Meditations on Kenya - a book by Binyavanga Wainaina

Following is my review of One Day I Will Write About This Place, by Binyavanga Wainaina,Graywolf Press, Minneapolis, 2011

This unconventional memoir starts with unconventional art on the cover.  Written by a Kenyan intellectual, literati, political activist and academic, the book has much to recommend it.  However, it requires patience in order to mine the kernels within. 

Binyavanga Wainaina, son of an Ugandan (Tutsi) mother (hence his first name) and a Kikuyu father was raised in Nakuru in the modern era. Although from a prominent upwardly mobile family, Binyavanga was a moody child, a bookworm, often lost in his private world.  He began to come to terms with himself in secondary school, but lost it again during the ostensible university years that he spent in South Africa. There he descended into alcoholism and listlessness, but gradually worked his way back to a more balanced approach to life. Writing was apparently his salvation and he is now a professor of that subject.

Even so, his style takes concentration. He narrates well, but slips in and out of train of consciousness. His story jerks forward and aft even though it does have a certain chronology.  What makes the book valuable and worth reading are the marvelously described insights into current Kenya.  Through Binyavanga’s eyes the reader discovers what it was like to grow up privileged, part of the new elite. Yet he was always the outsider, a puzzle to his family.    He remembers schools, religious cults, Nakuru town, brother and sisters, friends and neighbors.   He speaks eloquently from the very beginning about tribalism – about who is favored and who is not – and why.

His South African years fade into a haze of booze, and the struggle to survive in what for him was a foreign land.  However, people step forward to his aid time and again, both to enable his addictions as well as to help him conquer demons.   Finally, Binyavanga gets a better grip and returns to Kenya.  His haunting recounting of a family reunion on his mother’s side in far southwestern Uganda was perhaps the genus of the whole memoir.  However, he goes on to bisect Kenyan society of the 1990s, the role of tribalism, the plight of the cities, the burden of the rich and the foibles of all. He takes several jobs via family connections (they looked after him no matter what).  He hadn’t much ambition, but writes amusingly about how to sell goats – get the chief drunk – or grow wheat on lands hoodwinked from the Maasi. Although, Wainaina’s anti-establishment politics can easily be inferred, he does not beat any political drums in this book.   Indeed overall the book is an excellent social history of Kenya today.  

Binyavanga  Wainaina can write lyrically, both in describing situations as well as putting dialogue into the scenes.  Those sorts of passages alone make the book worthwhile.  Beyond that, however, this book is unique.  I know of no other that peers so penetratingly into modern Kenya

Running the Rift

A review of the novel Running the Rift by Naomi Benaron, Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2012.

This novel set in Rwanda at the time of genocide aptly evokes the pernicious slide of that society into hatred, violence and mass murder.  The story is told by recounting the life of Jean Patrick a Tutsi youngster endowed with the gift of speed.   He first appears as a child, the son of a teacher, but one who already feels discrimination because of his ethnicity.  All is magnified when Jean Patrick’s father dies and his family is compelled to move in with an uncle.  Life in rural Rwanda is accurately described as are the emotions arising from incidences of ethnic animosity.  Some folks are good, others not.

The story advances when Jean Patrick’s running abilities are noticed. As a teenager and then as a university student he gets groomed for the Olympic Games.  Being  a minor celebrity he meets President Habyarimana,  who is alternately portrayed as a protector  and persecutor of Tutsi.  Striving to stay above the ethnic fray causes mixed emotions in Jean Patrick who vows that his personal objective is not ethnic politics, but running.  The coach who pushes Jean Patrick to greatness has a mysterious side, yet he stands by his protégé, even at the last.  

Jean Patrick meets and falls in love with a Hutu activist while at university.  Their romance is doomed as the ethnic rancor engulfs the nation and spirals out of control.  Our hero narrowly escapes death and finally finds some solace years afterward.

This novel lays out the looming genocide and impact it had on families- before and after - in detail.   For readers who know exactly what is coming next, the story might move slowly.  It did for me. The setting, however, is impeccable and the use of Kinyarwanda, descriptions of towns, foods and local traditions accurate. The only discrepancy I found was the allegation that one could travel by boat across Lake Kivu to Burundi.  In fact, the nation across the lake is the then Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of the Congo.  Movement to Rwanda’s southern neighbor Burundi requires an overland jaunt as the Ruzizi River is not navigable.

