s Permanent Secretary to the department of Foreign Affairs. “I looked around the region and the continent, and I decided then that I would do what I could to bring peace to our neighbors.” There’s a long ways yet to go, but as Kiplagat pointed out, some signs of hope have bloomed amidst the rubble. Take, for instance, the fact that only two African nations are left in the hands of a military regime, quite an improvement from the time Kiplagat entered Foreign Affairs. “That was 1984,” he said, and although he’s held various positions in government since, he’s still working at the same goal of peace. Twenty four long years, good people, “and do you think I’m going to give up?”

Conflict, or, All a Writer Needs

By Arno Kopecky,
Kwani Editor

Incredibly, no one went over their five minutes. Going by the event’s title – “Writer’s Stories: Unpacking Kenya’s Crisis Session” – not to mention the venue, a Nairobi University lecture hall, all signs were pointing to a listener’s crisis of over-pontification.

Instead, we started out with a sneak preview of Wanuri Kahiu’s new film, From A Whisper, marking the tenth anniversary of the American Embassy bombing with possibly the best film about it to date – I say possibly because it wasn’t long before her characters all started speaking Swahili and I had to start inventing the plot. The preview was followed, appropriately, with a moment of silence, and then, melodramatically, with the national anthem. “Remind me to tell you what Oscar Wilde said about patriotism,” whispered Kwani? editor Billy Kahora before we’d even sat back down.

Oxfam director Irungu Houghton took over from there, MCing the mostly-full auditorium through a rapid succession of five-minute readings by all kinds of fiendish writers. The good professor, Wambui Mwangi, started out by reading the poetic hate letter Shailja Patel wrote to ECK chairman Samuel Kivuitu a few months back. Moving, yes – but it’s too bad the letter Kivuitu published in response never made it into the auditorium.

Binyavanga Wainaina came up next, introduced as the man who’s “collected over 1300 African recipes.” (“Bullshit,” coughed Kahora in the seat next to me.) True to form, Wainaina told a whimsical tale of the evolution of his name’s pronunciation over the thirty-some year’s he’s been hearing it, a subject he somehow related to the topic at hand.

Playwright Simiyu Barasa followed that up with the obituary he wrote himself in January – you know, just in case. It was that kind of month. The letter found its way into the New York Times and marked Simiyu’s descent from unchecked optimism to miserly cynicism as far as his beloved Kenya was concerned. Apparently he’s swung back to the middle, having “learned that too much love can make you a fundamentalist.”

Betty Murungi – yep, ODM stalwart James Orengo’s wife – then took us through an excerpt from the Diary of a Mad Kenyan Women, aka Wambui Mwangi’s blogsite, which as early as January 2nd presumed to say of the post-election madness: “we caused this, let’s fix it.” We’re trying, you madwoman, we’re trying.

I lied earlier, by the way. Irungu fielded some questions from the audience at this point, provoking an unsolicited poem which breached the five-minute mark.

Was that what Kalundi Serumaga had in mind when he took the stage next and said “When I get to disturbed, I like to share the feeling”? Hard to say. The razor-witted Ugandan leaves very few crimes unexposed, starting with the writers beside him: “When you say the violence started in January,” he wondered, “what exactly do you mean? Kenya has been violent to the core since independence…the role of the writer is to talk about these things in good time.” That is, before they happen, you assholes.

But where would we be if we actually learned to prevent them? Nairobi U professor Okoth Okwombo came on to point out the “paradoxical relationship between writers and conflict,” as in, how many great novels have you read about peace? (And yet, I wondered, how can it be that my own polite, well-ordered country has produced writers like Margaret Atwood, Michael Ondaatje, and Alice Munro?)

The Okwombo Paradox was a good segue to Ishmael Beah, child soldier extraordinaire and the afternoon’s final contestant. Beah’s memoir A Long Way Gone tells the story of his recruitment to Sierra Leone’s civil war at the age of 13; it’s sold a million hardcover copies in a year, making it the best selling African book ever. I wonder – would it have sold as many copies if Beah still looked like a drugged-out badass instead of a Benetton model? Either way, it’s an ironic shame A Long Way Gone remains unavailable in Africa, as Ishmael ruefully pointed out to me later. “Conflict is a part of human nature, it’s inevitable,” Beah surmised on stage. “What we can do as writers is minimize it.”

Question-and-answers from there on in. You shoulda been there. Suffice to say we reached a few tentative conclusions, chief among them the fact that writers have a tendency to take themselves and their so-called role too seriously. Or do we? Why then, as Binyavanga pointed out, does a government like Zimbabwe’s, which can’t even fill a pothole on Mugabe Boulevard, still find the time to bomb its independent newspapers?

Whatever the case, next time you feel like throwing a Molotov into the Kenyan Parliament’s nonstop cocktail party, keep Beah’s closing quote in mind (penned by the incontestable Maya Angelou): “We must be angry, but we must never be bitter.”

Ideas, Words and Markets!

Writers, writing, write,
Readers, read, reading
Hmmmm…

Bags, kangas, books
tshirts, booklets
Aaaaa….

