Book Review: When the Sun goes Down, introducing international short stories

Title: When the Sun Goes Down

Author: Emilia Ilieva and Waveney Olembo (Editors)

Publisher: Sasa Sema, 2011

Genre: Fiction (Anthology)

Pages: 199

Reviewer: Manuel Odeny

This title When the Sun Goes Down and other stories from Africa and Beyond is an anthology of sixteen short stories by Emilia Ilieva and Waveney Olembo, both dons in Egerton and Kenyatta university respectively.

Since literature is taught as a mirror which reflects the society this collection as a high school set book in English subject reflects not only to the Kenyan society but also at the international scene with increased titles from foreign writers.

Firstly with 16 stories with international writers, the book has surpass last year’s set book Half a Day and other stories which had 12 from Eastern and North Africa, this new set book has writers from Colombia, India, USA and Japan for the first time in Kenyan set books.

With the high rate of globalization brought by the speed of internet connectivity and media problem in far corner of the world like economic recession, terrorism attack and global warming affects us making this new set up a welcome.

Even though descriptions of the settings and characters may be alien to Kenyan students and readers, their themes are highly linked to us. The international story Tuesday Siesta by Colombian Gabriel Marquez and Sandra Street by Trinidadian Michael Anthony tackle issue of global warming and environmental degradation in an easy writing prose.

Equally, the issue of poverty is brought fore by USA writer Tillie Olsen’s I stand Here Ironing which contrasts the image of the rich western image.

On the other hand, the collection by the two writers Ilieva and Olrmbo has also managed to pass across readers the themes of HIV/AIDS, gender relations, corruption, war and human relations and peculiarities.

The main story When the Sun Goes Down written by Kenyan Goro wa Kamau and gave the book its title, talks succinctly on how society treats and stigmatise HICV/AIDS victims by following the lives of positive couples struggling for acceptance from their neighbors.

The story too like Kenyan Grace Ogot’s Bamboo Hut and Moroccan Leila Abouzeid Two Stories of a House also tackle the issue of gender relation not only in the family but also among members of the society.

Ugandan Moses Isegawa’s The War of the Ears which tackles the use of child soldiers in an African setting resonates well with the readers with the sentencing of DRC warlord Thomas Lubanga by ICC last week. Isegawa who was a refugee in Gulu Town of Northern Uganda writes from experience to invoke the image of a society living in terror of warped children militias. Interestingly, Isegawa is the author of Snakepit which had favorite reviews in Kenyan media few years back.

Other stories like Arrested Development by Zimbabwean Sindisile Tshuma talks of corruption and poort road infrastructure akin the chaotic matatus in Kenya while Sefi Atta from Nigeria talks about the issue of emigrants from West Africa going to Spain through North Africa by following the hazardous journey of a would be emigrant in Twilight Trek.

As an anthology the editors of When the Sun Goes Down have managed to open up high school students to literature of the world by increasing their appreciation with foreign writers. Equally, by mixing seasoned writers like Kenyan Grace Ogot and Nigerian Cyprian Ekwensi with new hands in literature like Sindisile Tshuma, Sefi Atta and Moses Isegawa, readers will appreciate the value of a story regardless of the timeline used.

With the government approval of the short story title with foreign writers for the first time shows that the high school students who are highly connected with Facebook, twitter and contemporary media will have the urge to not only read and appreciate African literature but open up to the world.

Book Review; Down African Second Avenue by Ezekiel 'Eskia' Mphahlele

Ezekiel 'Eskia' Mphahlele

Title: Down Second Avenue

Author:  Ezekiel (Es’kia) Mphahlele

Publisher: Faber and Faber first published in 1959

Pages: 222

Genre: Non-fiction (Auto-biography)

Reviewer: Manuel Odeny

 

The author’s life as captured in this title has relevance to Africans and more so Kenyans where, while in exile from his country South Africa, directed Chemchemi Cultural Center and published a short story In Corner B in 1967.

Like most South African biographies Ezekiel Mphahlele’s Down Second Avenue offers a personal account of the effects of degrading apartheid system. Born on 17^th December 1919, the first two chapters are dedicated to his childhood in Pietersburg where he lived with his unkind paternal grandmother who was ‘as big as fate, as forbidding as mimosa, stern like a mimosa tree”. His drunken father takes after the grandmother which sees his parents separate after domestic violence at a tender age.

The family moves on with the author’s maternal grandmother and Aunt Dora, who do laundry for a living, on Second Avenue of Marabastad slum in Pretoria which form the main setting of the book. He shares the tin shack with his little brother and sister, three uncles and three cousins as his mother works away in white suburbs as servant.

Mphahlele’s description of the slums of the 1920’s still resonates to poor housing and demolitions to date. He writes “Marabastad, like most locations, was an organized rubble of tin cans. The streets were straight; but the houses stood cheek and jowl, rusty as ever on the outside, as if they thought they might as well crumble in straight rows if that was to be their fate…the standards were always swaying in drunken fashion”. As kids they are forced to rummage through bins in Indian and white locations to supplement the meager family income.

The author escapes this appalling condition heightened by apartheid’s segregation through education offered by missionaries which gave rise to the country’s first black elites which spurred anti-apartheid resistance.  He went to school with Oliver Thambo and author Peter Abrahams among others.

As the noose of apartheid tightens education is controlled completely making the author lose his job as a teacher and ends up being an office messenger even after getting a Masters Degree with distinction.

Equally, locations considered to be in white areas are brought down without any negotiations with tenants like in Syokimau saga. House 2A of Second Avenue where the author grew is brought down.

“Marabastad is gone but there will always be Marabastads that will be going until the screw of the vice breaks. And the Black man keeps moving on…they yell into his ears all the time: move nigger or be fenced in but move anyhow” he summarizes the ordeal.