Running the Rift is an intense novel that succeeds in its effort to educate readers about the genocide and to evoke at a personal level the enormous human cost of that tragedy.

Letters to Home, Kenya in the 1890s

 My review of Kikuyu District by Paul Sullivan, Mpuki Na Nyota Publishers, Nairobi, 2000. 

So all you former Peace Corps Volunteers probably thought that your letters home to Mom and Dad that ended up in the basement would never again see the light of day.  Think again. Perhaps your literary ambitions can be accomplished.  Francis Hall’s were.  This month’s book Kikuyu District is an edited compilation of letters that Francis Hall, one of the first Europeans to live upcountry in Kenya, sent home between 1892 and 1902.  

This interesting book that costs over $100 in paper is now available for $2.99 in electronic form from Amazon.

Francis hall, known to friends as Frank, entered into the service of the Imperial British East Africa Company (IBEAC) in 1892. The company – always abbreviated as Coy. in the letters – was tasked to support efforts to reach Uganda from the coast.  Its upcountry agents, of whom Hall was one of the first, had the task of buying food and dragooning porters – hundreds were required - for the caravans passing through.   Central to this task was the necessity of keeping the peace among the tribes. Hall’s station at Fort Smith (present day Kikuyu) put him smack between the Masai and the Kikuyu who were in constant conflict.  To his credit Hall managed relations with indigenous Africans with some tact, understanding and even appreciation for their views.  But he could also be imperious and ruthless as were his more typical colleagues.

Via Hall’s letters readers can trace the evolution of the European presence in Kikuyu District.  From him alone plus those one or two Europeans transiting in caravans for Uganda, assistants were added, missionaries arrived (whom Hall derided as over financed, misguided problem makers), a few early settlers, and railroad construction personnel.  Hall’s letters are chatty. He uses lots of jargon appropriate to his time that requires some careful consideration by a modern reader as to what he means.  Hall held strong class prejudices and was unashamedly racist – as were all Europeans of his era. He employed today’s politically incorrect terminology when referring to blacks.  Many of the letters focus on the comings and goings of various Europeans and on infighting between upcountry personnel and Mombasa based bureaucrats.  Hall dwells on the looming possibility of the IBEAC being subsumed into government and the issue of whether he would be offered a position in the new Kenya administration.  When that happened he was included.

In addition to all his gossip Hall was gored by a rhino, bitten by a leopard, welcomed in odd ways to numerous Masai and Kikuyu palavers and councils.  He got engaged to a colleague’s sister and brought her out to Kenya as his bride in 1902.  At that point he was transferred to Machakos and then ordered to start an administrative center in Muranga, later named Fort Hall in his honor. There his story sadly ends.

I found this book fascinating.  It is not pretentious or elegant; rather it provides a candid glimpse into what Kenya was like for the first Europeans who lived there. It will make you want to edit your letters for publication.

Explorers of the Nile

 My review of  Explorers of the Nile – The Triumph and Tragedy of a Great Victorian Adventure, by Tim Jeal , Yale University Press, New Haven, 2011

Although well over fifty books have been written about the European search for the source of the Nile River, beginning with the best selling accounts of the intrepid wanderers themselves in the 1800s, Tim Jeal has added a real treasure to that trove.  While it seems that nothing in the historical literary world is definitive, Explorers of the Nile, currently has the last word. And a different word it is. Neal has done a prodigious amount of research. He hunted down the papers, letters, first drafts of books, including the expunged passages having to do with sex,  and articles written by the explorers, their families, their patrons and publishers.    He found archives stashed in attics, backrooms, town halls and, of course, in collections owned by libraries, museums, the Royal Geographic Society and the government. He filtered through this enormous amount of verbiage aptly tagging prejudices and misinformation in order to arrive at some new understandings about the characters and actions of the key men involved.  Because of the self serving nature of earlier published material and the pettiness and back stabbing that characterized personal accounts, Jeal’s new look at these men and their times is especially illuminating.

