My experience with Kenyans wielding the Kiswahili pen

Kenyans are Waswahili, and Kenya is guardian of the oldest and most famous Kiswahili orator and literature, stretching as far back as 400 years or more, according to some scholars.

Even in our own times, the persistent perception of Tanzania’s domination of the Kiswahili literary scene is not quite accurate.

It has probably been created by our educational gurus’ tendency to select Tanzanian texts for school study, as my teacher, Professor Kitula King’ei, has demonstrated.

Fortunately, even that bias is being rapidly rectified, in response to the growing availability of top quality Kenyan Kiswahili literary texts.

Mentioning names and texts is an invidious task, since there are so many, and new ones are emerging all the time.

KISWAHILI WRITERS

I thought I would just arbitrarily swing my glance from west to east and see what names among the Kiswahili pen-wielders come immediately to mind.

Again, I have to admit bias, as the eyes tend to see first my friends and long-time colleagues.

Out West I see the two stalwarts of Kiswahili prose, John Habwe, author of Pendo la Heba and Maumbile si Huja, and the astonishing Ken Walibora.

Both are academics as well as creative writers, but the younger man, Walibora, towers over the older one, as indeed, he towers over most other Kenyan writers.

Walibora first came to public attention with his elegant and stylish Kiswahili accent as a newsreader on Kenyan television in the late 1980s.

Then he took the Kenyan literary scene by storm with his picaresque search novel, Siku Njema.

My favourite Walibora work, however, is his second novel, Kufa Kuzikana, in which two bosom friends find themselves on two opposing sides of an ethnic conflict.

ACCURATE PROPHESY
A close look at the details, with the hate-speech style “hatutaki madoadoa”, refers to the so-called “land clashes” of 1992 and other such hullabaloos (like the 1998 Likoni ones, in which one of my research assistants lost a precious haul of field recordings but mercifully escaped with his life when his house was burnt).

Even more sadly, Kufa Kuzikana proved to be an accurate prophecy of the infamous PEV, underlining the oft-made observation that serious writers are like the ancient prophetess Cassandra, always accurate, never believed.

Anyway, through Nyanza and the Rift, the eye picks out my friend, Ustadh Wallah bin Wallah, Malenga wa Ziwa Kuu.

Ndugu Wallah’s precocity, when he penned the illustrious KiswahiliKitukuzwe shairi while still in high school, left many wondering if he wouldn’t be a nine-day wonder.

But Wallah is still a rising star, indeed a household name wherever good Kiswahili is respected in East Africa, and I think I have an idea of the reason.

NAIROBIANS

The secret actually lies in that iconic shairi title: “Kiswahili kitukuzwe”.

Wallah’s unreserved reverence for Kiswahili is the driving force behind his unrelenting work in its promotion, which, in turn, has seen him soar to the heights of success and recognition.

Around Nairobi, my choice is of an unlikely candidate, Wanjohi wa Makokha!

I have little knowledge and even less enthusiasm for Sheng. But I accept the reality of Sheng as a linguistic mode, used by a significant and growing number of, especially, Nairobians.

Makokha’s extended experiments with Sheng in A Nest of Stones is a significant statement about this emergent variety of language and the prospects for its future.

Heading east from Nairobi, we are blanketed in a forest of Waswahili wordsmiths, most of them our contemporaries.

STUNNING WRITER

Here we meet Kitheka wa Mberia, Kitula King’ei and my irrepressible bosom friend, David Mulwa, author of plays like Buriani, Ukame and Daraja.

But the absolutely stunning figure here is Kyallo Wamitila, a writer we might name after the French novelist Balzac, whom his contemporaries called the “forçat” (galley-slave) of literature.

Probably modelling himself on Said Ahmed Mohamed, his teacher in Germany, Wamitila has set himself a bruising writing programme, at one time bringing out a new book practically every month.

We may exalt quality over quantity, but there must be a substantial corpus of writing, in which we can seek quality, and Wamitila has certainly given us a “corpus”.

At the Coast, I will arbitrarily limit myself to a few of my acquaintances, and even then hardly say anything about their literary work, which in many ways stands head and shoulders above the best in the canon of Kiswahili literature.

ABDILATIF ABDALLA

Every time we meet, Abdilatif Abdalla, the first writer in post-independence Kenya to be detained for his writings, can hardly hide his amusement at my hybrid Kiswahili lafudhi (accent), attributable to my endless yo-yoing between Dar es Salaam, Kampala, Nairobi and Mombasa!

Now honourably retired from his distinguished academic labours at Leipzig, Abdalla might, hopefully, soon give us more of the elegance heralded by his Sauti ya Dhiki and Utenzi wa Maisha ya Adamu na Hawa.

Alamin Mazrui, of Kilio cha Haki and Wingu Jeusi fame, followed Abdalla into detention and exile, his prison experience prompting him to compose one of my favourite poems, Niguse, in Chembe cha Moyo. He, too, owes us a new fresh look on the world.

Katama Mkangi, my Dar es Salaam comrade, went too early to his rest, but the socially-committed novel legacy he left us in Mafuta and Walenisi will certainly live on, and my friend Rocha Chimerah seems to be building on it in his Nyongo Mkalia Ini.

CREATIVITY
My younger colleagues, Zein Abubakar, Clara Momanyi, Bokheit Amana, Ali Hassan Njama and Sheila Ali Ryanga, have all given us a taste of their creativity.

Our plea is, jameni (surely), can we have some more? And Mwalimu Kimani Njogu, where is the sequel to Zilizala (the Tsunami)?

Incidentally, our Tanzanian relatives have readily acknowledged our creativity.

Thus we see Said Ahmed Mohamed collaborating with Ken Walibora on Kiti cha Moyoni, and with King’ei on Posa za Binti Kisiwa, just as A. S. Yahya collaborated with Mulwa on Ukame and Buriani.

This is as it should be, for Kiswahili is a creative and cultural continuum throughout our region.

Wait till the Waganda hit the kilingeni (dancing/healing arena)!