Kwani? 05 Part 2: ‘Revelations & Conversations’, An Anthology

Kwani 5 Part 2 ‘Revelation and Conversation : Part 2 of Kwani? 5, the second 400 pages of a twin edition, further examines Kenya in the context and violent aftermath of its 2007 elections. Here, writers, photographers, poets, cartoonists provide further collective narratives on what we were before, and what we became, during the epochal first 100 days of 2008. The issue also features a extended travel piece based in Uganda that comparatively explores the concept of ethnicity, and the history of a peoples in a space other than our own.

Kwani? 05 Part 2 Editorial

The Fire Next Time

OR

A Half-Made Place: Between Tetra Paks and Plastic Bags

In Kenya, democracy is the growth in popularity of bad manners. Anonymous

About six months ago, I wrote an editorial to appear in the twin issues of Kwani 05, Part 1 and 2 (this issue). However, that editorial only ran in Part 1; I yanked it from this issue- Part 2, because what I had to say back then today feels jaded, naïve and foolish as is any attempt to capture public life in this country beyond the span of a few weeks. The certainties, ideas and chest-thumping of August 2008 are dust motes and vapours. I wake up to the Kenyan morning and look around, and the new day seems to forgive the recent past, mostly because the public life is one of amnesiac collusion, a physical fact without regret or hope. So I start again.

The two parts of Kwani? 05 are dedicated to our ‘troubles’. And it is exactly 11 months since the two principals of these ‘troubles’, PNU and ODM, signed a peace accord through President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga and ‘decided to work together’. Read the full editorial.

Kwani? 05, Part 1

Excerpts From Kwani? 05, Part 1
Truth does not set you free. Instead, truth sets loose. It risks what we hold dear. And there are no assurances.
Daring truth entails risking all we might want to preserve. It means daring to break with family and friends. It means disturbing the fragile peace we inhabit by having difficult conversations. It means telling our mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, lovers, and friends that their political choices are unpalatable-Excerpt from ‘Daring Truth’ by Jeremeiah Okongo.

I saw someone being killed in town at the matatu station called Kalenjin airport because the matatus there carry people heading into the North Rift. The IDPs who had been evicted from Eldoret were very bitter and were going around looking for Kalenjins to avenge their losses. They came to Kalenjin airport because they knew that’s where most of them board matatus to go home. Unfortunately, one man was caught by the group. They beat him up and stabbed him to death. I was not noticed because I look like a Kikuyu.- Kevin Koros, a 20-year-old actor from Lakeview, near Nakuru.

When my uncle saw some people approaching his home, he called the chief again who didn’t answer the call. When the Kalenjin youths reached my grandparents’ compound they said they were looking for my uncle to kill him. When they spotted him running away they tried to shoot him with arrows, but luckily none hit him. My uncle and grandparents moved to Nyahururu to start a new life. – Gladys Maina, currently living in Kikuyu, Central Province.

We spend most of our lives listening to every word of those politicians. That’s why we are suffering, especially the middle class and poor people. The rich from Westlands, Lavington, Runda are very safe. -Alvando Msamani, electronics salesman,Dandora.

I was born in Baringo. I’m a Kikuyu, but I learnt Kalenjin before my mother tongue. Most of my friends are Kalenjin. But today I don’t want to see any one of them. I really hate myself for saying that.

I cannot go back to Central Province. The language they speak there is totally different from the Kikuyu I speak here. When I speak my Kikuyu there, they start laughing at me. And when I go to Baringo, where I grew up, they look at me as a foreigner. If I don’t belong in the Rift Valley, where else can I fit? I am married to a Luhya! – Jesse Njoroge, Nakuru Read more

Kwani? 04

Following the great tradition set by its three predecessors, Kwani? 04 presents a wail of new voices in literary concert with the not so new. The now established talents – Binyavanga Wainaina, Muthoni Garland, Doreen Baingana- share these pages with the fast risers: Billy Kahora, Mukoma wa Ngugi and Shalini Gidoomal. Read more

Kwani? 03

The recently published kwani? 03 has been described by critics and kwani? lovers alike as the best of the series and an indicator of how Kenya’s most popular journal has grown. In all aspects – editing, design, layout and breadth of material, kwani? 03 introduces a new chapter to the creative writing scene. Themed on the seventies, the cover uses the visual arts to make the written word as interesting and interactive as possible. Established writers M. G. Vassanji and Zimbabwe’s Charles Mungoshi grace its pages, among several other new writers published, for the first time, in kwani? 03. Creative non-fiction with social commentary also appears in the new issue, marking a new phase for kwani?.

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