How Walibora death startled me out of my dreams

I was thinking about taarab music when the thunderbolt news of Ken Walibora’s death hit me.

Do you remember that the mother of Kongowea Mswahili, the hero of Walibora’s epoch-making picaresque novel Siku Njema, was the son of a famous female taarab singer?

My thoughts had been triggered by news of the passing away of Ahmed Ismail Hussein “Hudeydi”, the Somali music maestro, who succumbed to the dreadful Covid-19 monster in London last week.

Among lovers of Somali music, Hudeydi was known as the “King of the oud”. This instrument, called udi in Kiswahili, was an essential item of classical taarab orchestras in Zanzibar. This reminded me of how much we - Waswahili (East African Coast dwellers) - have in common.

About Walibora, arguably the “king” of Kenyan Kiswahili literature, I do not know what say. An obnoxious cocktail of shock, sorrow, anger and revulsion has robbed me of words.

The shock is palpable and understandable among all of us, literary, literate, illiterate, orate or inorate.

Walibora belonged to all of us. It is almost unimaginable that, while all our eyes and ears were trained on Covid-19, death should sneak in, hyena-like, and snatch away our communication icon through a senseless matatu “accident”.

When will these endemic matatu-madness crimes, which we keep euphemistically calling “accidents”, be brought under control?

DISCUSSION PANEL

I mentioned my revulsion at what I heard of Walibora’s last moments. We do not want to pre-empt ongoing investigations.

But surely, how could a person of Walibora’s stature lie ignominiously unrecognised and unidentified in a mortuary for five days?

Does our care and respect for the humanity (utu/Ubuntu) of our fellow beings end at death, and they become “takataka” (trash)?

Of my sorrow I dare hardly speak. As often in such situations, this is a gnawing pain that seems to seep endlessly into the bones until even the marrow aches.

But as I search in my mind for straws to cling upon in this isolated and distanced mourning, I realise that this “young man”, as I called him, was very often there with me, especially in those situations when we talked, enjoyed and worked on things Kiswahili and literature.

My last encounter with him was on a discussion panel of “experts” on Kiswahili (waliobobea Kiswahili), alongside such stalwarts as my sister and teacher, Prof Clara Momanyi, Prof Kimani Njogu of Twaweza Communications, Prof Ahmed Lodi from Zanzibar, and East African Kiswahili Commission Executive Secretary Inyani Simala.

This was last December at Kyambogo University in Kampala, at an international conference of CHAUKIDU (the International Society for the Promotion of Kiswahili).

My main contribution to the discussion was my vigorous but sincere protestation that I could not and should not be counted among Kiswahili experts.

HUMBLE GENIUS

The only Kiswahili I know was what I had picked up from the streets and alleys of Dar es Salaam.

My main claim to it was that I was an ardent advocate and activist for its use. But of course I felt mightily pleased and flattered by the invitation to sit at that table with Walibora and the other real pillars (vigogo) of my beloved language.

Indeed, as I have often said, that is what I find invariably irresistible about the Waswahili: their unreserved acceptance of anyone who shows interest in and respect for their language.

This, really, at a personal level, is what particularly attracted me to Walibora. Despite his stupendously vast and versatile knowledge of Kiswahili, and the creative facility and felicity with which he used it, he always deferred to us, his “elders”, flattering us with his genuine expectation that he had something new to learn from us.

Once, in 2015, I was boasting to my Kiswahili colleagues at Kenyatta University that I had “discovered” a new effective way of teaching fasihi (literature).

Walibora attended my lecture, and immediately afterwards, he drove me, in his beautiful white Mercedes, to the studios at Nation Centre and interviewed me for his “Sema Nami” (chat with me) programme. Bits of that, I believe, are still out there on YouTube.

But let me summarise the three sterling qualities that made Walibora a precious asset to all of us in Kenya and East Africa, and especially relevant to our language and literature culture.

PROLIFIC WRITER

The first is his consistently broad regional perspective, as opposed to the “village-focus” narrow-mindedness that still plagues many of our societies.

The setting of his unforgettable Siku Njema across a large swathe of East Africa, from Tanga through Mombasa to the foothills of Mount Elgon, is a signal of this.

Similarly, his Kufa Kuzikana is an articulate indictment of not only our infamous “tribal clashes” of the late 1980s and early 90s but also of the Rwandese genocide, and maybe, prophetically, the 2007 “PEV”.

Secondly, Walibora was an indefatigable and tenacious creator and communicator. Although he was a scholar and a professor to boot, his heart was in creative writing and mass communication.

He wrote and published, probably as prolifically as any other Kenyan working in Kiswahili. Maybe the other few in his league are Kyallo Wamitila, Kithaka wa Mberia and Rocha Chimera.

These people’s work was, I think, the best answer to my teacher Prof Kitula King’ei’s lament, back in the 1980s, about the dominance of Tanzanian texts in Kenya’s fasihi curriculum. After all, you could not teach Kenyan texts if few of any merit were written.

LANGUAGE LOVER

Finally, Walibora, through his writing, journalism and lifestyle, has illustrated to us the beauty and richness of Kiswahili. Above all, he has emphasised to Kenyans that Kiswahili is “our” language.

You do not have to be a “coastal” (or a Tanzanian) for you to speak and write it with fluency and elegance.

Nor is the use of grammatical, idiomatic Kiswahili an affectation or a show-off (maringo) for any Kenyan, regardless of where they come from.

Kongowea Mswahili. Pay all due homage to Kenneth Waliaula Walibora, our fallen Mswahili.

Prof Bukenya is a leading East African scholar of English and literature; [email protected]