Without a job the author moves to Botswana to teach before coming back to his country to become a journalist and a literary editor with Drum Magazin in 1956. He try’s and get dissolution with politics by joining Africa National Congress, ANC before leaving the country for exile in Nigeria to teach in Lagos.

Ironically it is while in exile that his writing career takes off, this book was written while the author was in Nigeria. He says his short story Man must live again, whose story of the same title was in Kenyan set book Encounters from Africa, was an escapist writing since he “ can never summon enough courage to read a line from any of the stories”

“Writing in exile somehow feels like having just climbed down from a vehicle that has been rocking violently for countless times” he notes.

The book is divided in twenty three chapters with the author using simple English in a strong narrative to tell the story of his life within the struggles of apartheid. by giving full chapters to other characters in their daily struggles against the system the reader is offered a mirror to see the society in a wider angle. Equally by using interlude written in first person between major chapters, the reader get a chance to glimpse at the author’s personal struggles.

But by finishing the book with his move to Nigeria away from his country, Mphahlele falls for the pitfall of autobiographers’ ‘escapism’. Consider the following finishing: Barack Obama (Dreams from my father) where he leaves for Harvard from the Chicago slum, VS Naipaul (Miguel Street) moving from Trinidad to abroad trhe same with Camara Laye (The African Son) he leaves Mali for African in a scholarship.

Apart from Kenya and Nigeria, Mphahlele lived in Zambia and USA in exile before returning to his country in 1977 and changed his name to Es’kia as a means of recanting Christianity. He died on 27^th October 2008 which his two autobiographies, thirty short story collections and several poetry books leaving a major mark in African literature.

Book Review: John Grisham- The Litigators (New Title)

Book: The Litigators
Authro: John Grisham
Publisher: DoubleDay
Review: John Grisham Newsletter
Available: Excerpt and online Random House on this link

The partners at Finley & Figg-all two of them-often refer to themselves as "a boutique law firm." Boutique, as in chic, selective, and prosperous. They are, of course, none of these things. What they are is a two-bit operation always in search of their big break, ambulance chasers who?ve been in the trenches much too long making way too little. Their specialties, so to speak, are quickie divorces and DUIs, with the occasional jackpot of an actual car wreck thrown in.

After twenty plus years together, Oscar Finley and Wally Figg bicker like an old married couple but somehow continue to scratch out a half-decent living from their seedy bungalow offices in southwest Chicago.

And then change comes their way. More accurately, it stumbles in. David Zinc, a young but already burned-out attorney, walks away from his fast-track career at a fancy downtown firm, goes on a serious bender, and finds himself literally at the doorstep of our boutique firm. Once David sobers up and comes to grips with the fact that he?s suddenly unemployed, any job-even one with Finley & Figg-looks okay to him.

With their new associate on board, F&F is ready to tackle a really big case, a case that could make the partners rich without requiring them to actually practice much law. With any luck, they won?t even have to enter a courtroom! It almost seems too good to be true.

And it is.

The Litigators is a tremendously entertaining romp, filled with the kind of courtroom strategies, theatrics, and suspense that have made John Grisham America's favorite storyteller.

John Grisham's The Pelican Brief bigger than watergate

Title: The Pelican Brief

Author: John Grisham

Publisher: Islands Books; 1992

Genre: Fiction (Thriller)

Pages: 436

Reviewer: Manuel Odeny

The brown pelican, the symbol of Louisiana State of USA in 1960, are quickly going extinct thanks to the oil exploration at the delicate Mississippi delta which Is the birds’ breeding ground.

Its is these birds that John Grisham gives The Pelican Brief its title in his masterful  thriller of court room drama fast paced with gangsters, lawyers and sleazy politicians.

In a wave on conspiracy two USA Supreme Court judges are violently murdered. As Americans grapple with the shock, the FBI places its suspect list of Underground Army, Klansmen, Puerto Ricans and other conservative roughnecks.

Things only change when a second year law student in New Orleans take a long shot in the dark by detailing the killers behind the murders.

Darby Shaw, the young law student using public records speculates the murderer to be a crazy oil exploration magnate called Mattiece whose billion dollar oil reserve sits dormant as environmentalist wag war in the back loaded courts in a brief termed the Pelican.

Believing that the two judges would vote against him the magnate discreetly takes them down and pays the white house re-election campaign team a tidy amount for a favorable bench.

Things move discreetly until Darby Shaw’s Pelican Brief finds its way to the FBI before finaling settling at the White House with a snow balling effect of high class murders.

The murders seem uncoordinated: Shaw’s Prof dies in a car bomb, FBI lawyer is found dead in a hotel room, a young associate of a reclusive Republican law firm is mugged and an international renowned Arab assassin is gunned down in the streets of New Orleans as he tries to kill Darby Shaw.

Now the same murderers are on the hot heels of Darby Shaw.

The pieces of jigsaw finally fit together when Darby partners with Gray Grantham an investigative reporter with The Washington Post. As the scandal unfolds to surpass Nixon’s Watergate it threatens to put the president’s re-election on the hold.

The book has all the elements of a thriller: the little tit bits of facts craftily thrown about (history of brown pelicans), a dangerous assassin who murdered a Lebanese general as a teenager, a psychopath millionaire hell bend on destruction. To cap it all, a beautiful and smart damsel dodging hardcore gangsters partnering with a Pulitzer winning The Washington Post journalist as they dodge the bad guys, CIA, FBI and bombs going off as they try to nail the fools at the Capitol Hill.

The final ingredient is John Grisham’s ease of story telling and his knack of building thriller from law as he waxes the fable together to grip the readers to the book’s cover.

Book Review: The Partner by John Grisham

A Partner in Deed, is the Partner in Heels.

TITLE: The Partner
AUTHOR: John Grisham
PUBLISHER: Island Books
PAGES:
REVIEWER: Manuel Odeny

Life to Patrick a Mississippi lawyer sucks. Outwardly to friends and family he appears normal till he realizes what others don’t. he works as a rookie for two years for a politically connected firm before making partner and marries Trudy, a beautiful woman he meets at a party.

