Revisioning Kenya - not your problem? by Arno Kopecky

August 10, 2008

“Revisioning Kenya,” hosted by RaMoMA gallery on a sunny Friday afternoon and billed as the highlight of Kwani Litfest 2008 (with stiff competition from the cocktail party at US Ambassador Michael Ranneberger’s house), 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?”

Arno Kopecky is a Kwani? editor.

Written by Kwani · Filed Under Kwani Events, Readings

Sunday Salon: Enter at Risk, by Arno Kopecky

August 4, 2008

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?

Written by Kwani · Filed Under Kwani Events, Sunday Salon

Sunday Salon - August 3 (Special Litfest Session)

July 29, 2008

Sunday Salon, Nairobi
A Prose Reading Series
NEW YORK - NAIROBI - CHICAGO
http://www.sundaysalon.com

David Kaiza
Stanley Gazemba
Bantu Mwaura
Kalundi Serumaga

Four readers, four unique voices, in a tranquil outdoor setting

An evening of entertainment for discerning lovers of the written word.

7-9pm, Sunday 3rd August
Kengeles, Lavington Green
Entry Only KSh300
Free entry before 6.30pm
Free entry for all Sunday Salon Alumni

ABOUT THE WRITERS

David Kaiza
David Kaiza is a Ugandan writer based in Kampala. After working as a journalist for several years with the Daily Monitor, he took a two year hiatus from writing and became a metal worker. He recently returned to the pen with a travelogue about Luo origins, featured in the forthcoming Kwani 05.

Stanley Gazemba
Trained as a journalist, Gazemba lives in Kangemi, Nairobi and writes for Sunday Nation and Msanii Magazine. He is the author of The Stone Hills of Maragoli, which won the 2003 Jomo Kenyatta Prize for Literature, as well as 5 children’s books. He will be reading from his latest book, Grandmother’s Winning Smile.

Bantu Mwaura
Bantu Mwaura is an award winning performing artist from Kenya, a director, a playwright, a poet and a storyteller. His poetry has been published in several collections and anthologies, and his plays have been performed in Kenya , Zimbabwe, the USA and the UK. His work is featured in Missionaries, Mercenaries and Misfits, a new anthology about the relationship between Africa and international aid networks.

Kalundi Serumaga
Kalundi Serumaga is a Ugandan journalist who spent much of his childhood in Kenya. He lives in Kampala, where he works as a media columnist and radio talk show host.
His work has been published in After the Vote and Missionaries, Mercenaries and Misfits, as well as the forthcoming Kwani 05 .

Written by Kwani · Filed Under Kwani Events, Sunday Salon