The book focuses on the big names: Livingstone, Burton, Speke, Grant, Stanley and Baker (and Madame).  They were individuals of indomitable spirit. Men and a woman who refused to succumb to the travails of Africa. They suffered unimaginable physical stress – disease, infection, wounds, malnutrition – all compounded by isolation, mental fatigue and the constant threat of violence that morphed into real conflict time and again.  Yet they soldiered on. Only one of the great explorers, Dr. Livingstone, died in the field.  The others managed to survive, mostly attributed to brute force of will. Even so, Jeal points out their foibles as well as strengths. Consequently, these icons come across as real humans consumed, as we all are, with the big and the small. 

Jeal tracks their voyages in the book.  Although there are a few maps, I dug out a more detailed map of East Africa to better trace their footsteps. Jeal’s retelling of their travels uses extensive quotations from their journals.  No doubt he has this correct.  But the value of this new look goes beyond descriptions of the difficulties encountered to provide a solid overview of the region, of why the Arab slave trade was so disruptive, of why the explorers had to rely on these men whose slaving activities they deplored and importantly of why and how British patrons, politicians and the public viewed their exploits.    Jeal too gives long overdue credit to the African men – guides, headmen, interpreters, servants and porters who made the safaris reality. 

Jeal’s new look burnishes the soiled reputation of John Hanning Speke, the first European to see the source of the Nile where it exits Lake Victoria.  (As an aside, the British colonial era monument placed at the site stating that Speke was the “first man” to see the source of the Nile was dismantled shortly after independence accompanied by the thought that African men had seen the sight for centuries.)  Readers of previous explorer books will remember that Burton, who refused to accompany Speke on his northward trek to discover Lake Victoria, impugned Speke’s character and denied his claim.  Since Speke died in a hunting accident shortly after his return to England, he could never defend himself against Burton’s spurious allegations.  But Jeal does. His study of both Speke’s and Burton’s correspondence and journals prove that Speke was maligned. Similarly Jeal rehabilitates the reputation of Samuel and Florence Baker which had been tarnished by their criticism of John Petherick, the British agent in southern Sudan who failed to support them as ordered.   Petherick, however, was a connected aristocrat whereas the Bakers (not even married at the time) were lower class.  Indeed one of the values of Jeal’s book is that he deals forthrightly with class issues – something that was, of course, avoided in the nineteenth century.

After elucidating the discoveries of the various parts of the Nile basin, the book takes a hard look at what  that meant for subsequent developments in the region.  Jeal  notes that the British imperial necessity to secure the upper Nile played out to the detriment both of Uganda and Sudan with disastrous consequences for their peoples a hundred years later.  Arbitrary borders were the crux of the problem.  He posits that the inclusion of Nilotic tribes in a modern Ugandan state preordained the conflict under Obote and Amin that devastated the nation.  Similarly, the inclusion of Equatoria into a larger Sudan and then half measured development of the south under British suzerainty precipitated the chaos of the Sudanese civil war.  He suggests – and would be the first to admit that retrospect is a fine platform – that had more Afro centric policies been pursued that much of this conflict could have been avoided.    

In sum, this is an excellent book. It retells the stories in a new light and provides insight into the motives of all concerned. Importantly it portrays events in the light of their times, but with the benefit of retrospective from our era.  It’s strongly recommended. 

Rwandan Youth Stymied by Culture

This is a review of Stuck – Rwandan Youth and the Struggle for Adulthood by Marc Sommers. Published by the University of Georgia Press, 2012. 

Stuck is an unusual and hauntingly sad book. It is a solidly researched sociological study of what youth in today’s Rwanda see as their prospects.  Most of the youth, especially those from the overwhelmingly poor majority, find themselves caught in the transition zone of life between childhood and adulthood. They are not able to become men or women on account of a pernicious combination of culture, economics and government policy.

