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?