By David Maillu
Writer
Ngugi wa Thiong'o. Controversial writer, David Maillu asks "What can
Kenyans give you in order to for you to come home and help them bury the
corpse of their misery?" PHOTO/FILE
Dear Ngugi, kuhana atia mundu witu?
Allow
me to write an open letter to you on behalf of myself, your
intellectual fans and the spirits engaged in building our mother
continent.
Just in case I sound irritant, bear with me, knowing well that he who cries has no beautiful lips.
This
open letter is a cry against your physical disappearance from us.
Forget it; your occasional visits to Kenya are not enough.
Allow me to think, dream or conclude that when you die, you will be buried in Kenya.
Think
about the African wisdom that says you must eat and drink with people
who will bury you. Kenyans will bury Professor Ngugi wa Thiongo’o,
because he is a Kenyan Kikuyu. Period.
Way back in
1978, after you were released from detention by the Moi regime, perhaps
you could remember the meeting I had with you on Kijabe Street.
You were glowing with bitterness for having been denied your teaching job at the University of Nairobi.
I tried to sell to you the philosophy of magnanimity with which you could handle the nasty political mood in the country.
KANU LEFT IN 2002
“Brother,”
I said. “You are a very special person to Kenyans. Save yourself for us
by diverting from writing raw-nerve books like Ngahika Ndenda in order
to buy time for the hostile regime to cool down.”
For
an answer, you categorically told me: “David, if they don’t give me my
job I am going to fight to the last drop of my blood.” You left the
country to live, work and give weight to capitalism, the ideology you
had been fighting fiercely against in Kenya. Knowing your value, the
capitalist intelligence received you with open arms.
Eventually,
when the Marxist cow died a natural death, they would adopt you by
offering you a job and unbeatable opportunities with acknowledgement
that, henceforth, you would swallow your pride fully and be party to the
capitalist empire.
Capitalist institutions in which you live have grown a thick skin to any criticism against their ideology.
You
could yell any critical statement against them yet you’d get away with
murder because, after all, the crying of a chicken doesn’t stop the
farmer from slaughtering it.
You justified your new
frontier by promising: “I will return to live in Kenya after the Kanu
regime has gone out of power.” To answer your call, eventually your
kinsman, Mwai Kibaki, removed Kanu from power democratically in 2002.
What happened that you failed to live up your promise to Kenyans?
The
only reason you have for living abroad is purely commercial — you are
paid well for your effort there. Within that framework, you have created
a philosophy to justify your stay by saying that, after all, your
people still benefit from your writing wherever you may be and that you
don’t have to live in Kenya in order to write.
If so,
for example, what is your philosophy in publishing a Kikuyu magazine in
the US, where there are only a handful of Kikuyus, instead of publishing
it in Kenya where we have a Kikuyu population of over six million?
Misplaced thinking?
You are likely to reply: “Who would support me to publish a Kikuyu magazine in Kenya?”
BAD MOUTHING YOUR COUNTRY
There’s
always a justification for everything. There is a proverb that says if
you want to eat a hyena, you say it is too young to have eaten a human
being.
I have to refer to a particular meeting I had
with you during a writers’ conference in Stockholm, Sweden, where you
breathed fire into white people’s ears with regard to the dictatorship
and inhumanity of the Kenyan government.
I took you
aside to a corner and asked you: “Why do you tell these white people
such things about your mother country when you know too well that even
if the white people were murderers they would keep silent about it to
outsiders?”
You answered: “I have the right to speak up
my mind about the evils taking place in my country.” I asked you:
“Speak your mind to whom?” You replied by shrugging your shoulders and
ended the conversation.
Mwana wa mutumia, remember
Wole Soyinka as one of the speakers at the conference? His powerful
voice spoke defensively about Nigeria and expressed how he had missed
the Nobel Prize by an inch.
When outside their country,
the protective Nigerians always give you the impression that their
country (kontry) is the best in Africa.
