Why Kenyan art is recognised more abroad than at home

If I were not taught and examined by Dr Fred Okengo Matiang’i himself at the University of Nairobi (room number ED 308), I would probably be tempted to agree with my dog Sigmund that I am an idiot who studied the wrong subject at school.

The dog says that had I studied something worthier than literature, by now I would certainly be a rich man, with a nice and bigger tummy of my own, driving more than my just one Range Rover.

But I usually tell Sigmund during our daily evening walks that, surely, a man that the current Education Cabinet Secretary gave several straight A’s in some very difficult literary subjects cannot be easily dismissed as an academic dwarf even if he looks like one.

A cold-blooded careerist from the age of two (when I learnt to dance to M’Bilia Bel’s Mobali na Ngai Wana), I could have done quite well in any subject they offered at my school, including those taught by inveterate bores. Yet from the way the Kenyan elites are busy talking down on the arts, one would be forgiven for thinking that there is nothing of value in studying the subjects I decided to pursue.

In Mobali na Ngai Wana, M’Bilia Bel uses the tune of an old song, in which a woman urges her husband not to shame her by beating her in public. The woman says: If you have to beat me, do it quietly at home, so people don’t get to know about it. The woman is not necessarily acquiescing to domestic abuse that never gets to be discovered by the public; rather, she is metaphorically saying that it is not in order to keep shaming people in public to boost your ego. She is against impunity and the banality of violence that inform patriarchal African societies at both domestic and public levels.

M’Bilia Bel transforms the song to suppress references to this private domestic violence. Instead, she foregrounds the woman’s unrequited love for the husband she pampers like a “bebe” (baby) and who she’s ready any time to take to many places, including the “equateur” (equator).

Like the woman in Mobali na Ngai Wana, I urge the Government to cut down on its cynicism and impunity regarding the arts. Just cut the funding to the arts (if you provide any) without making unnecessary public statements about how useless the study in the arts is. Double or triple the funding for the subjects you hold in high esteem, but stop insulting us.

The good thing in studying the arts is that you can tell when a government mandarin is talking nonsense — and that sub-species of Kenyans is always good at spewing hogwash. It is not lost on us that these anti-arts elites studied arts in school (probably, unlike me, without an option to study anything else).  

Their kids are also studying art subjects in our so-called elite academies, excelling in such areas as photography and tailoring (or “fashion design”, if we may use, with air quotes please, the term they prefer). The elites do not want us to take arts seriously because, with the critical-thinking skills the study in artistic appreciation equips us with, we would easily see through their wiles.

My senior colleague and author of numerous works on medieval literature, Prof Barbara Newman, reminds us that there is no better way of acquiring an independent mind than taking courses in literature. The skills you get from literature classes allow you “to see through manipulative uses of language, such as advertising and political propaganda, to avoid becoming their victim.  Should you be so inclined, you will also have the skill to produce these forms of language.”

Unfortunately, the Kenyan elites are misusing the skills they learnt in art classes to deceive the public and curtail our freedoms through decrees from puritanical censorship boards and constant denigration of artistic endeavours that don’t serve the elite’s political agenda. It is the duty of the literary critic today to expose these manipulative pen-pushers working for the powers that be.

It is because I didn’t grow to be a useless fool after studying what the government now sees as a low-value subject that Stellenbosch University in South Africa invited me the other day to go there and talk about my research. Sigmund, a self-proclaimed professor at the Fort Howl School of Critical Theory, tagged along most likely because he had heard that my project is funded by a million-dollar grant. Eyeing what M’bilia Bel would call my million-dollar “mokwa” (bone), Sigmund claims to have written a PhD thesis titled “Agamben in Rwathia” about my supposed misreading of the Italian theorist.

I was hoping Sigmund would be turned away at Cape Town airport because he didn’t have proof of yellow fever vaccination, but he has a way of  turning invisible. At the immigration counter, he pretended never to have been to Kenya, one of those third world countries with risk of yellow fever.

