At just 18, Malala sure is inspiring

What do you do with the rest of your life if you’ve already won the Nobel Peace Prize at the age of just 17?

In early August, I went to London for a top-secret mission: an interview with the 18-year-old Nobel Laureate and girls’ education advocate, Malala Yousafzai.

The studio Fox Searchlight Pictures slapped an embargo on me until October 2. I couldn’t publicly talk about having interviewed her, my general impressions about meeting her, or even post a picture with her. The date was significant because that’s when the documentary on her life, He Named Me Malala, by Academy award-winning director Davis Guggenheim was released in the US.

On my first day in the English capital, I picked up her book, I Am Malala, co-written by  noted British journalist Christina Lamb, at a Waterstones outlet.

She starts her book by painting a picture of how beautiful it is in the Swat Valley in the little Pakistani town of Mingora where she grew up. She introduces the Taliban, their origins and how they came to hate education for girls, insisting on a misrepresented version of Islam.

“This is a family that is standing up for education and believes that every child should get a quality education,” is the first thing Malala told me. She had just finished her General Certificate of Secondary Education (GSCE) exams and had just started on publicity work for the film.

I asked what she felt about the world getting an intimate look into her new life in England, her “two cheeky little brothers”, and her family as a whole.

“It is important to share our story with people, and I am hopeful that it will inspire people,” she said.

KENYAN VISIT

The documentary was originally meant to be a film, but Guggenheim decided to use the format because he felt the story was too powerful to dramatise. “The truth is, my motivation was to tell a story for my own daughters. I have two young daughters and I would love them to feel the sense of power and urgency that Malala feels as a girl.”

We chatted about why he was interested in the story to start with, and whether Western audiences would relate to it. “This is a story about a girl, an inspirational father who helped encourage his daughter to be brave. That is what I think will be universal,” he replied.

Malala speaks purposefully but with measured sentences, as if weighing every single one. She described Kenya as “a wonderful country” when she recalled going on safari in the Maasai Mara where she saw a lion for the first time. She visited in June 2014 and spent some time with students at Oleleshwa Girls’ Secondary School in Narok.

“It’s really sad to meet those girls who cannot continue their education and usually drop out of school in Standard Seven or Eight when they can no longer afford to go to school and they have to get married.” She has obviously had lots of media training but her passion for educating girls, especially in underprivileged communities, still overflows through it.

Mercifully, she has the moral authority to proselytize about educating girls because she aced her GCSEs. A fortnight after our interview, her father, Ziauddin Yousafzai, tweeted her results, with included 6 A+s in chemistry, physics, biology and two  different maths courses. She got As in the other four subjects, namely history, geography, English Language and English Literature.

In fact, so committed is she to school that when she won the Nobel Prize last year, she was in class. When a teacher called her, she initially thought she was in trouble. In the documentary, she talks about how she used to be the cleverest in her class back in Pakistan, but that changed in the UK.

STILL DREAMING

“I have always wanted to get good grades even before this happened, to be a top student,” she said when I asked her to explain. “In Pakistan, it’s rote memorisation and how good your handwriting is, how long the answer is. In the UK, it’s more about understanding the topic, analysing and using your brain.” No wonder her handwriting was so good, as I told her when she signed my book, much to her amusement.

I was genuinely starstruck by Malala and all she has achieved. As I had waited to speak to her, I told her father how well she had done, using her global influence for an important crusade and he smiled with evident pride. Instead of using her fame for a victory lap, she’s still deliberate with which speaking engagements to honour, which meetings to skip if they’re just photo ops, and which causes to add her voice to.

She hopes to study philosophy, politics and economics at Oxford. She didn’t say what she would do after that because, at just 18, she’s already accomplished  more than most people ever will. And yet she never stops dreaming.

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Must President intervene for athletes to be paid?

