For a week, we celebrated our common humanity, not special tribal destinies!
What you need to know:
As the media scramble to report the “truth according to Jubilee” or the “truth according to Cord,” our truth, the real truth, disappears in between.
From December 1-6, Kwani Trust held its biennial Litfest. The event provides a space for African, diasporan as international writers and other creative workers to converse about the state of art, society and humanity.
A brainchild of the transformative Kwani? literary journal founded by writer Binyavanga Wainaina (we wish him well as he recovers in hospital), the Litfest is a weeklong series of events such as talks, book launches, performances, readings, and debates on a wide range of literary and socio-cultural subjects.
Every Litfest has proved to be a festival for the soul, an invigorating experience that rekindles, above all else, hope in Kenya and Africa. It is easy to lose hope in these parts, where we seem fatalistically driven towards an apocalyptic rupture.
Thus it was refreshing to hear writers and artists talk about the power of togetherness and truth, not the kind of power in whose pursuit the dictator in Burundi has risked the future of his country. Power, as exercised by African leaders over the past 50 years, is not a means to achieve social or economic goals. It is power to glorify the self; the Robert Mugabe kind of power.
At the Litfest, we felt refreshed by vistas of possibility that countered the images of Africans risking all on the high seas trying to escape the despair in their countries.
We listened, too, to conversations about honesty, a welcome respite from constant reports of theft, like those about Kenyan MPs, not satisfied with the wage heist, innovating new ways of stealing — inflating mileage claims. We were tired of reading about their useless foreign travel whose cost we can ill afford.
At the Litfest, writer Taiye Selasi talked about multi-rootedness and the possibilities, not limitations, of self-identification. Kenyan writer Yvonne Owuor lamented the small tribal visions of the Kenyan leadership and, instead, articulated a bigger, inclusive, liberating vision of Kenyan-ness.
It was good to see Kenyans come together at the Litfest, not to hear the inanities of their tribal chieftain, but to discuss, share and inspire one another. It was refreshing to hear how we can solve our common problems, not listen to demagogues blaming them on this or that community.
It was good to hear conversations about our similarities, not mythologies about the special destinies of our tribes as preached by our religious and political leaders.
At the Litfest, young and old, Kenyan and African, black and white, all communed in a spirit of celebration of our common humanity.
At the Litfest, the inaugural Cornell-Mabati Kiswahili Prize, whose aim is to encourage writing in African languages, was awarded to several promising young writers.
It was refreshing to have conversations with young writers such as Zukwisa Wanner, Parselelo Kantai, Mukoma wa Ngugi, Billy Kahora or even younger upcoming writers like Kiprop Kimutai. It was good to see and engage with scholars and writers such as Abdulatif Abdalla or Nurrudin Farah.
At the Love Concert in aid of Binyavanga, we listened to uplifting poems and songs that reminded us of the dignity of all humans, as opposed to the staple of political speeches which, although meant to un-dignify this or that community, end up un-dignifying us all.
At the Litfest, in main talks or in side conversations, the tribal and racial discourse that chokes our conversations was disrupted. Like the tribal mathematics for 2017.
It is sad that the news media that so obsequiously reports the shenanigans and inanities of even minor political players does not cover the Litfest and other progressive conversations. As the media scramble to report the “truth according to Jubilee” or the “truth according to Cord,” our truth, the real truth, disappears in between.
Thus, the vision we have of Kenya is the one articulated by a morally bankrupt political class, and not the bigger and humanising vision articulated by the Kwani Litfest and other such platforms.