At the firm Patrick picks up a conversation between his four fellow partners who want to fire him because the firm is about to get $13 million from a case by Mcaistar- a former employee of Global Parts, a company selling nuclear war heads to the government of US.

When the company betrays Mcaistar by blocking his promotion and transferring him to a little town, he takes his revenge, resigns and looks for a politically connected firm to reap in millions. Mcaistar ‘uncovers’ a plot to over bill the government on a nuclear weapon deal.

At home Patrick meets his wife’s ex-husband who tells him of Trudy’s affair with a teenager lover that caused their first divorce. Patrick discovers of his wife double dealing and that their daughter is illegitimate.

While the mid-life crisis causes men to take on younger wives and some to go back to school, Patrick decides to disappear, he teaches himself how to disappear without trace: through death. Patrick fakes his death

So when a partner ‘dies’ and $13 million gets lost from a bank questions will star t fly-unanswered- and rumor mills wills grind-unverified. Is Patrick really dead? Did he take the money?

After watching his own funeral the hunt begins……….

The legal thriller write john Grisham novel is fantastic. The humor short and witty. Suspense grips as Grisham leads you to a specific path to the truth only to reach a dead end and direct you to a new unchartered path.

The reader will enjoy the book with its swift turn of betrayal and greed.

Edwin Savatia, Young author on online publication of his book Blood Creep Ghoul

Edwin Savatia during the interview

Edwin Savatia a final year student at Maseno University shares with readers of The Burning Splint about being published at 23 years and challenges facing young writers in Kenya.

Burning Splint: Who is Edwin Savatia?

Edwin Savatia: Am a Kenyan born on October 1988 in Vihiga County. I went to St. Joseph’s primary in Webuye and am an alumnus of Kakamega High School. Currently am a final year student of Bachelor’s of Arts Communication and Media Technology with IT in Maseno University.

BS: What is the genre of your writing? Can you describe the style of you writing?

ES: Am an author with a lining to fiction covering adventure and human interest stories. Am also a poet with over 20 poems on unpublished manuscripts, on top of my published book Blood Creep Ghoul, I too have one complete manuscript Witch of Mikovo: The 13 Mortal Hearts and another one still in the pipeline.

BS: Please highlight to the readers about Witch of Mikovo: The 13 Mortal Hearts?

ES: its main theme and setting is about culture and environmental issues in an ancient African town. A town inhibited by a council is inherited by a tyrannical major from his erstwhile humble and peace loving father.

BS: When did you start writing, and from where do you draw your inspiration?

ES: I started writing seriously in form 3 this was in 2005. I got then, and still get my inspiration from society in issues like betrayal, unrequited love and other emotional theme. I see stories in many things as family setup, society and politics.

With time though I took to fiction to express myself better.

BS: As a young author with your first book, who is any established mentor author inspiring you to write?

ES: locally I get inspired by David Maillu and Mejja Mwangi with his book Cockroach Dance; Nigerian Chinua Achebe and Kem Nankwo with his book Danda; and R.L. Stine.

BS: How to they inspire you?

ES: It’s the way they narrate a story simply with the African traditional touch.

BS: Let’s talk about your current book Blood Creep Ghoul and how you came to publish it?

ES: The book was published on February this year by I Proclaim Publishers where it costs about Ksh. 800 online and Ksh. 1,200 when ordered in hardcover. An author friend proposed I Proclaim Publishers which is an imprint of Dorans Publishers.

BS: I meant how you came about moving online away from established publishers in Kenya..….

ES: I was coming to that actually, I tried three local publishers, 2 of them didn’t bother to reply which was disheartening while Longhorn Publishers was positive by reading the manuscript and replying at about 2 months and they had a problem with the theme.

BS: As a young writer what are the challenges facing you and others in Africa with a bias in Kenya.

ES: The biggest is getting your first piece published and cutting a niche audience in fiction with romance, gangster or a war front story from conversations. Most publishers too don’t believe in young writers and worse still if a young writer is trying to break a niche.

BS: What about as a student and among friends and a family?

The Author

ES: I don’t follow you, in what way?

BS: I mean in line with challenges as a writer with time for studying and support from people closer to you with a make believe attitude that the profession doesn’t pay enough?

ES: Surely…. writing and editing stories is time consuming, but my family and friends are very, very supportive perhaps since writing is in line with my profession in Communication.  Blood Creep Ghoul ‘s  acknowledgment would attest to this.

BS: Talking about the Blood Creep Ghoul may you give us a gist of the book.

ES: it is a 142 page fiction book where a platoon sets camp in Kra Valley Forest with an aim of attacking another camp for gun powder which they successfully do. The ensuring counter offensive and fighting triggers a reincarnation of a long dead soul of a ghost.

BS: The blood creep ghoul.

ES: Exactly and that is where the book gets its title.

BS: How can readers access a copy?

ES: I Proclaim books is based in Pennsylvania USA and the book is available in online copy and hard cover by ordering it on the following link: http://ipaustore.com/ip4923.html they can also place an order and inquiries from my email and through The Burning Splint (contacts are at the end of this interview).

BS: As a Kenyan writer published by a USA publisher what is you take on the country’s publishing environment?

ES: Honestly, publishers should not take long with author’s manuscript because any feedback Is better than an agonizing silence. They too should give a chance to young writers to create a more diverse market.

BS: Comment on the notion of Kenyan youths being poor readers with invasion of social media and electronic media?

ES: The readership is low with a laxity caused by reading for immediate knowledge but not literary work during a leisure time.

Additionally, there no initiative to get an original copy with most across the age groups opting for pirated version affecting the industry. Equally publishers and readers are afraid in trying out new readers and opt for legends like Chinua Achebe.

BS: May you take this privilege to recommend 5 books from your shelf to the readers of The Burning Splint. Please leave a short comment after the author and the title?