To become an adult in Rwanda requires that a male build a house, have some sort of income, marry in a publically acceptable fashion and have children. For a female, she must properly marry and bear children.  It sounds simple, but isn’t.  Rural youth have limited opportunities for earning money, so putting aside even a meager amount to buy roof tiles is difficult.  Furthermore, government policy to restrict new housing to planned villages severely thwarts ambitions because the requirements for those locations are too onerous. Rather than use a family farm, one must buy a plot and build a house much larger than a poor man can afford.  Obviously if men cannot meet the cultural requirement for marriage, then women too are stuck. There is no one to marry. Additionally, females are constrained by law that prohibits marriage before age 21 and, culturally by age 25 or so, females are considered too old.

One consequence of the failure to attain adulthood in rural areas is flight to the city.   Those interviewed called this “escaping.”  There youth become lost in the urban milieu, still unable to earn much money, but freed partially from their “stuckness” on their home hillside.  Life in the city comes down to scrounging one meal a day, a few pennies for local brew and visiting a prostitute.  Female options are fewer.  A percentage of them soon resort to prostitution.  Government housing policies also impact on urban youth as tracts of shanty towns are leveled for modern housing for richer folks.  The policy to ban informal trading also hinders youths’ ability to earn money.

For the poor majority education was not a viable option. Even though Rwanda laudably promotes universal primary education, few of the four hundred persons interviewed had completed primary school. Most dropped out to “dig,” i.e. perform field labor, in order to begin saving for a house.  Those bottom class folks saw kids who completed school and went on to secondary school (less than 10 percent) as a privileged class apart.

A preponderance of the youth interviewed reported they had no prospects, few dreams, and no abilities to change their fate. They were not only stuck in a netherworld where they could never attain adulthood and acceptance in society, but were perpetually doomed to exist on the margins of society and the fringes of a modern economy.

Most of the government officials interviewed for the book agreed with those observations.  They know that the crisis has already arrived and government policies exacerbate the problems rather than help solve them. The problem arises in that central government authoritarianism prevails and policies of social engineering presently underway such as the requirement to create villages in order to free up agricultural land are set in stone.  One hope is that this book will engender policy discourse and conversations that might result in modifications in national policies that will help rather than hinder youth aspirations. 

Antecedents of Empire - The Search for the Nile

For those who love adventure and history. This one is for you.

Explorers of the Nile – The Triumph and Tragedy of a Great Victorian Adventure

By Tim Jeal , Yale University Press, New Haven, 2011

Although well over fifty books have been written about the European search for the source of the Nile River, beginning with the best selling accounts of the intrepid wanderers themselves in the 1800s, Tim Jeal has added a real treasure to that trove.  While it seems that nothing in the historical literary world is definitive, Explorers of the Nile, currently has the last word. And a different word it is. Neal has done a prodigious amount of research. He hunted down the papers, letters, first drafts of books, including the expunged passages having to do with sex,  and articles written by the explorers, their families, their patrons and publishers.    He found archives stashed in attics, backrooms, town halls and, of course, in collections owned by libraries, museums, the Royal Geographic Society and the government. He filtered through this enormous amount of verbiage aptly tagging prejudices and misinformation in order to arrive at some new understandings about the characters and actions of the key men involved.  Because of the self serving nature of earlier published material and the pettiness and back stabbing that characterized personal accounts, Jeal’s new look at these men and their times is especially illuminating.

The book focuses on the big names: Livingstone, Burton, Speke, Grant, Stanley and Baker (and Madame).  They were individuals of indomitable spirit. Men and a woman who refused to succumb to the travails of Africa. They suffered unimaginable physical stress – disease, infection, wounds, malnutrition – all compounded by isolation, mental fatigue and the constant threat of violence that morphed into real conflict time and again.  Yet they soldiered on. Only one of the great explorers, Dr. Livingstone, died in the field.  The others managed to survive, mostly attributed to brute force of will. Even so, Jeal points out their foibles as well as strengths. Consequently, these icons come across as real humans consumed, as we all are, with the big and the small. 

Jeal tracks their voyages in the book.  Although there are a few maps, I dug out a more detailed map of East Africa to better trace their footsteps. Jeal’s retelling of their travels uses extensive quotations from their journals.  No doubt he has this correct.  But the value of this new look goes beyond descriptions of the difficulties encountered to provide a solid overview of the region, of why the Arab slave trade was so disruptive, of why the explorers had to rely on these men whose slaving activities they deplored and importantly of why and how British patrons, politicians and the public viewed their exploits.    Jeal too gives long overdue credit to the African men – guides, headmen, interpreters, servants and porters who made the safaris reality. 

