It is a well-worn phrase, but Kenya truly feels like my second home. It has sheltered me at my worst and has given me good memories at my best. I always said that if I were to be exiled, I would go to Tanzania, but if I were to choose to live outside Ethiopia, I would settle on the coast in Kenya.

I must confess, I was never a fan of Ngugi Wa Thiong’o. I read his works out of a sense of duty and because, really, how many African classics of his level do we have? By some strange twist of fate, his passing was announced the day I arrived in Kenya on yet another escape. And I read the various tributes across media platforms- global and African. The Continent published a piece worth reading. Ben Okri also did a nice piece in the Guardian.

I had recently finished reading a really poor shadow of a biography of another giant of African literature of his time, Laureate Tsegaye Gebremedhin (1936-2006). The Laureate wrote mostly in Amharic, his native country’s language, but he also wrote several plays in English- some of which were produced in various African cities. Most of all, he was known in the circle of leaders of newly independent African countries for his essays and studies on African oral literary culture and expounding on this culture as the origin of Ancient Greek theatre, his pan Africanist views and for having penned the Organization of African Unity’s anthem (predecessor of the African Union).

That this whole preceding paragraph was necessary is itself sad, but we know so little of each other. We are not taught classics from our continent (efforts by South African universities excepted). We are not taught to write in our languages. (My favourite tribute for Ngugi Wa Thiong’o was from an ordinary Kenyan who wrote, “thank you for giving us language”. ) Or we do write in our own languages, nearly 90% of publications in Ethiopia are in local languages, but the translation culture does not exist.

Ngugi Wa Thiongo’s passing and the many parallels between his life and that of Laureate Tsegaye, who was only two years older than him, brought back feelings of anger at the fate of our African giants, and sadness at the luck of ours, we Africans.

Granted like all their fellow contemporaries who wanted to further themselves were obliged to study in Western countries – the UK for both Ngugi and Laureate Tsegaye. (It is also ironic that many of the products of this paternalistic colonial privilege of Western education made them mostly students of socialist and Marxist thinking – with a few exceptions like Laureate Tsegaye.)

The sadness is that, five decades later, far from reversing the trend, we are in the tens of thousands seeking, nay depending on, education abroad. The real sorrow lies in that we deplete our own institutions, our countries, and our people to serve ungrateful masters who, at the slightest problem, point fingers at the “foreigners” and who wave “the ban on international student visas” over our heads.

As the saying goes, “prophets are foreigners in their country”. So just like Ngugi Wa Thiong’o, Tsegaye Gebremedhin and hundreds of their fellow western educated brothers on their continent- you are welcome back home so long as “you are a good little boy.” If you escape imprisonment, enforced disappearance or exile by your own so called “brother in power”, you will suffer the fate of Thomas Sankara and Patrice Lumumba – the CIA will kill you.  

The tragedy is that, having resisted the temptation of and the push to exile you might have to go abroad to get any recognition even by your countrymen. The flip side of what James Baldwin aptly called “the colonial gaze”. They see us as “primitive, barbaric, or at the very best exotic” and we are perpetually in search of acknowledgement that we are “the special one” from the lot of barbarians. Or what Bob Marley termed “mental slavery”. This constant desire to be seen, to be approved, and to be clapped for “by the white”- your colonial masters. The list of publications on so-and-so journal from so and so university in Europe or the USA and the conference papers, the awards and prizes from so and so academy that are brandished as some sort of validation in any biography or memorial is sickening. But have we given our greats any alternative or platforms for celebration back home, much less at the continental level? Has that useless African Union served even this one purpose? Have they issued a line of tribute for Ngugi Wa Thiong’o?

Take heart in the fact that Ngugi himself would probably have been disgusted if they had. Just like I was at the tribute from the Kenyan President which probably have made Ngugi roar with laughter. Here is what he thought of the successive governments of his country- especially after he and his wife were attacked during their first visit to Kenya since their exile:  “the new Kenya Kwanza administration is dominated by individuals of questionable integrity, and who have faced just about every imaginable crime in our statutes, including theft and robbery” he wrote only in 2023.

If it is not to receive an award or attend “an all-paid expenses” conference somewhere that you have to go abroad, you will go in your old age to seek some or other medical treatment. And convalesce at one or more children’s places, who you have ensured have received foreign education and preferably foreign citizenship. And end up dying there anyway. This too is made part of your bio at your funeral as if it were some kind of achievement – “after having undergone medical treatment in so and so country for a long time”…… But perhaps to escape the lot of the African masses and gain three months or two years lease on life despite a dialysis is a personal victory worthy of eulogy.

Except it further complicates the question of how we Africans remember our giants. Here you have the example of a biography I mentioned earlier, half of which, the writer said, was based on an interview with the already gravely ill Laureate Tsegaye. That venture having been interrupted by the Laureate’s passing, the writer claims he obtained the family’s permission to pursue the effort with archives and other sources. That may be, but the book ended up as a mash-up of some anecdotes from childhood and youth, a large gaping hole where the writer was at his most mature and politically active, a pretentious attempt at description and narration by the writer himself, and a whole lot of plain extended curriculum vitae. In short, the book reduces a towering literary figure to a child and youth with a lot of grudges and sad memories who became an event trotter as an adult. The only redeeming part of the book was the few personal anecdotes in the foreword by the children.

That is precisely why we see in many northern hemisphere countries, entire academies and departments dedicated to the study and memorialization of national figures. This is not a matter to be left to the whims and schedules of mere individuals, no matter how well-intentioned they are.

Correcting narratives, false histories, and lies from our societies is part of a reconciliation process and a long, hard road that each of countries will have to embark if they are to achieve meaningful peace. But it starts at home with the way we individuals think of and say about ourselves, the way we remember our parents,  our ancestors and our communities. It is these individual and communal lies that add up to become nationwide narratives that make or break our countries. We first have to hold ourselves accountable for the tragedies that have befallen our country and our continent before wanting to hold power to account and demanding justice- where were we and what were we doing when our brothers were being tortured, exiled, imprisoned and killed?

In the words of Ngugi Wa Thiong’o, “Even more importantly, have we (Kenyans but also Africans) built institutions that can safeguard the rights of the citizens so that no one shall ever go into exile for expressing their thoughts? And is our country safe for those who espouse a different pathway for a more just and equitable society?” On the day of his passing, the cover page of The East African read “Kenya Aided Arrest of Activists in Tanzania”. So no, we have not been our brothers’ keepers and instead “sought the easy life”. We all have to face that truth sooner rather than later.

So dear Kenyan brothers, that you may not hold a grudge on Ethiopia for not celebrating your great, but also as a national of a country expert at letting many of its greats die forgotten or horribly, unrepresentatively, spitefully, incompletely, tribalistic-ally or politically memorialized, here is to entreat you to remember Ngugi Wa Thiong’o well.

Here is to entreat his family to handle any plans for a biographical book themselves, or not to handle it at all.

Here is to entreat our already elderly greats to write your own damn story yourselves.  

Kenya, May 31, 2025