ES: On top of the list if Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, because of its mastery in capturing the African story and society. Secondly is Philip Gourvetrich’s We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families which gives a real life experience of Rwanda’s genocide.

Thirdly is John Grisham’s The Last Juror with its mastery in court room drama, Mejja Mwangi’s Cockroach Dance would follow with the best of human life and society of the Kenya’s 70s and finally Kem Nankwo’s  Danda for throwing humor in Nigerian culture which reflects to other African countries.

BS: Career wise can you take writing seriously as a profession?

ES: Most definitely, am confident to pursue it because it is a passion and the best way to express myself not only as a write but to the all society.

BS: Patting shot?

ES: The society should embrace young writers by embracing their work with a positive criticism this would increase more literary works by Kenyans and Africans at large.

Most important too is the inception of new media in publishing which should be harnessed in the publishing industry without curtailing the professional standards.

BS: Thank you Mr. Savatia for your time The Burning Splint wishes you success in your endeavors?

ES:  Thanks Mannu….. I mean Mr. Odeny; I wish you success in your career too.

(For further inquiries contact the author on edwinsavatia@yahoo.com and the blogger at manodeny@yahoo.com or follow the following link directly : http://ipaustore.com/ip4923.html)

Prof Wangari Maathai; Nobel Peace Price laureate Challenge for Africa

Title: The Challenge for Africa

Author: Prof Wangari Maathai

Publisher: Arrow Books, 2009

Genre: Non-fiction

Pages: 319

Reviewer: Manuel Odeny

“Africans must make a deliberate choice to move forward together toward more cohesive macro-nations, where all can feel free, and at peace with themselves and others, where there is no need for any group to organize violence against their neighbors, then everyone would begin to reap the benefits of unity in diversity” Prof Maathai summarizes the book.

Born in Nyeri, Kenya in 1940 Prof Wangari became among first African elites who, alongside Barack Obama Snr benefited from airlift to study abroad before their hope for a better Africa against colonial governance was swept away to disappointments by the old guards guided by greed and otiose tribalism.

As an elite and a university lecturer the author could have easily joined or turned her face away from poor governance, massive land grabbing and environmental abuse by the political elites in Kenya, but she didn’t.

Through the establishment of Green Belt movement in 1977 she worked in trenches at grass root to plant over 30 million trees to bring peace, justice, and end poverty and ignorance against violation of human rights, corruption and save the environment. It is in this period that the author observed some colleagues leaving the trench to follow their own dreams while other ended up in jail, exile or as refugees.

Although she became the MP for Tetu in 2002, environment assistant minister, a Nobel peace prize winner in 2004 who have dined and wined with presidents, celebrities and powerful people Prof Wangari is still humbled to work with common wanainchi.

It is this aspect that makes the book special in a reader’s bookshelf from connecting ordinary African lives, policy of government and their effects to the world.

Sadly, Africa in the foreign press has been described in the nth world; poverty, war, disease, ignorance and poor leadership. The image carried across is that of absurdity and paradoxical of extreme wealth and extreme poverty.

Celebrities, NGOs and foreign correspondents calling themselves experts writing about the continent ignorantly like Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, pessimistic like Blaine Harden’s Africa: Dispatches from a fragile continent, with atavistic awe like Karen Blixen’s Out of Africa or slightly balanced like Martin Meredith’s State of Africa: A history of fifty years of African independence.

But when an African 2004 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Prof. Wangari Maathai’s writes The Challenge for Africa  it offers a new breathe of life into viewing the continent from an indigenous eyes who have spent her life making it a better place, and not a detached foreigner with patronizing air.

The facet taken by the author is optimistic on the enduring spirit of Africans, using culture, environment, self belief and positive leadership to bring light to the beleaguered continent.

Former Britain Prime Minister Gordon Brown, UN former Sec Gen Koffi Annan and South Africa’s Nelson Mandela writing on the book’s review sees Prof. Wangari’s book as an inspiration to the world by championing for humanity whose message of hope need to be supported by the world.

“I have written for The Challenge for Africa for all those with an interest in the fate of the African continent” the author writes in the introduction “I hope to explain, elucidate, engage, and, perhaps most important encourage all concerned to grapple with the challenges facing Africa today”

Divided tightly into 14 chapters, the book offers insight into the state of Africa as affected by international affairs like colonialism, Aid dependency syndrome and the unfair trade balance which has, though partly, negatively affected the beleaguered continent.

From the African perspective, the author shed a light in leadership skills, democratic space, sustainable and accountable management of natural resources, peace and justice. Additionally, the author links culture, African family, tribalism and environmental conversation by craftily intertwining them to the hope for Africa.

The Challenge for Africa is dedicated to all people of Africa by the author is a beautiful read that shapes the readers perception about the continent. Prof Wangari Maathai is also the author of Unbowed: A Memoir, The Green Belt Movement: sharing the approach and experience and Replenishing The Earth: Spiritual values for healing ourselves and the world.

An observation though is that Meredith’s book State of Africa: A history of fifty years of African independence is wrongly quoted as The Fate of Africa: From the Hopes of Freedom to the Heart of Despair by the same author and the indexing is shallow although these do not add a major flaw to the book.

Book Review: Journalist Philip Ochieng is accusing the African press

Title: I Accuse the Press: An insider’s View of the Media and Politics in Africa

Author: Philip Ochieng

Publisher: Initiatives Publisher, 1992

Genre: Non-fiction (Academic)

Pages: 210

Reviewer: Manuel Odeny

the slightly truculent and bellicose tone of Philip Ochieng’s I Accuse the Press is attributed to the muse during the 1979 course for New International Information Order by UNESCO to try an rectify the one sided flow f information from the West to Africa and other developing countries. The former counties have been reported negatively with most media content coming from the West.

By then Ochieng was a sub-editor at Daily Nation.

In the book’s introduction the author notes his anger at his colleagues who took side with the western world.