Contact litfest (at) kwani (dot) org for a bit of this and a bit of that…

A Moment of Silence

Yetanatha by Arno Kopecky (may you be blessed with endless waves through your travels)…

A moment of silence, please, for Alexander Solzhenitsyn, dead on Saturday, August 2 at 89 years of age – several decades more than the Russian lit-giant must have expected in his firing-squad-facing, gulag-archipelagoing youth. It was Philo Ikonya who reminded me; last seen heckling the readers at Sunday Salon, Ikonya was on the Open Mic stage at Club Sound by the time I walked in on Tuesday night, telling the audience about all the times she’d met the late Mr. S – first in a Nairobi slum, then again on Robbin Island, and yet again…

Maybe one day we’ll be telling kids about the people we met at Litfest. It was a special session of Kwani’s monthly Open Mic poetry night, maybe because this time the mic was only half open. Elitist, I know. But praise Allah for vets like Ikonya, David Ofiano, Nuru Bahati, and Imani Woomera, the Hawaiian Kenyan (how many of those do you know?) who cameo’d briefly on Ikonya’s heels with a trademark oceanic rhapsody that almost got me sprinting for Lamu.

Next up was the night’s main feature, Neema Mawiyoo, whose middle names I don’t have time to type. Neema’s one of the risin’est stars in Nairobi’s poetry circles. She started out with a series on memory, “something that’s been obsessing me lately,” which must mean she’s finally old enough to find it unreliable. I don’t know if the ‘goat meat’ song and chant she broke into halfway through her performance was related to childhood recollections, or if she’d switched themes by then, because at that exact moment I was accosted by the foulest-breathed man in east Africa; it smelt as though the man had eaten half a goat two weeks ago and left a quarter pound rotting in his teeth. I gagged my way through the introduction, exhaled in relief when he moved on, and spent the rest of Neema’s performance hyperventilating.

The mic opened up to the public after that, with predictable results: sooner or later, someone always starts to rhyme. I did enjoy the dramatic element of revenge that crept into the less inspired performances, though, however unintentional. All that romance, alliteration and rhyming caused an entire line of heads seated at the bar to look over their shoulders for the first time all night – having spent the night interrupting the poetry with loud drinking, their situation was finally reversed.

A distressing mass exodus followed the final intonations, with Binyavanga Wainaina, Wambui Mwangi, Angela Wachuka et al leading the charge to quieter environs. Left to wallow in the poetic aftershocks were myself, Tony Mochama and his girl Sharon, an enthusiastic Advanced Fiction workshopper named Betty-from-Meru (not sure about her writing, but she knew how to dance), and one Scisa Rumenge, a young filmmaker from Kakuma refugee camp. Rumenge was here on a special Litfest scholarship, having attracted the attention of Litfest co-organizer Dipesh Pabari through a number of award-winning films at last year’s Kenya International Film Festival.

“Every second here is like a year’s worth of learning for me,” Scisa told me, jolting me back to the greater realities that the Litfest was meant to address. “I’ve been living in that refugee camp for seven years now, ever since I escaped genocide in northeastern Congo.”
Not everyone, it suddenly occurred to me, ought to die before earning a moment of silence.

Click HERE to view more photos from Mentalacrobatics

Litfest Launch - ed!

By Arno Kopecky (the surfer dude!)

Kwani Litfest is on, people. We turned the switch Friday night at Acapulco (the one in Nairobi, not the Mexico) with the help of Just A Band, who are not just a band but practically a football team of dj’s, instrumentalists, and Eryka Badu-esque sirens. A steady drizzle throughout the day didn’t stop the crowd from filling the garden to capacity, and then some – by nine o’clock people had to park further away than their apartments.
Acapulco is an unbeatable spot for a party, unless you happen to be the one trying to finish your dinner date in peace. You feel like you’re at your wealthy god-father’s estate, wandering through the thick arches separating the various dining rooms, admiring the surf photos on the walls and the wine collection stocked above the bar at the entrance, then skipping the line (horrendous) and getting your drink at the bar set up outside instead – sadly, they neglected to stock it with tequila, one of the evening’s only disappointments.
You could find Mr. Cuervo inside if you had the patience, which may have explained the lingering presence there of writers like Andia Kisia and Jackie Lebo; it certainly explained mine. Other familiar faces were prowling around too: Judy Kibinge, the multi-talented filmmaker; Wambui Mwangi, the most literary academic in town and a person who usually likes to throw these kinds of events in her own garden down the street; Muthoni Garland, nominated Caine Prizee (‘nuff said), Doreen Baingana, the Ugandan writer fresh in from Kampala, and Martin Kimani, the Kenyan journalist you are least likely to actually see in Kenya – to name a few. Notably absent were Chimamanda Adichie and Ishmael Beah, whose globe-trotting schedules won’t deposit them here till later in the week, and our very own Binyavanga Wainaina, whose recent trip to the Ghana Litfest resulted in blink and you miss it appearance early on. A spell of malaria that dampened his usually festive mood and ebullience. (But not for long, he assures us – he might even be up for his reading tonight at Sunday Salon.)
The band went strong until, well, who was checking the time anymore? Whenever it was, their stopping didn’t slow us down much; that was the moment Tony ‘Smitta’ Mochama entered the fray, and things got truly vodka-riffic from there on in. The dj’s inside cranked it up a notch or two to get the dance floor moving, the ladies took over the men’s washroom outside (‘you can use the bushes, boys’) and the writers took over the garden bar. For the next several hours (or was that days?) we left no drink unturned.
‘Funny,’ said miss Lebo at one point during the night, ‘we used to throw Litfest parties and you’d know every single person. Tonight I don’t recognize half the people here.’
Sounded good to us – a sure sign that this year’s Litfest has already outpaced the previous years. Friday night proved that more is indeed merrier; here’s to more of the same in the two weeks to come.

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