Tony Mochama, one of Kenya’s best-known writers and the subject of
Professor Evan Mwangi's article last Saturday. PHOTO| EMMA NZIOKA
'How to write when one has really nothing to say’. This headline
hit us like a thunderbolt last Saturday, setting Kenya’s literary scene
afire after Prof Evan Mwangi charged like a raging bull at the
penmanship of Tony Mochama, one of Kenya’s best-known writers.
Mwangi’s object of dissection? Nairobi: A Night Guide Through the City in the Sun, a
book Mwangi labels, in many words, as “verbal diarrhoea” written by “an
infantile drunk”; a book whose editors are blinding thieves and its
readers veritable dunderheads and one whose only beauty is as a physical
object.
While it is quite clear that
the commentator and author are acquainted with each other and clearly
have different literary and social views, it is hard to comprehend why
Mwangi fires salvo after salvo at the youthful Kenyan.
The
tirade resembled that antiquated pre-independence rifle charged at a
society which isn’t supposed to evolve but remain zombie-like in a
modern world.
LOATHSOME EXPRESSIONS
Barbs
such as, “the book is symptomatic of post-independence Kenya: A
fragmented society out of joint, full of contradictions, alienated like
the drunk overgrown teen the narrator in this book is… a society where
alcoholism has become the norm” are loathsome expressions against a
people he is purportedly defending.
All
this from an advocate for the ‘single African story’ of pestilence,
tribal hate, greed and corruption, who, while on his flight to Chicago,
tears open a gift intended for another and audaciously speaks about it.
One
who opens another’s package (replaceable or not) and writes about it
then goes on to call Kenyans “thieves, pimps, prostitutes and drug
dealers” is himself no doubt corrupt, devious and scheming.
Now as a ‘dunderhead reader’ of the book in discussion, here is how to read a book which has nothing to say.
First
pick a book of your interest. It could be an academic book, a
historical account, a romance novel, a biography, a spy novel, a
detective book, a thriller, erotica, non-fiction, science fiction…
whatever tickles your fancy.
Done?
From your area of interest, you must have a writer whose works you like
(whether you know them or their editors closely, vaguely or distantly).
In this case, you have chosen the book in discussion.
You
love the cover. But please read the cover front to back, inside and
outside (there is some text other than the title and writer’s name)
Now
since you have ripped off the wrapping due to the excusable corruption
by curiosity, there should be something about the author’ and the book.
You learn that the writer is a traveller who lives and works in Nairobi.
He is notorious for anarchic use of English to an extent that he has
been dubbed a literary gangster. He has a number of works under his
belt. He is no nincompoop and he actually traversed the halls of
respectable institutions of learning, moving from classroom to
classroom, attending lecture after lecture.
Do
you want to continue reading such a fellow’s work? You have decided to
read the book in spite of your knowledge of the fellow. You now know it
is a book printed in 2014. You know that ‘the night runner’ is a
literary term and not a literal one. You know that no porcupines from
the 1960’s and 70’s are going to appear at a nightclub. You know that
there will be no descriptions of assassinations of Pan-Africanists along
Tom Mboya Street. Or presidential candidates conceived in between the
alleys of Koinange Street. You are certain that this is not the ‘great
African novel’ that the academia has been praying and hoping for.
You
know that it’s going to be mostly a satirical account of the urban
African whose setting will be predominantly Nairobi at night. Chances of
it gracing a classroom to illuminate the ‘dull minds of a post-colonial
citizenry wallowing in the dimness of dark beer bottle’ are small,
unless a dim lecturer decides to illuminate his dull class with
contemporary urban non-fiction literature.
Still
want to read it or rewrap it and present it to your friend as
untouched? The ‘dunderhead’ ends up flipping through the pages of
chapter one. Wait a minute… this ‘gangsta’ has something to say. He is
walking to the pub on a weekday evening against a tide of hardworking
Kenyans headed in the opposite direction to their homes, away from this
city of lights with no delight.
MAD ASYLUM
“The
light drains out of the evening sky until it looks like a cheap T-shirt
whose colours have run from over washing. Nairobi, by weekday dusk, is a
mad asylum of matatu mayhem and stone-faced pedestrians, hurrying to
get home. The Nairobi Night Runner is street-bumped by an albino and
square-faced pretty girl in Nairobi’s Tom Mboya Street where it is said
that 100,000 people walk by daily and nightly.
Their faces drained of expression in their single-mindedness to get home,” you read on.
The Night Runner is heading to a rinky-dink pub that has existed in the heart of the city way before ‘dunderheads’ were born.
We
note that he speaks of the subject and crime carefully and eloquently
in the simplest manner possible, the only mention of alcohol being the
‘cheap gin’ the unemployed fellow, who is in no rush to get home, is
drinking. The book speaks of the dangerous looking men whose bully lingo
and rough looks are indicative of the lads 100,000 or so odd people are
trying not to be or meet.
Yet our venerable critic only reads mulatto (without the scars) in the short yet descriptive chapter.
Throughout
the book there will be descriptions of various events and happenings
during the 56 chapters that most Kenyans and other ‘dunderheads’ from
cities across Africa can relate to. There will be the strange names of
places and taverns that a number of readers will find distinctive, if
not hilarious. There will be questionable characters like the fellow
who the Night Runner will haltingly bump into at a Madaraka Bar posing
as him to get free drinks from other patrons.
There
will be the ‘African socialism’ themes where a fellow or two will buy
drinks for everyone and situations where a brother or sister going
through financial hiccups is spared blushes by his/her peers. There will
indeed be humour and crassness while all this is happening.
There
will be night-running in Eastern Europe and North America which will be
different experiences from night-running in Nairobi.
There
will be a ‘scat’ (woman of questionable ways) and many other strong
minded, hardworking, highly intelligent women. There will be a day
runner who walks into the bar first thing in the morning and faces the
wrath of the Night Runner for irresponsible drinking habits.
There
will be expatriate parties where Nairobi will seem different to the
Night Runner. There will be sober nights reserved for reading, writing
and watching movies for the Night Runner.
There will be empty bars on Sunday nights when the ‘dunderheads’ have to relax with family.
And
while all this is happening, a reader will notice that there will be
all manners of hardworking dunderheads from various fields of industry
who, like the Night Runner, get paid legally and enjoy their tipple as
mature and disciplined as any other Smart Alec from the far flung city
of Chicago.
There will be so
much writing with nothing to say by Mochama that is quite entertaining
and readable. But first, we ‘dunderheads’ should sober up and appreciate
how to read.
‘Nairobi:
a Night Guide through the City in the Sun’ is available at the Prestige
Bookshop on Mama Ngina Street and the Goethe Institute. Stanley O.
Mitoko is an urban film-maker and the writer of the poetry collection
‘Afrikan Dream'
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