It’s this basis that among my university shelves I found the book standing out in western media books as an insider’s view of the African press.

During my undergraduate media and communication course work I found the book appealing in the state of African press, freedom on press, editorial control by owners and government, light into government/party newspapers and most importantly the dearth journalism skills on practioners.

As a start up reporter in 1966 for Nation the Kenyan author ended up working in major papers in three East African countries of Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda as columnist, reporter and editor. Interestingly, his work made Ochieng to end up in acronymous situations with colleagues and a guest of the state in Kenya and Uganda.

In Uganda he was arrested within weeks of editing a government paper while the Kenyan government could not comprehend him linking it with the Entebbe raid by Israelis in Target magazine in 1976.

This stints and his studies made him be viewed as a communist during the height of the West and East –ism schism and saw him prevented from writing in local dailies in 1975.

Though banned his writing skills saw him co-author with Joseph Karimi a successful book Kenyatta Succession.

This author’s expense knowledge, experience and life as an African journalist while still writing two columns for Nation that makes him an authority in African press, but not a saint (as I have pointed at the end of this review).

I Accuse the Press is divided into six chapters, the first ‘Enemies of the press’ is a talk on new international information order and place of press in Africa as either an ally r enemy of the people or the government. In this chapter the author is aided by historical account of African press and philosophical views from communication researchers like Wilbur Schramm.

He next two chapters written from the author’s own experience shows how even when a small freedom of expression exists there is a constant risk of clump-don by governments afraid of nay criticism, and censorship by proxy on the editorial content by media owners. Ochieng notes the thin skin of political leaders on criticism and their poor briefing to local press at the expense of foreign press curtails media growth in Africa.

The following chapter and most scathing in accusing the African press is the dearth of journalistic ability to manipulate their tools of trade like language, style, knowledge and intellectual implement. As a book worm, the author chides journalists who never read and research, and instead opt for shallow reporting.

In this chapter too, Ochieng decries tribalism and stinginess in the Kenyan press that makes journalistic training to be poor for fear of poaching between the media houses and shifting of poorly paid reporters to public relations. He observes:

“You can teach a potential hunter how to wield his spear and aim it unmistakably at an animal. But if you do not at the same time teach him what kind of animal to aim his spear at with the greatest benefit to his tribe (Africa), he may as well jolly aim at a member of his clan” he writes n even western educated African journalists.

On the other hand the second last chapter looks at government ownership of press like the now defunct Kenya Times which the author was the Editor in chief in 1988-91. Though humanely conceived by governments to the citizens notes the failure of the government paper as in other African is due to social, economic, political, technological and intellectual problems.

The last chapter checks the rise and fall of indigenous media empire Stellascope publishing company owned by Hillary Ngweno making the author conclude the working of an African journalist should never be constrained by indigenous, foreign state or commercial ownership in advocating for the continent’s total strategic interests.

Good for Africa, but….

Though written before 1922 which my lock out readers not well versed with the region’s history plus the author’s writing style of using ‘heavy’ vocabulary I would recommend it if one needs an insight in regional press since Ochieng is a walking encyclopedia in this. This was evident during the 50 years celebration of Daily Nation by the author’s insightful articles.

The experience f the author as a journalist and the angle he takes in media is relevant especially with press freedom in Africa as a mirage with factors like technology and illiteracy keeping major populace in dark. I found such lines helpful since I personally think (though dissent) that the fourth estate mantra never exists in Africa.

I also like how ‘smooth faced’ journalist in the acknowledgement and within the book became today media geezers with a mark in the industry like Lucy Oriang’, Tom Mshindi, Austin Bukenya, Henry Chakava, Wangethi Mwangi, Salim Lone, Joseph Odindo, Benjamin Mkapa (Former Tanzanian president) to name just a few.

The book with the major changes in the media scene needs to be revised to capture tics like ICT change, entry of new players and how media situation in Africa is since the 1980s UNESCO  push is still a staus quo.

My only reservation with the book is the forward by Dr. Calestous Juma which places the author on a pedestal as a ‘saint’ in the media. I find these offhand since the book is based n the author’s personal experience which since are based n controversies some personalities like Goerge Githii are portrayed negatively.

Though the forward states that ‘the book invokes an Olympian image that is worth recounting’ it doesn’t make the author a saint pointing out at the African press in any way. This thought is in the light of Philip Ochieng’s column Fifth columnist after the Mr. Bosire’s commission on Goldenberg scandal by the KANU government implicated him of getting Ksh. 250,000. He writes:

“Hypocrisy is a sin more deadly than Goldenberg. I would be a hypocrite to say I have never committed it. But it is agonizing to be wrongly accused of it….the Bosire commission affirms that Goldenberg paid me (K)sh.250,000. Let me not deny it. Indeed, Mr. Bosire’s figure may be conservative. When I worked for president Moi as editor of The Kenyan Times, he sometimes shoved a few thousand quid into my pocket.”

Reviewing Raila Odinga An Enigma in Kenyan Politics by Babafemi Adesina Badejo

Raila Odinga

Title:  Raila Odinga An Enigma in Kenyan Politics

Author:  Babafemi Adesina Badejo

Publisher: Yintab Books, 2006

Genre: Non-fiction (Biography)

Pages: 367

Reviewer: Manuel Odeny

The Author Babafemi Adesina Badejo, a Nigerian working with The UN in Nairobi in this biography of Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga tries to outline the role and contributions of Raila in Kenyan political scene.

On the book’s preface the author acknowledges that Raila Odinga’s social and political life, especially earlier would not only excite Kenyans but also the international audience and political students.

True to the preface 6 years after being published and launched the book is still fresh and elicited wide coverage in Kenyan press especially about the 1982 coup attempt, clamor for multi-party politics in 1990s, NDP-KANU merger which ended Daniel arap Moi totalitarian regime and the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), with a copy in the appendix,  which collapsed the NARC government.