It is at Stellenbosch that the Kenyan literary scholar, Grace Musila, teaches, and I learnt a lot from the professor. I also met Prof Tina Steiner, an authority on Indian Ocean, whose work has influenced many Kenyans, including my friend Godwin Siundu. Many will envy me to hear that I met in person Prof Annie Gagiano, a respected literary authority who has written lucidly on Dambudzo Marechera, Bessie Head, and Yvonne Vera!

I think we agreed on one thing: that the Indian Ocean should be studied in relation to African and Indian mainland and other water masses to avoid silencing continental Africa and Asia, which are still marginalised areas of study. That is, we should not use new areas of focus to deflect attention from others that have not been fully explored. 

Students at the university were studying work by Ng’ang’a Mbugua, Henry ole Kulet, Wanuri Kahiu, and Judy Kibinge, among other Kenyan artists. I didn’t say it, but I was happy that nobody was obsessed with Ngugi wa Thiong’o any more, as it is time we started to de-Ngugi the mind.

I was expecting nasty experiences in Stellenbosch, a bedrock of apartheid in the past which is still considered by some a “mini-apartheid island.” The “Boers” are presented negatively in Kenyan popular works, such as Charles Mangua’s Son of Woman. I feared I would encounter some of these bad fellows.

But everyone in Stellenbosch was kind. They even never allowed me to pay at the health club after I asked them if they would rename the Virgin gym after I was done with it to squeeze out every penny of my gate fee. The Mexican restaurant guy served me free burritos, and everyone wanted me to taste their wine.

But I guess, from my experience in the US, the Afrikaner generosity here could be because the place is wealthy. In poor parts of South Africa, the racist coarseness probably shows. 

Because I’m a small man, nobody disrupted my visit. During Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s lecture at the neighbouring University of Cape Town earlier in March, students briefly interrupted his address by demanding that all white people (“the enemies”) should be sent out of the lecture hall.

I didn’t get to meet Kenyatta University’s Dr Macharia Mwangi, who is also visiting the University of Cape Town. The Gikuyu translator of Okot p’Bitek’s Song Lawino is my former high school classmate (in case anybody questions my legitimacy to write this column), a fellow teenage karubu wine-taster across Kahuro and Kahatia, fellow untrained literature teacher at Kirogo Secondary School, my former university student at some point, and always a good friend of mine.

I wanted to ask Douglas (for that is what I still call Dr Mwangi despite his seemingly having dropped his ‘Christian’ name) how he has translated p’Bitek’s “Their testicles / Were smashed / With large books!” Paul Sozigwa’s Kiswahili translation is graphic, but I’m praying Douglas just uses “waru” (Irish potatoes), not the Gikuyu taboo word for that part of the anatomy. 

I was so thrilled to meet at Stellenbosch for the first time the Kenyan novelist Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor, whose Dust I’ve been trying to write about for some time.  

The writer is in South Africa on a prestigious Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study fellowship before heading to Germany for another residency. I am looking forward to using her forthcoming The Dragonfly Sea in my Indian Ocean literature classes.  

KENYAN FELLOWSHIPS

Please, everyone, before I forget, send me a list of fellowships we have in Kenya for local and foreign writers — the ones the government will withdraw once it stops supporting the arts to bolster the sciences.

Anyway, at the traffic lights in Stellenbosch, I noticed my dog Sigmund was behaving weirdly. I thought I should ask what was going on.

Me: Sigmund, why are you twerking like a pervert?

Sigmund: Can’t you see the sign says “Wag”. If you’re arrested for disobeying simple traffic rules, I’ll pretend I don’t know you.

Me: “Wag” is Afrikaans for “wait.”

Sigmund: (Twerking more vigorously). I’ll still wag as I wait.

At the airport on my last day in South Africa, I was surprised to find that I couldn’t bring my Amazon kindle on board the plane. Like our elites, Trump must be anti-literature.  

I’m not quite gifted in decoding sarcasm when it’s aimed at me. I actually didn’t get the joke when the black immigration official, upon seeing my American passport, asked me: Sir (pronounced “sehh”), should we arrange for special security to the Airforce One?

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