THE EASTAFRICANPOET

We drive through bushes. We pass the villages that rim our side of the Bonny River. There are hardly any trees in the area, and the shrubs are little more than stumps, thin and dusty, not verdant as they used to be. This, Mama has told me: that the vegetation around the Bonny River once thrived. That the trees grew tall, and from them sprang green leaves. And their flowers gave rise to fruit. Of course, this memory is hers, from a former reality, one too old to be my own. The roads are sandy and brown, with open gutters, and with wrappers and cans and bottles strewn about. Collapsing cement shacks line the roadside in messy rows, like cartons that have long begun to decompose. A short distance from us, something comes out of the river, a small boy or girl, maybe six or seven years old. Hands flail in the air and another child joins – typical children’s play. Except that it’s too early in the morning for that. Except that their skin, and even the cloth around their waists, gleams an a

The Gitu wa Kahengeriled Mau Mau War Veterans Association has published a book that tells the history of the freedom struggle of the 1950s. It explores the suffering of those who fought the British and the continued agony of the veterans under the successive independent governments, as told by those who have lived it. Titled The Forgotten Heroes and Heroines , the book is a collection of first-hand accounts based on interviews with survivors of the struggle from across the country. Some of the interviewees talk of physically executing the war from the forest, where they suffered more from the cold and hunger than the British guns. Others were detained for many years and tortured to no end, while the women narrate how they and their children were deprived of food, medicine and human dignity in what wa Kahengeri insists were emergency “torture” villages. The book tries to show that although it may have been the Gikuyu, Embu and Meru who were referred to as Mau Mau, others in the cou

- I don’t think of my writing as wild, it’s just not obeying anyone. I write to escape and there’s not much escape staying in certain lanes. I don’t like lanes. Even when it comes to language, in my work in progress, I’m playing with language. I’m writing in English, but not in English; I’m writing in many Englishes. And that’s the kind of writing I want to do. I don’t want to write in the Queen’s language like I was doing in school. This is what writing is. That kind of writing really doesn’t interest me. -

You’ve always been the one in charge. Oh, yes. You came into the world on a high note, swinging a golden conductor’s baton all the way down the birth canal. And life as it should re-organized itself by bending to your formidable will. Sweet. Sure, some folks were trampled on during your march to the top. Big deal. They were just collateral damage in a numbers game. Frankly, it’s easy to sleep at night when all you see are numbers. Thinking about faces can be such a downer. And as everyone knows, you’re all about the up and up. Last year, your team contributed to the company’s five percent lay-off rate. You told yourself it’s a cold hard world before skipping off to spend the bonus check you got for maintaining the all-important bottom line. Things and people get eaten every day. Nature’s way of maintaining the status-quo. It only sucked if you were way down on the food chain. And then one morning, IT showed up at the office. Starched, neatly pressed, all straight white teeth. Kissin