The desire to write Raila Odinga Am Enigma in Kenyan Politics was born to the author on 15^th November 2002, a month after Raila declared Kibaki tosha at Uhuru park.

Raila accepted the author’s requested for his biography on the same date.

Badejo notes;

‘My intention in this work is simple. It is to tell as briefly as possible, the story of politics in Kenya and Raila’s role in them. In effect, it is a desire to write two biographies in one’

Individuals with imprint in Kenyan political history for more than 60 years are Jomo Kenyatta, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, Tom Mboya, Daniel arap Moi and Raila Amolo Odinga, making Raila’s biography to be timely.

Making of the young Raila Amolo Odinga

Jaramogi

Divided into 22 chapters, Badejo dedicates the first 5 on his upbringing.

In 1945 when a new beginning for the world dawned with an end of WW2 Raila Amolo Odinga was born to Adonijah Jaramogi Oginga Odinga and Mary Juma Ng’ong’a on 7^th January.

Rayila meaning ‘a nettle sting’ was the second child after Ng’ong’o Molo Oburu (Odinga) and the younger Ngire Omuodo Agola who was jailed in 1983 and died of diabetes.

The young Raila was first inspired by his father in quest for independence while living in Kaloleni estate, Kisumu where he accompanied Jaramogi in many meetings. In one such meeting to Uganda to raise funds for Ofafa Memorial Hall (after Ambrose Ofafa, a Nairobi Kaloleni councilor assassinated by Mau Mau fighters in 1954 ) notes:

‘This and other trips helped me to develop confidence that assisted me when I went abroad at a relatively young age’

Raila attended Kisumu Union Primary School, Maranda school from 1955-62 before joining Herder Institute and University in Magdeburg, Germany where changed from pursuing medicine to engineering. The scholarship was facilitated in 1960 airlift by Jaramogi who used Kwame Nkrumah and Abdel Nasser passports after his was seized by colonialists.

To Germany he passed through independent Tanzania where Julius Nyerere helped with travel documents and Egypt where they demonstrated for Mandela’s release.

The expanse student body shaped his political career by joining student associations and opened Kenya People’s Union offices in Europe. Thinkers like Frantz Fanon, Karl Marx, Kwame Nkrumah, Mao Tsetung, WEB Dubois, Marcus Garvey, Fidel Castro (History Will Absolve Me), Galbraith and Adam Smith too shaped his intellectual.

His father’s detention after forming KPU in 1966 disrupted Raila's PhD program where he come back to Kenya and started lecturing in University of Nairobi department of Mechanical Engineering in 1970.

It's here that he met his wife Ida Betty Odinga, born on 24^th August 1950 in Migori to Nehemiah and Rosa Oyoo. Ida graduated with Education Arts in Geography.

Cutting the political teeth

Kenyattaa

From chapter 6-11 the book  looks at Kenyatta’s repressive government, ban of KPU in 1969, infamous 1982 parliamentary one party coup, 1982 government coup and Raila incarceration by Moi.

A taste of Kenyan politics to Raila was in Kisumu massacre on 25^th October 1969 during the opening of New Nyanza General Hospital or Russian, a day after Raila arrived in the country. Kenyattaa used inflammatory remarks which culminated to over 100 deaths, and Jaramogi and Achieng’ Oneko’s detention. 

These incidences lead to Mau Mau era oathing by GEMA and Kamba to keep the presidency in their community.

Prior, tension was high with fresh assassination of CMG Argwings-Kodhek and Tom Mboya in January and July respectively on 1969 (at least they have streets named after them!). And Pio Pinto Gama. JM Kariuki (Nyandarua West MP) followed suit in 1975.

Kenyatta regime's detention facilitated by Mboya and Moi netted Dennis Akumu, Ngugi wa Thiong’o ( for Petals of Blood, 1977), Sharriff Nasir, Ochola Mak’Anyango, Oyangi Mbaja, Opwapo Ogai, Oluande K’Oduol, Rading Omolo, PP Ooko, Caroline Odongo (African American, Jaramogi PA), Bildad Kaggia (Thika MP), Were Olonde, Ochola Achola, Kimani Waiyaki (After Nairobi’s Waiyaki way first, African town clerk), Wasonga Sijeyo, Koigi wa Wamwere, Martin Shikuku, Jean Marie Seroney (Deputy Speaker) and John Keen (Maasai MP) amongst others.

Sharrif Nassir is succinct about Kenyatta’s detention as quoted by Andrew Morton image makeover of Moi in Moi: Making of An African Statesman as saying;

‘You could never talk in front of Kenyattaa. I remember he once called MPs together and told them: ‘if you talk my bird will take you away’…..the terror was such that you were never able to sit down with three people without knowing who was who. You were afraid it might get to Kenyattaa and you would be jailed’

It was these period of detentions that Raila helped KPU, after joining KANU, to run the 1974 and ’79 general election which failed. To succeed surrogates of KPU sucked from KANU were encouraged to seek change.

Mboya

This period saw radicalization of university student’s politics and raise of academics like, amongst others, Ooko Ooki-Ombaka, Peter Anyang Nyong’o, Oyangi Mbajah, Atieno-Odhiambo, David Mukaru Ng’ng’a, Patrick Sumba, James Orengo, Salim Lone and Mwashengu wa Mwachofi. They wanted to form Kenya African Socialist Alliance (KASA).

Before realizing the dream VP Mwai Kibaki, Nicholas Biwott, Charles Njonjo aided by legal advice of Paul Muite rushed the infamous section 2A constitutional change making Kenya a one party state by a legal fiat.

Koigi wa Wamwere on Sunday Standard of 9^th May 2004 noticed this move closed all avenues for change leading to the 1982 coup, he stated:

‘by the 1982 constitutional change, the Kenyan government justified war against itself”

The Kenyan 31^st July 1982 coup

Due to controversy surrounding the issue Raila didn’t accept involvement in the coup bringing out Badejo’s marvelous knack of a biographer to piece the story together from newspaper and interviews.