Jeal’s new look burnishes the soiled reputation of John Hanning Speke, the first European to see the source of the Nile where it exits Lake Victoria.  (As an aside, the British colonial era monument placed at the site stating that Speke was the “first man” to see the source of the Nile was dismantled shortly after independence accompanied by the thought that African men had seen the sight for centuries.)  Readers of previous explorer books will remember that Burton, who refused to accompany Speke on his northward trek to discover Lake Victoria, impugned Speke’s character and denied his claim.  Since Speke died in a hunting accident shortly after his return to England, he could never defend himself against Burton’s spurious allegations.  But Jeal does. His study of both Speke’s and Burton’s correspondence and journals prove that Speke was maligned. Similarly Jeal rehabilitates the reputation of Samuel and Florence Baker which had been tarnished by their criticism of John Petherick, the British agent in southern Sudan who failed to support them as ordered.   Petherick, however, was a connected aristocrat whereas the Bakers (not even married at the time) were lower class.  Indeed one of the values of Jeal’s book is that he deals forthrightly with class issues – something that was, of course, avoided in the nineteenth century.

After elucidating the discoveries of the various parts of the Nile basin, the book takes a hard look at what  that meant for subsequent developments in the region.  Jeal  notes that the British imperial necessity to secure the upper Nile played out to the detriment both of Uganda and Sudan with disastrous consequences for their peoples a hundred years later.  Arbitrary borders were the crux of the problem.  He posits that the inclusion of Nilotic tribes in a modern Ugandan state preordained the conflict under Obote and Amin that devastated the nation.  Similarly, the inclusion of Equatoria into a larger Sudan and then half measured development of the south under British suzerainty precipitated the chaos of the Sudanese civil war.  He suggests – and would be the first to admit that retrospect is a fine platform – that had more Afro centric policies been pursued that much of this conflict could have been avoided.    

In sum, this is an excellent book. It retells the stories in a new light and provides insight into the motives of all concerned. Importantly it portrays events in the light of their times, but with the benefit of retrospective from our era.  It’s strongly recommended. 

Review of The Book of Secrets

This is book that folks looking for good fiction about East Africa ought to read.

The Book of Secrets  by M.G. Vassanji, Picador, NY 1994

This is a superb novel by M.G. Vassanji that is set in Kenya and Tanzania beginning just before World War I.  The basic plot revolves around a diary kept by colonial administrator Alfred Corbin in the small (fictitious) Indian trading town of Kikono located at the foot of the Taita Hills along a track that would become the road and railroad between Voi and Taveta.  No one knew what Corbin recorded so assiduously in his diary, but they presumed it included information on the townsfolk as well as the mysteries of imperial power.   In any case, the diary first appears, then disappears and is re-found. It provides the skeleton for the story to hang on.

The story really is one of relationships.  The re-discoverer of the book of secrets was a retired Goan school teacher in Dar Es Salaam in the nineteen sixties.  As narrator he then retraces life as it was in Kikono before the great war when Corbin assumed his duties and was quizzically observed by the townsfolk who the author called Shamsis (which is an actual Islamic sect), but who seemed to me to be Ismailis, traders well known in East Africa. Corbin’s concerns for an unconventional girl and whether or not he fathered her child is the basic mystery that is unpeeled in various fashions during the course of the story.

The Great War disrupted the town. Corbin was withdrawn. His diary was stolen.  People from the town and their descendents moved to Moshi, Dar and Europe, yet their connections to one another and to the essential mystery remained vague even as some unraveled and others faded.

The Book of Secrets is a wonderfully told tale. Descriptions are vivid. The landscapes, the towns, cities and historical events are accurately portrayed, but the characters are especially memorable.  They are exactly the sort of people that would inhabit this world.

Obviously, I enjoyed this book. The East Africa setting is realistic (including the Cozy Café in Dar that I patronized in 1966). Besides being a good story, the book is a valuable social history, particularly with regard to the changes experienced by Asian communities in East Africa.  Read it!