By TONY MOCHAMA

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When we met Anja, one of the founders and organisers of the ‘Macondo Literary Festival’ a day before this year’s edition of the festival – held across three days at the Kenya National Theatre – she was excited about this year's line-up of writers. “You are welcome to interview them,” she told Khainga Okembwa of ‘Books Café.’

The annual festival brought together literary writers, critics, artists, publishers, book lovers and film-markers from all over the region.

“I am attending for the first time,” said bibliophile Jacktone Nyonge at the KNT. “I can only assure you that it's great, thrilling, absorbing and insightful. The menu is so rich that one is spoiled for choice.

"The festival has employed an array of strategies to drive its agenda, such as discussions by the authors on carefully selected thematic areas that are well moderated, exhibitions of books, reading of selected book excerpts, display of pieces of art, photography and running of selected films.”

This year's theme was ‘The Sea is History – Connecting Africa's History and Futures through Literature’ and bringing together authors from French, Portuguese, Arabic and English writing language zones of Africa and Brazil in conversation with writers from the Indian Ocean worlds.

Some of the renowned writers featured included MG Vassanji from Canada, Chigozie Obioma from Nigeria/US, Janika Oza from Canada, Jeferson Tenorio from Brazil, Shubnum Khan from South Africa, Joao Melo from Angola, Hamza Koudri from Algeria, Shabhangi Swarup from India, and Johary Ravaloson from Madagascar.

From left to right: Shubhra Swarup, Janika Oza, Zulfikar Hirji, Shubnum Khan, Kiprop Kimutai, Shubhangi Swarup, Hamza Koudri at the Kenya National Theatre during the Macondo festival. Inset: Macondo Literary festival Founders Journalist Anja Bengelstorff (left) and Acclaimed Kenya author, Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor during the interview in Nairobi on September 18, 2024. Pool

The overview from ‘Macondo’, a mythical place name from Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s “100 Years of Solitude” started for me from ‘Ukumbi Ndogo’ at the Kenya National Theatre, where e-Kitabu was holding a session titled ‘From Manuscript to Masterpiece’, whose star speaker was Deborah Aoko Tendo.

She is the writer of ‘Rough Silk’, which she self-published, and self-marketed through social media, and which she claims has sold a stunning 30,000 copies. e-Kitabu’s Amelia said when one does social media marketing, they organise a complete e-package for the writer, and this begins with a social media schedule.

“You then have to create engaging posts as your content for the audience, even as you promote your published/ printed work. Our measure matrices of author success are simply one – how many books has the ‘SM’ marketing moved (product sold)?”

Tendo reiterated that in these days of social media, a lot of the people who will buy your book may not even be readers. “Let me let you in into a secret,” she advises, “even if you are an introvert, as many writers are, you have to be an ‘extrovert’ on your social media spaces, and constantly engage your audiences.”

For instance, Tendo talks about relationships (men/women) on Wednesdays, nostalgia (back in the day) on Thursdays, Friday rhumba, football on Saturdays, something motivational/ inspirational/spiritual on Sundays and hot politics on Mondays.

“By the time I am pushing my book (Rough Silk) on Tuesdays, I’m sorted with my audience. People who wouldn’t have bought the book are ready to buy ‘Tendo.’”

The following day, last Saturday, it was time to get more cerebral with the ‘Let’s Talk Africa’ with the literary triumvirate of the suave Brazilian author Joao Melo, Algerian Hamza Koudri and Shubhangi Swarup moderated by Dr Mshai Mwangola.

Ms Shubhangi spoke of a perspective binary when it comes to the sea. “Most folks live their lives on the land, with the beach as backdrop, often on vacation; but the writer of oceanic literature must turn their back to the land and look wholly on the sea.

We must remember the sea is the living ecosystem of our origins; someone called it our collective amniotic fluid, and we must protect its species from continents of plastic junk.”

Author Hamza also spoke of the desert as ‘another kind of sea’ with its own caravan of stories, but did not address the politic issue of another kind of ‘fake’ story – propaganda – such as the one the Algiers’ sponsored SADR puts out about the ‘Western Sahara’, propagated by Polisario secessionists out to claim Southern Maroc for the last half century.

Joao Melo, resplendent in white and still funny in Portuguese, was more political on the continental question, saying that “the West identifies us as people, pacifies our culture, oppresses our imagination by imprisoning us with muddled vision”. “We think we are global citizens of ideas, but what we are is global consumers of their goods.”