Sparred by marginalization of Luos, poor facilities and fear of another coup by Kambas made james Waore Dianga, Hezekiah Ochuka, Pancras Okumu and Ogidi Obuon from Kenya air force to plan the coup. They made it clear that the new government could be purely military making civilian participants to seek only change.

Raila, Jaramogi, Patrick Sumba and Odongo Langi were the purported civilians who faced detention.

The coup survived shortly forcing Moi to hid in a Maize plantation before it was squashed.

In Raila’s first detention from 11^th August 1982 to 5^th February 1988, he tactfully implicated Njonjo causing his sucking. The second without trial followed six months later on 14^th August 1988 in the newly built infamous Nyayo House torture chambers till 21^st June 1989.

The third detention till 21^st June 1991 when he was released on health grounds was in the clamor for multi-party politics on the 1990 famous Saba Saba rally at Kamukunji. This also saw incarceration of, amongst other, Alexander Muge, Kenneth Matiba, John Khaminwa, Gitobu Imanyara, John Henry Okullu and Mohammed Ibrahim. 

The author details effect of these detention on family members, business associates especially his wife who lost her job and his young children.

After passing of the multiparty system and the formation of a party, Forum for the Restoration of Democracy (FORD) Moi’s government was hell bent on assassination attempt forcing  Raila into exile through a boat ride to Uganda and only came back latter for 1992 general elections campaign.

FORD, NDP-KANU merger and MOU

The Goldenberg scandal rocked FORD when Kamlesh Pattni donated Ksh 2M, tribal internecine wars and the demise of Jaramogi on 20^th January 1994 caused disintegration.

This saw Raila buying National Development Party (NDP) from Steven Omondi Oludhe for 0.5M and a used Mercedes, and send the registrar into a spin by showing interest in KENDA and Labour Party. With this and a go getter spirit he resigned from FORD and won the cosmopolitan Lang’ata seat in a risky by- election

When NDP took the third position in 97 elections Raila masterminded a merger with KANU which wanted a majority in the parliament. On its part NDP wanted government’s material support and logistic, and re awake spineless leaders like Kalonzo Musyoka, George Saitoti, Musalia Mudavadi, Katana Ngala amongst others.

Raila’s countered Moi’s use and dump policy when he thought he had the Luo’s vote to pass Uhuru Kenyatta as a candidate. Mark Too who facilitated the merger observed;

‘president Moi underestimated Raila by thinking that the dissolution of the NDP had turned Raila into a lion in a cage that could roar but not kill’

Daniel arap Moi

The walkout from New KANU to form Rainbow Alliance leading to the formation of NARC and later to the degeneration of the first coalition government due to the miss understanding of the MOU discussed in the book.

Badejo too  has shed Raila’s involvement in the protracted struggle  for a new constitution, I have moved from reviewing this area since its still fresh to most readers.

A critique of the book

Raila Odinga An Enigma in Kenyan Politics is a marvelous abridged version of Kenyan political history over the  last 60 years without pedantries written by an outside observer which, honestly, gives the book credibility above tribal bigotry by critics if it were to be written by a Kenyan.

The book’s attempt to cover Raila’s un-scathed life through the political landmines of communism label, ‘dirty politics’ in Luo Nyanza, courage and resilience in bettering Kenya is well done.

Additionally, Badejo’s simple language and knack of narration gives African political challenges from an African perspective in flowing chapters well crafted to carry the reader smoothly across to the end. 

To avoid a construe of all biographies into hero worshipping the author is balanced in a marvelous interview and research although most interviewee’s back tracked  in fear of being associated with Raila, like Moi.

The Book

Worth of note is the unbiased quotation on Raila by different people like Paul Muite’s;

‘Raila is in the same model as people like Hitler….He is somebody who would destroy a country if he sees power…. (he is) determined to seize power by hook or crook. But he must be stopped from seizing power…. He is unelectable and therefore would design short-cuts to grab power’

I will recommend the book to enlighten the reader in Kenyan political landscape.

Book Review; The River Between by Ngugi wa Thiong’o

Ngugi wa Thiong'o

Title: The River Between (School Edition)

Author: Ngugi wa Thiong’o

Publisher: East African Educational Publishers Ltd, 2009 (first 1965)

Genre: Fictional (Literature)

Pages: 148

Reviewer: Manuel Odeny

Waiyaki, the story’s protagonist while standing on God’s hill overlooking Mount Kirinyaga next to Kikuyu’s holy tree, the Mugumo, sees the expense ridges and valleys lying like dormant lions waiting re-awakening.

This tranquility is shattered with British colonials who bring change that places the society in a cultural dilemma of enlightenment or going back to ancestral roots, this theme of change is core in this Ngugi’s first book.

The author Ngugi wa Thiong’o skillfully narrates the effect of change through two opposing ridges which face each other like angry fighters before a clash. The first and greater is Kameno which is home to the great seer Mugo wa Kibiro who prophesized the coming of white men. Waiyaki and his father Chege are direct descendants of Mugo from this ridge.

Its rival, Makuyu embraces Christianity and white man’s way of life as lead by an overzealous preacher Joshua.

In this life and death struggle for leadership and supremacy there is a river between the two ridges defying the season of time and change. Representing the continuity of life the river between is Hanoi which Ngugi gives the book its title.

In the story, Waiyaki becomes an African elite after acquiring the white man’s education in the missionary schools which he tries to impart to the society to counter the encroachment of the white man. Makuyu’s ridge overzealous Christianity and Kameno’s conservative tribal purity of folk tradition threatens to destroy the society unity.

The author gives hope in this quagmire as the rift between the two ridges widen as the book ends in a love story. Waiyaki bound by an oath to safeguard conservative way in Kameno marries Nyambura, an impure uncircumcised girl from Makuyu whose father Joshua leads the Christians.

