I’ve lost my literary sister, Kenya has lost a literary icon

What you need to know:

  • Speaking in a calm clear voice in support of the opposition, she, dressed in a nurse’s uniform, said that people harvested what they planted. If you want war, prepare for war. If you want peace prepare for peace.

  • Her Christian name, Grace, fitted her personality perfectly. With her mellifluous voice, she was always polite but bold and daring, knocking at literary doors that others may have feared to touch.

  • But when in 2003, I returned to Kenya for the launch of the my Gikuyu language novel, Murogi wa Kagogo, Grace Ogot was there at the Hilton. She really made a big impression on my two children, Mumbi and Thiong’o Kimathi.

We first met in 1957 as rivals in a debate between Maseno and Alliance. The two schools had a bond in Carey Francis, who had been headmaster of both schools at different times. Maseno hosted us.

I led the Alliance team in support of the motion: If you want peace prepare for war. My side was winning, until one single intervention from the audience. It was a female voice from the back of the hall.

Speaking in a calm clear voice in support of the opposition, she, dressed in a nurse’s uniform, said that people harvested what they planted. If you want war, prepare for war. If you want peace prepare for peace.

No amount of rebuttal on our part could dent the impression she had made with her commanding presence, voice and words.

I have written about this episode in my memoir, In the House of the Interpreter, where I describe her as the peacemaker.

Who was the lady, in a nurse’s white uniform of Maseno Hospital, and who had sealed our fate?

Her name was Grace Akinyi, who I would learn later, was fianced to Allan Ogot, my maths teacher at Alliance, but who, by then was studying History in Edinburgh.

CLOSE ENCOUNTER

Later we heard that she had gone back to England where in 1959 she became Grace Akinyi Ogot, the name by which she is now known in Kenya, Africa and the world.

Her Christian name, Grace, fitted her personality perfectly. With her mellifluous voice, she was always polite but bold and daring, knocking at literary doors that others may have feared to touch.

To the best of my knowledge, she was the first Kenyan to contribute stories to the BBC, joining a host of other contributors from the Caribbean and other places such as George Lamming, Samuel Selvon and VS Naipaul.

But our first face to face encounter was at the now famous 1962 Makerere conference of writers of English expression attended by writers who would later become literary household names in Africa and the world.

Among these were Chinua Achebe and Wole Soyinka, Esk’ia Mphahlele and Lewis Nkosi from South Africa-in-exile, and Langston Hughes and Saunders Redding from the USA.

The Kenyan contingent consisted of Jonathan Kariara, Grace Ogot and I.

By then she worked in Uganda where she lived with her husband, Professor Ogot, who was among the first African dons in Makerere. My maths teacher at Alliance had become my history professor at Makerere. But Grace Ogot had carved a place for herself in the literary sphere.

It was at the Makerere conference that I learnt that Grace Ogot and I had another thing in common apart from our debating duel at Maseno.

At the end of 1961, and independently of one another, she and I had submitted novel manuscripts for the first East African Novel writing Competition. Mine would later be published as The River Between in 1965; and hers as The Promised Land in 1966.

Our paths would later cross in Kenya where we launched Kenya Writers Association that never really got off the ground, because we were caught up in the invisible and unpredictable hand of history.

I was imprisoned by the Jomo Kenyatta regime between 1977 and 1978 at Kamiti Maximum Security Prison where I wrote my first novel in Gikuyu, Caitani Mutharabaini, later translated into English as Devil on the Cross.

The novel was published in 1981, along with my play, Ngahika Ndeenda, that had led me to the Maximum. That was the same year that Grace Ogot also published her first works in Dholuo, Aloo Kod Apul-Apul and Ber Wat.

So, although I was in prison and she outside, we seem to have turned to African languages at about the same time.

A year later, 1982, I would be forced into exile by dictator Daniel arap Moi. I opposed the dictatorship, working night and day with the London-based Committee for the Release of Political Prisoners in Kenya. Grace worked with the regime, even earning a ministerial position.

During the more than 20 years of Moi’s reign of terror, she and I never communicated, directly or indirectly. I could understand.

GRACEFUL PRESENCE

Many people were put in prison, a few even tortured, accused of having met with me in London or reading my books.

A few Kenyan intellectuals denounced me, but to my knowledge, not Grace Ogot. But still it was a great divide between us.

But when in 2003, I returned to Kenya for the launch of the my Gikuyu language novel, Murogi wa Kagogo, Grace Ogot was there at the Hilton. She really made a big impression on my two children, Mumbi and Thiong’o Kimathi.

She was still the Graceful presence that I had met years ago.

Naturally we never talked politics of the past; only the politics of writing in African languages, for, like me, She had started writing in Dholuo. Miaha, her third book in Dholuo, later translated into English as The Strange Woman by Prof Okoth Okombo, had been published in 1983, three years before my third in Gikuyu, Matigari ma Njirungi, that came out in 1986 only for it to be promptly banned.

All in all, the parallels between our literary careers were uncanny. Grace Ogot’s middle name is Akinyi, which means dawn, a name that I gave to a character in my novel, Petals of Blood, to signify the possibility of the dawn of a new world.

But that Akinyi also correctly speaks to Grace Ogot’s contribution to Kenyan literary culture.

She was very present at the dawn of Anglophone Kenya Literature, and established herself as one of the major founders and makers of the Kenya modern literary tradition.

Kenya has lost a literary star. For me, I have lost a beautiful literary sister. But the aesthetic in her books in Dholuo and English will continue to shine for generations to come.