‘How Ngugi inspired me to write’

What you need to know:

  • But Hilary also knew of my special concern for Ngugi’s well-being as he had run an interview I had with him about his then newly released novel, Petals of Blood.
  • The catch was that Hilary also sent me with a preordained agenda, a set of questions to ask Ngugi which I felt were meant, if not to incriminate him, to at least determine his current mode of thought.
  • Nonetheless, I don’t take it personally. Instead, I am grateful that Hilary finally published that interview, the first one Ngugi gave to a world that was soon to be banging on his front door to record a bit of what I had got in those first hours of his release.
  • I cannot deny his inspiring words went straight to my heart and I can credit him for my taking up the pen (computer) as he’d advised his students to do.

Seeing Ngugi wa Thiong’o speak last week at Kenyatta University about Gacamba and Charles Njonjo confirmed for me that Kenya had truly changed from days of old when speaking the former Attorney-General in derogatory terms would have put one straight into detention, most likely into Kamiti Maximum Security Prison.

No one knows that reality better than Ngugi who spent a whole year at Kamiti, an experience he vividly recounts in his book Detained.
It’s a book in which an anonymous local reporter was featured in the opening chapter where he referred to someone from local media coming first to interrogate him.

I was that person as I’d been working at the Weekly Review and the Nairobi Times where Hilary Ng’weno had advance warning that Ngugi was about to be released under the new Daniel arap Moi administration, reversing the order made by the previous and all-powerful Kenyatta regime.

Hilary also knew I had a special interest in Ngugi’s case primarily because he had been my professor for three extraordinary years when I was a graduate student in Literature while he had headed the Literature Department.

MY SPECIAL CONCERN FOR NGUGI

It was my privilege to be there, having come to the UoN as a Rotary Foundation Fellow and stuck around to complete a master's degree under Ngugi’s direction.

But Hilary also knew of my special concern for Ngugi’s well-being as he had run an interview I had with him about his then newly released novel, Petals of Blood.

At the time of the interview, Ngugi’s remarkable Kikuyu play had just opened, so Kamiriithu’s people’s theatre had not yet been bulldozed by the regime that truly feared the overwhelming popularity that Ngaihika Ndeda (I Will Mary When I Want)had aroused among the masses of Kenyans, not only in central region but countrywide.

Hilary didn’t publish that interview in the Weekly Review until after Ngugi was detained, but that interview must have been one reason why my boss sent me to scoop the international and other national media.

The catch was that Hilary also sent me with a preordained agenda, a set of questions to ask Ngugi which I felt were meant, if not to incriminate him, to at least determine his current mode of thought.

Did he believe in a peasant revolution?

That was the first question on my list, a list I frankly handed to my former chairman and said I wished to scrap in order for him to speak his mind and say what he wished to the rest of Kenya and the world.

That scrapping of Hilary’s list nearly got me sacked from the Weekly Review, as my boss was furious.

But I couldn’t help expressing my loyalty to a man I most admire for his integrity, his intellect and indeed his ideological commitment to Kenyan working people.

RISK

I hadn’t thought about the risk I was taking in letting Ngugi use the media platform I gave him to speak his mind.

It was also not recorded in Detained which instead made me sound like something of a stooge, which if I personally found sad and disappointing.

Nonetheless, I don’t take it personally. Instead, I am grateful that Hilary finally published that interview, the first one Ngugi gave to a world that was soon to be banging on his front door to record a bit of what I had got in those first hours of his release.

I didn’t see Ngugi much after that; not until he came back to try to stage Maitu….

We met while the show was being rehearsed at the UoN, a few meters away from the ED2 auditorium, where I first heard him speak to incoming students about the country’s need for writers.

I cannot deny his inspiring words went straight to my heart and I can credit him for my taking up the pen (computer) as he’d advised his students to do.

Maitu … would eventually be performed outside the country since it too was shut down, this time by the Moi administration, which had already come to recognize Ngugi as a dangerously popular force that they would need to reckon with.

That was shortly before Ngugi went to attend a conference abroad and was advised not to return as he would inevitably be detained again and probably never see the light of day again.