Participants in the tents of the Macondo Literary Festival, 2024 at the Kenya National Theatre in Nairobi on September 18, 2024. Pool

This session also having taken place at the main auditorium of the KNT, it was time to return to ‘Ukumbi Ndogo’ for the third session of the day for me, the discussion about ‘Siblings, Conflicts, Transformation and the Sea,’ the main discussant being Janika Oza.

“Imagine being born, raised, bonded over shared experience, shared familial intimacies, had your ups-and-downs under the same roof/s, for the first two decades of your life.

There is a preciousness to the sibling experience, and it begs for a lifetime protection,” said Oza. “But in some cases, resentment builds, often over attention, and is buried for decades.

Then a cataclysmic domestic event happens, a sick parent or black sheep sibling, death and/or inheritance issues, and all the tension comes to the fore.”

Writer Janika, who addresses sibling issues in her works, spoke of ‘seas of silence’ that follow, sometimes for the remainder of the siblings’ lives, even when one or the other goes overseas. Family sagas do make for good drama, though, looking at shows like “Succession”.

Closer to home, come Sunday morning, there was a ‘New Kenya Writes’ discussion for a new generation of Kenyan writers, most just on the cusp of 30 and represented by the likes of Diana Mosoba (Till Death Do Us Part), Scholar V. Akinyi (Hop, Step and …) and the poet Schola ‘Skeeter’ Moraa, as well as Kiprop Kimutai, a current Miles Morland scholar.

Read: Kenya hosts 3rd edition of Macondo Literary Festival

Sunday at high noon and the launch of “Insurgent Feminisms: Women Writing War” was upon us at Macondo, with its author Hassan Sartur of Somalia and co-editor Bhakti Shringarpure in attendance, with Dr Garnett Oluoch-Olunya guiding the very interesting discussion that revolved around how ‘mankind’ goes to war, how women are left behind to clean up the mess, and how wo/men have to rebuild.

While Ukraine and especially Gaza (and now Lebanon) were in that main auditorium with us, it had to be discussed, how our own African wars are by-and-large either ignored (the perennial ‘regional’ war in the DRC) or forgotten while still ‘new’ (the civil war in The Sudan) by Western media.

Later, and staying at the auditorium, the incomparable Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor, author of ‘The Dragonfly Sea’ (and a co-founder of the Macondo Literary Festival) hosted a trio of writers who have written about the sea – Johary Ravaloson of Madagascar, Shubaum Khan of India and Khadijja Abdallah Bajaber from Mombasa, whose first novel about Indian Ocean jinns/monsters like the Sunken King in her ‘House of Rust’ caused a few ripples on the local literary scene.

The climatic moment of the festival for me was the virtual session by Chigozie, who spoke of the imaginative worlds of his stories like ‘The Fishermen’ which whilst objecting to its ‘magical realism’ label, Chigozie speaks of there being “our connection to another dimension” and “presences that may or may not be ordaining (our) lives”.

On the topic of historical fiction, Chigozie spoke about the importance of writing into ‘identified gaps’ for literary practitioners.

“Books like Adichie’s ‘Half of a Yellow Sun’ operate on the periphery of the Biafran war. No one had actually centered the characters in the war. The soldiers. So, I wrote the war novel.”

Chigozie then spoke of the importance of African writers staying true to their cultural voice, personal style and authentic continental issues.

Macondo Festival's Anja Bengelstorff with Brazilian author Jeferson Tenório at the Kenya National Theatre during the 2024 Macondo Festival on September 21, 2024. Pool

“Short sentences, they say in the West, but I have always maintained the exuberance of the epic in my novels, because that is how we in Africa speak.”

The two-time Booker nominee from Nigeria, now living in the US, then waded into the deep end: “Just because something is centered in New York does not mean that we should immediately turn it into the Ark of the Covenant in Africa.” By this, Chigozie means issues like ‘queering literature’, a genuine issue but a bit further down in our hierarchy of human issues to be addressed by our literature – with ‘poverty’ at the top.

“Here in the US, they’re not too interested in something (literary works) that does not start and end with America. That is why the only real seller we saw (was from our sister) and it was titled ‘Americanah.’

Poet and playwright Adipo Sidang (Parliament of Owls) beside me muttered: “Africana would have gained no traction in that Parliament of parochial howls …” With the sun setting on Macondo, we left to witness another kind of story, Arsenal FC snatching a last gasp draw (against Man City) from the jaws of victory.