Ngugi on family, writing and the nation

I am itching to tell that story about you in Brazil. Should I tell?” Prof Ngugi wa Thiong’o asked his son Bjorn Lanno.

We were in the Vice Chancellor’s boardroom at Kenyatta University.

“Yes, go ahead,” Bjorn said, and Mukoma, Nducu, Wanjiku and Njoki, his siblings, laughed cheekily. Certainly, they are friends.

Prof Ngugi then narrated how Bjorn left Sweden where he lives and works as a journalist, went to the United States to meet his family members, then took over Ngugi’s car and drove around.

Thereafter, he asked to return to Brazil, where he had been volunteering in a remote area in Rio de Janeiro. “When he came back, he was accompanied with a girl, the love of his life, he said. So I asked him: You mean you left all the girls in Sweden, and in all the US states, only to end up looking for love in that small place?”

As we laughed heartily, Ngugi told Njoki not to laugh. “I might tell them about you.”

Njoki looked at her father, lovingly, and then at Wanjiku, as if seeking big sister’s opinion.

We all stopped to listen when the professor said how he missed the birth of his child while he was in detention.

“‘When a baby is born, it brings joy. I missed my child’s birth when I was detained. Fortunately, my wife sent a picture, but it took forever to arrive — but it came on a day when were all in very low spirits. When we saw Njoki, we called her kana ka posta.”

There was a tremendous sense of camaraderie as we all looked at Njoki, then Ngugi asked for Mukoma’s laptop and engaged in a Skype call with Mumbi who was presenting a paper at a conference in Germany.

Ngugi has a story about all his children — and he tells every story about each of them with immense love.

Seen by many as the tough-talking critic, Ngugi cracked our ribs and was even playful, what with running around pretending to be flying from Kenya to India, to France and to the US!

“I wish my wife was here to tell you what happened when we were in Rome.”

From that statement, we could tell that he misses his life’s companion, Njeeri, who could not travel to Kenya for the celebration of Weep Not, Child. Obviously, family is close to the hearts of the Ngugis.

This recognition, of family, which translates to nationhood, is something I quickly noticed in the author as we welcomed him at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport.

“These are my little brothers,” he said as we shook hands. “We should never allow anyone to measure how much we can achieve. If we are determined, we can do anything as Kenyans, no matter how young or old we are.”

Does he think Kenya has made progress, 50 years after Independence?

“When you measure progress, sometimes it is easy to be overwhelmed by the problems of the day and forget where we have come from. If you look back to the Kenya of the colonial days, we have come very far.”

Even then, he feels we have to keep on dreaming because challenges of ignorance, poverty and disease are still present.

“We want even the most ordinary of Kenyans be empowered mentally, culturally and economically. We want a people who are aware, at the cornerstone of a strong nation.

“You do not get a strong nation through people who always say yes. You want, also, people who can say No.”

While he appreciates development around the country, he still decries poverty.

“For every skyscraper, there is a slum,” he reckons. “Politicians can be wealthy but that does not stop them from seeing that power comes from the ordinary citizens.” He adds that the middle class is not always the engine of development or ideas.

On a light note, he thinks his family has changed his view of the Kenyan middle class.

He had all along thought of a golfer as the representative of the Kenyan middle class. Many years later, he was surprised that his son, Nducu, plays golf. Then he met his granddaughter, Nducu’s daughter, and she is equally fascinated by golf. “Her swing is quite good.”

Apart from being writers, the Ngugis are also social commentators.

When the professor was delivering a lecture at Kenyatta University earlier in the week, we were all spellbound as he weaved the narrative of self-worth.

“How can you depend on, and glorify your neighbour’s light? And say, oh, this is wonderful. Look at how great my neighbour’s light is! This is incredible. You must light your own house.”

This assertion gives rise to the question of language.

Ngugi then called Mukoma, a professor at Cornell University, to the podium.

Mukoma helped launch the Mabati-Cornell Kiswahili Prize for African Literature, whose winner will receive fifteen thousand dollars. “We should be proud of and own this prize and participate in the competition,” he said.

Then Ngugi took over: “Many Kenyan parents are usually very proud when their children speak English. They loathe their mother tongue.

“I would like you to request your county governments to pass laws that criminalise punishment of pupils who ‘shrub’ or speak their mother tongue.”

The hall erupted in applause. As the applause died, Ngugi homed in with what he calls secrets of life.

“If you know all the languages of the world but do not know your language or culture, that is enslavement. If you know your language and can also speak other languages, that is empowerment.” That statement was met with more applause.

“The colonialist gave us the resource of accents, and as we concentrate on perfecting these accents, he is accessing our resources. It is time Africa used her resources to plan her future.”

As the lecturer ended, a member of the audience asked about the reach and shelf life of local languages.

Ngugi then brought in Dante — the Italian poet of the late Middle Ages — and his writing in Latin, to life.

“He was told, you will never be read and no one will remember you. When the Bible was translated into English, people wondered, ‘the word of God in English?’ I look at local languages as an udder full of milk. As you fight over English and French, I will slowly milk the goodness of my mother tongue.”

He received a standing ovation and he bowed in humility. The family clapped with us, proudly.

Then I remembered what Nducu, the author of City Murders, had said two days earlier.  “Professor will never let you get away with mediocrity,” and Mukoma, the author of Nairobi Heat, had added that “it is always work first.”

Wanjiku, the author of The Fall of Saints, wrote in her reflections of her father that “my father always tells us, timing is everything.”

As Ngugi, a professor who dotes on all his children the same way he worries about the poor ordinary Kenyan, rightly says, imagination is the greatest democratic equaliser in the world. It has no barriers such as gender or age.

As such, I will keep on imagining but at the same time wonder, why, this icon, a man who has earned ten honorary doctorates, has never been honoured in Kenya. Isn’t it about time we had the Ngugi Literary Award for African Writing?