Conflict (or, All A Writer Needs) - by Arno Kopecky

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 began speaking Swahili and I had to start inventing the plot. Read more

Kwani Litfest Gears Up (and editorial gears down)…

Litfest 2008 is in full swing now, with the workshops beginning today and two weeks of fabulous events and international company to look forward to.
At the same time, we’ve just put the finishing touches on Kwani? 5, a special twin edition focusing on the post-election trauma and due back any day from the printers (we’ll keep you posted on the launch party).
Once we’ve wrapped up the Litfest and made Kwani? 5 available, our editorial team will be leaving the offices to scour the continent in search of fresh inspiration - and possibly more than four hours of sleep a night - for most of September and October. A skeleton crew will stay on to handle essential operations, but for those of you with editorial inquiries or requests, please hold off until November, when we’ll be back with a vengeance.
Thanks for understanding. A million thanks to all the people who made both the Litfest and Kwani? 5 possible… time now to go enjoy them.
Sincerely,
the Kwani? team.

Sunday Salon: Enter at Risk, by Arno Kopecky

Heads up – the Ugandans are here. Two swept in from Kampala to dominate last night’s Sunday Salon: Kalundi Serumaga, a verbal assassin of a journalist, and David Kaiza, who recently traded in journalism for, shall we say, ethnotravelogue-ism.

Serumaga preempted his reading – a slow-roasting of the Kenyan intelligencia for the worst of all academic crimes, naivety – with an apology for meddling in Kenyan politics as an outsider. “Then again,” he informed the audience, “you are not Kenyans either. Kenya wasn’t built for black people, after all, and if you find yourself here it is either as a visitor or a servant.” And later, only half in jest, “genocide is only a problem when it isn’t carried out successfully. If you wipe a people out entirely, there is no one left to seek justice. The problem we have in Africa is that the colonialists never finished the job.”

I spent the rest of the evening hiding under a table. That was where Kaiza’s narrative found me and pinned me to the floor, this time in wonder instead of self-reproach. In April, Kaiza had been commissioned by Kwani? to trace the origins of the Luo – his people – following the post-election violence in which they figured so prominently; we joined him, transfixed, on a journey down the Nile, through the founding kingdoms of Uganda, and into the various tribedoms of Kenya, where ethnicity is no longer quite the unambiguous source of pride it once was. Or was it?

“What has tribe ever done for women?” demanded Philo Ikonya, the poet, almost-politician, and spokesperson for the kingdom of Woman, during the Q & A afterwards. I raised my head above the tabletops to listen better. “Why should I take pride in a community that expects me to stay in the kitchen?”

Bantu Mwaura, dreadlocked theatre artist and another of the night’s presenters, sprang to the defense of his black Nilot brothers. “Patriarchy was introduced by the white man,” he announced. “Until they came we were all very matriarchal.”

I sank back out of sight and let Rasna Warah take over with an explanation of the origins, not of her people, but her newly published anthology, Missionaries, Mercenaries and Misfits. Warah, a columnist for the Daily Nation and 17-year veteran of the development world, described how she realized, about five years ago, that aid work in Africa was: 1) part do-good morality play (‘missionaries’), 2) part cold-blooded capitalism (‘mercenaries’); and 3) completely out of touch with reality (misfit). Good for nothing, in other words, except the consciences and bank accounts of its architects.

“Damn,” whispered the German lady hiding under the table next to me, “it took her twelve years to figure that out?”

A fitting irony to close the night on – this denigration of NGOs, the United Nations, and all western-origin development projects, at an event sponsored by those very institutions. But last night’s Salon was only the beginning; plenty of time and opportunity in the Litfest ahead for the sparring to continue, and the one thing we can count on is that it will.

Arno Kopecky is an editor at Kwani?

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