Meditating quietly in God’s hill after making a choice to marry Nyambura, Waiyaki observes change in the society;

“Circumcision of women was not important as a physical operation; it was what it did inside a person. It could not be stopped overnight. Patience and, above all, education, were needed. If the white man’s religion made you abandon a custom and then did not give you something else of equal value, you become lost. An attempt at resolution of the conflict would only kill you.”

This attempt makes Waiyaki to be betrayed by his two childhood friends Kinuthia and Kamau, and the all society.

The River Between is Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s first novel written in 1961 while he was a second year student in Makerere University College, Kampala Uganda, at the age of 23 years. Although published four years later after Weep Not Child (1964, Heinemann) it established Ngugi as a prolific writer.

The clarity of prose, the simple and powerful words he uses gives him magnetism as a narrator giving the reader a mirror to check the society through the novel’s characters.

This school edition which the author has changed some lines and phrases is a high school set book in Kenya. Writing the preface of the book from Irvine California where he is a don the author hopes the book will inspire young readers to write like the same way he felt challenged before independence when there were no African writers.

Ngugi is an author of several plays, essays and novels like Petals of Blood (1977) which caused his detention by the Kenyatta government, Matigari (1987) and wizard of The Crow (2006). His novels A Grain of Wheat (1967) and Devil on The Cross (1982) were voted among AFRICA’S 100 BEST BOOKS of 20^th Century.

Review: The Autobiography of Malcolm X; A Glimpse of Black Paradise.

Title:  The Autobiography of Malcolm X

Author: Malcolm X (Assisted by Alex Haley)

Genre: Non-fiction (Autobiography)

“Only Malcolm X’s autobiography seemed to offer something different. His repeated acts of self-creation spoke to me; the blunt poetry of his words, his unadorned insistence of respect, promised a new and uncompromising order, martial in its discipline, forged through sheer force of will” US President Barack Obama in Dreams From my Father; A story of Race and Inheritance.

Perhaps in the turn of the 21^st century Malcolm X is the most physical symbol of black liberation globally. X was born Malcolm Little on May 19^th, 1925 in Lansing, Michigan.

In the turn of the century Times magazine named The Autobiography of Malcolm X as the best and most powerful work of non-fiction. Atallah, X’s daughter in writing the forward of the book recounts how the US public erstwhile inertia about X got a jolt with release of X movie by Spike Lee.

This ‘X renaissance’ saw commercialization of his portrait, in theaters and a soaring interest about his life.

His transformation from a ghetto hustler to an international black crusader is most remarkable. After dropping out of school at 15, buoyed with wrong role models and influence he ends up (inevitably) to jail for 6 years.

He suffered anguish and ignorance down the society ladder as an addict, ironically he finds solace and peace in the jail library and converts to Islam to change above white prejudice.

US President Obama’s  search for fluid state of identity in his life falls for this book like most readers globally. Malcolm X’s The Autobiography of Malcolm X has changed lives of millions and shaped many perspectives both white and black.

About a half a century after his assassination on February 1965 in New York, his description of racism and trouble in US is still potent to date.

“I have given to this book so much of whatever time I have because I feel, and I hope, that if I honesty and fully tell my life’s account….read objectively it might prove to be a testimony of some social value” Malcolm X writes, and goes on to give a vivid picture of his hustling years: running numbers, selling drugs, pimping, burglary among others.

The violence which snuffed the life of X started while the author was still in the womb. His mother Louise Little, a daughter of a white man and a black woman in illicit affair narrates to her son how the Ku Klux Klan invaded their house.

The father a member of Universal Negro Improved Association, UNIA led by Marcus Garvey is brutally murdered by the Klansmen leaving the family in destitution.

Like most white lynches the murder is never investigated and an insurance company refuses to pay up a policy breaking up the family further. His mother ends up in a mental institution while the eight children wind up in approved homes.

It’s this powerful narrative voice holding the reader with a vice grip that the author starts in the first two paragraphs ‘Nightmare’ and ‘Mascot’ covering this fallout.

After completing 8 grade Malcolm moves with his sister Ella in Boston where he enters the nightlife of hustling. His relationship with an older woman Sophia and burglary ultimately sends him to jail in 1946.

Ironically social conditions against blacks in jail give the author a transformation. He immerses himself into books where his oratory skills take shape in debates.

After his release he joins Elijah Mohammad’s Nation of Islam where he quickly raises from an assistant minister to head the New York Temple.

Malcolm easily finds the right note with the ghetto masses for revolution. His black racial pride and the militant and spiritual struggle for self respect sees his ascend not only in US, but globally. 

He soon falls out with Elijah Mohammad due to jealousy.

Malcolm X as an international figure is highlighted in the last chapter on his visit to Mecca, Egypt, Lebanon, Ghana and Nigeria. He discover true Islam, racial tolerance and meets foreign leaders like Kwame Nkurumah. 

As the curtain of his life drapes, Malcolm prophetically see the violent death of his father in snuffing off his old age.

“To come right down to it, if I take the kind of things in which I believe, then add to that kind of temperament that I have, plus one hundred percent declaration I have to whatever I believe in- these are ingredients which make it just about impossible for me to die of old age”

As the book ends the malignant disease of racial bigotry by whites in US took a violent twist in riots while integration took a stalemate. X ended up being labeled a ‘demagogue’ and ‘a hater’ among others.

This prophetic stalemate saw Martin Luther King, Jnr whose integration stance failed and was assassinated for having a dream.

Malcolm X’s The Autobiography of Malcolm X gives the reader what shaped the author since the great depression, WW2, Marcus Garvey and Baptist upbringing though important during his time takes a backstage.
 

He finally summarizes his life:

“Sometimes I have dared to dream to myself that one day, history may even say that my voice- which disturbed the white man’s smugness, and his arrogance, and his complacency- that my voice helped save America from a grave, possibly even a fatal catastrophe.”

The text of the book ascertains this quote.