PRESIDENT KENYATTA WANTS Kenya’s history-making athletes to return to State House this Thursday to report if they have been paid. If you closed your eyes, you might think that Daniel arap Moi was still running the show. You know, in the old days when nothing got done unless the president personally ordered it. They are owed more than Sh60m for between 2013 and 2015, but the officials have never bothered to pay them their allowances. “As a government, we have your debt,” he said in Swahili. “Let’s agree that next week  the team captains (for the World Athletics Championships in Beijing and World Youth Athletics in Cali) and team leaders be here on Thursday and tell me if you have been paid.” He repeated the Thursday date at least three times, seeking affirmation from the gathered athletes, including Ezekiel Kemboi and David Rudisha. “Come here as witnesses because they can lie to me,” he added, to laughter. What shameless athletics officials are these that are hanging on to the well-deserved allowances of our national icons and why are they still in office? These are the same people who fly themselves Business Class to global competitions and draw ridiculous allowances but can’t pay their employers!

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Crossing fingers for Trevor Noah

AFRICA’S FUNNIEST EXPORT, Trevor Noah, started his new gig as the host of The Daily Show on Comedy Central last Monday. “Once again, a job that Americans refused is being done by an immigrant,” he joked in his opening monologue, referring to the fact that the network first offered the job to several established comics, who all turned it down. The reviews all agreed that he wasn’t a total disaster (thank God!) but he wasn’t great either. In fact, his first segment with serious viral potential came later in the week, when he compared Donald Trump to stereotypical African presidents like Idi Amin Dada. I groaned because he was supposed to bring a “global perspective” but instead he went for the typical Africa-bashing that ignorant Americans will approve of. Granted, the show is mostly watched by white liberals, but I’m still hoping that the South African comedian comes into his own and creates a cultural phenomenon just his like his predecessor, Jon Stewart did.

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Feedback: on Internet hyenas who think they have a right to judge other people

Larry, your article on the death of Nana Gichuru was right on target. Internet trolls feed on the self-indulgent nature of social media. The users can be divided into two groups: the first comprises those who ceaselessly share their lives and feed the second group, which cannot let the opportunity to spread their ideals and opinions pass. These groups are interdependent.

Sadly, with the Internet age, we are bringing up a generation with a society-imposed, complex need for validation. Most young people these days share more than they should on a largely uninspected, uncensored Web. That is why perhaps the Internet went into a frenzy following Nana’s death.

Driven by a familiarity and kinship with her, most felt they had a right to judge her.

Even in death, the Web monster did not spare her. Sadly, grim pictures that partly exposed her nudity were shared online. An Internet cautionary tale indeed.

June Muchuku

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Your article was spot on. Only idlers have time to judge others, especially those they know nothing about. You are a victim. One day I was sitting with a friend who wanted to switch off his TV every time you appeared to present the news, never mind that he had never met you. 

I forced him to listen to you on JK Live. His perception changed and now he will die to read or listen to anything from you, so let us learn not to judge on others.

Keep up the good work!

Robinson O. Mirieri

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Your article on Internet hyenas and Nana’s death call for a prompt response.

Try telling that gibberish of a rant to the husband or the kids of the deceased as consolation. Or her parents, sister or brother and you will know it amounts to justifying her death. Maybe you will argue that her appointed time had come, but that’s no excuse to be careless. There is a very thin line between living on the edge and being fatally stupid, to the extent of prompting one’s death.

I didn’t know this young woman but from her posts, it is very clear she derived a kick from pushing the limit and carelessly living on the edge. Her way of life largely contributed to what befell her. You are what you say. I feel for the kids, if she had any, and the widower. Kariuki GK

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Larry, you are no different from the people you are criticising since you have assumed an exalted, know-it-all position and condescendingly judge people you don’t know concerning their motives for commenting about someone you all never knew or met.

If you had written about the photos of the accident being widely circulated, that would have been fine as that was a tad insensitive.

You, however, appear to want everyone to speak well of her simply because she is dead? I don’t necessarily support their comments as I never knew or met her.

All I can say is that it appears that she drove recklessly on that day and one can only be thankful that the only life lost was hers, and not that of some innocent driver, passenger or pedestrian. At the very least, you should have condemned reckless driving as it has the potential to needlessly kill, maim or injure innocent people.

The sum of the comments (which I haven’t read) maybe is that she died needlessly, but you seem to support/encourage such? It is not like she died on some heroic duty or cause. You appear to want more youngsters to go down a similar route? Aspirational early death? How does her death make her  family and friends feel? Do you know or care?

As for the aspects of her life in the public domain, there will never be common ground as people are very different and have different motives, you included. You also need to learn to let them be.

Francis