TAKE 5: Ngala Chome

Ngala Chome is a writer and historian. He is also the associate editor for Kwani? 09, Kwani Trust’s next literary journal issue, and has contributed articles for the Chimurenga Chronicles and Enkare Review, among others.

1. Describe yourself, in terms of your personal and professional work?

Primarily, I am an academic. I am currently doing a PhD in African History at Durham University in the United Kingdom. For the PhD, I am writing Mombasa’s post-colonial history, with a focus on politics.

I chose to write this recent history since a lot has already been written on the colonial and pre-colonial history of Mombasa, and the coast more widely.

I always think that the medieval to early-modern history of the East African coast, especially that involving the city states that dotted the littoral from Kilwa to Mogadishu, is a minefield for the imagination. There is a lot of fodder for creative and non-fiction writing, including poetry.

Personally, I have always been fascinated with people’s histories and social groups. I am even more fascinated by intellectual, and creative work that engages with the ‘big questions of society’.

2. How did you get into writing, and why? What do you think about Kenya's current literary landscape, particularly in terms of the upheaval in writer's collectives and Makena Onjerika's recent Caine Prize win?

I started with thinking, then talking, then debating with whoever had the time, on what I considered to be important subjects afflicting humanity, mostly Kenya, at the time. I was 17 during the 2005 constitutional referendum, and I would always be found debating with adults on the content of the proposed draft, and more broadly, about Kenyan politics.

Long before I joined the University of Nairobi, I had already decided that my choice of study would be politics and history. In 2012, I received a call from Billy Kahora, Kwani?’s Managing Editor, who asked me to write a non-fiction piece about Hassan Joho.

It took about two years to write something of acceptable quality, which became part of the latest issue of the Kwani? Journal. I also started reading a lot of fiction. It was during this time that I would be asked to write a lot about the coast, where I was born and raised. I mean, the time of terrorism, radicalisation, Mombasa Republican Council, and so on.

It was also during this time that I started becoming actively involved in Nairobi’s intellectual and cultural life, including the literary landscape, which I think is slowly coming to birth.

I try to stay away from the upheavals, but I hope that this is only a sign that a new and progressive kind of politics is forcing its way into our cultural spaces.

It is important that these spaces are not built on retrogressive ideas, especially due to the incredible amounts of talent that exist, as shown by Makena’s win of the Caine Prize, and also Khadija Abdalla Bajaber's win of the Graywolf Press Africa Prize.

3. You wrote about your childhood in Kisauni, Mombasa, comparing and contrasting your time there then and your visits now. What do you think is the importance of writing about what you know, and the political intricacies of that?

Well, my style of writing, especially when writing non-fiction, relates closely with how I think, including how I tell stories.

So, I am a sucker for ideas, because I am an academic, but I also sometimes want to see them grounded in some form of human experience, either in the experiences of people I know, or in my own experiences. It is the American sociologist C. Wright Mills who formulated the term ‘sociological imagination’, which broadly refers to the awareness of the relationship between personal experience and the wider society.

So, I thought that the best way to address these seemingly complex, significant-sounding concepts, such as exclusion, identity politics, disenfranchisement, was to speak to them using personal stories. That’s what the piece "Kisauni", published on the Enkare Review, seeks to do.

4. Who do you enjoy reading? And what's the last book you read?

I love chaotic prose and extremely poetic writing. I like what books that many people are fond of saying are hard to read do to me.

They torture me, but ask that I trust them at the same time. That we’ll get somewhere, don’t worry. Then eventually we do.

So, all the books by Marlon James for instance, Jazz by Toni Morrison, or Dust by Yvonne Owuor. The book that I am just finishing now is the seminal work by the German sociologist Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.

5. If you were to write a book, what would it be about? And, what would (will) the title be, if you have it?

Well, I am going to turn my PhD thesis into a book. But to be honest that’s not the book I want to be proud of in future. I have been working on my memoir. I will probably work on it for a very long time!