Most Kenyan
writers walk outside the country bearing the loudest mouths, airing
dirty Kenyan linen in international places. They get awfully excited
when they are applauded for their presentation. Why?
One
day, I challenged one of your diaspora colleagues, Prof Evan Mwangi:
“Why are you working in America instead of coming home to help build the
nation intellectually?”
The mysterious soft-spoken
scholar replied: “Where are the jobs in Kenya? Who wants us? They pay
peanuts forour sweat. That leaves us with no other choice but to engage
intellectual prostitution.”
Tell me, what is the cost of that prostitution to the development of our country and the so-called underdeveloped continent?
SACRIFICE FOR COUNTRY
Your
old University of Nairobi colleague, Professor Micere Mugo, a victim of
Kanu dictatorship like you, uses diplomatic words to say why she’s
teaching Americans. “Give me a job; I’d love to work in Kenya.”
I’ve
met some of the Kenyan diaspora intellectuals who have asked me:
“David, what magic have you used to make you survive permanently in
Kenya?”
They didn’t believe me when I replied,
“Sacrifice.”Wa Thiong’o, please, you being a big man in Africa and an
intellectual who would make big difference in building Africans
intellectually, I am imploring you to reconsider joining hands with us
on the ground to intellectually fend for the needy and desperate
transitional generation.
You will agree with me that the corpse of African misery can only be buried by Africans.
The
world wouldn’t give a damn to see your parents walk in tatters. African
misfortune is fortune to outsiders. One of those misfortunes is brain
drain, which can only be handled by sacrifice; that you have to eat less
in order to make someone else eat.
Please, join hands with me in paying tribute to Professor Wangari Mathai’s pace-setting sacrifice.
The
most traumatised woman in Kenya fought relentlessly, surviving all
manner of humiliation by a government that saw her as a liability. She
died not only for Kenya and Africa but also for the world.
She was never given any of the medals that President Kibaki thought his wife, Lucy, deserved more.
You
are an international celebrity who has never been given that medal
which, I think, you would not accept. By accepting it, you would be
condoning the rot in the government that does not recognise its
intellectual heroes.
The government was awfully
embarrassed when Wangari was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Even
thereafter, she was still treated like any other village woman.
Wa
Thiong’o, Kenya’s greatest woman died in Kenya and we buried her in
Kenya. She refused to work outside Kenya. She turned down that fat
salary.
There is big money in America, where you can
even demand $1,000 (Sh85,000) just for giving a public lecturer. In
Kenya, you would be lucky to get Sh10,000 for such a lecture.
However,
everything has a price. Bearing the cross on behalf of the people would
mean accepting a big pay cut. But the value you will have added to the
community would be invaluable.
STOP EATING ALONE
Wa
Thiong’o, intellectual prostitution is marketable for Kenyans, but at
what cost? You used to preach socialism. Have you changed and started
preaching and practising real capitalism?
What can Kenyans give you in order to for you to come home and help them bury the corpse of their misery?
Do you know how much inspiration you would instil in young people by interacting with them face to face?
Surely,
Africans need you much more than Americans do. You are an invaluable
elder who should be reachable always for consultation.
Drop money addiction for a noble course; the more money you make, the more you want to make.
If we can’t have a job for you, come and make use of your creativity to set up something which will institutionalise your name.
You are already an institution and you must give that institution a true playground.
You
could come up with something like Wa’Thiong’o Creative College
University, or a research institution, or a drama college, or a literary
centre. By so doing, you would also create jobs for others and be
bigger than what you are today in America.
Borrow a leaf from Wangari Mathai who created the Greenbelt Movement, which made Africa proud.
Stop
eating alone; eat with us! Help reverse the dragon of brain-drain that
is killing socio-economic developing in Africa. You will be surprised
how many other intellectuals will follow suit if you decide to bear the
flag.
Leave America to Americans. Instead, attract and
bring Americans to develop Africa.Brother, don’t be scared of Kanu
ghosts; they are no longer there. Even Kibaki has retired.
Creatively, there are more expansion opportunities for you in Africa than there are in the US.
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