Category Archives: Non fiction

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A review of Jeff Koinange’s Through My African Eyes

Book: Through My African Eyes

Author: Jeff Koinange

Publisher: Footprints Press Kenya

Year of Publication: 2014

Genre: Biography

I have been watching Jeff Koinange for years. I started watching him when he was working for KTN in 1995 when he would read the news. I also watched him on Africa Review,  the Reuters show that screened on the same channel.  Later I would see him after he moved to CNN and went around the continent showing stories from Africa’s biggest disaster areas before leaving and coming back to Kenya to help start the K24. At K24  he hosted thousands on The Bench on his show Capital Talk  among whom were heads of state, authors, actors, singers, business leaders and doctors. So as you can imagine, I was interested in seeing the story of the man who has brought us so much in the last couple of decades.

Jeff Koinange’s memoirs Through My African Eyes is about hit the book stands of the continent. The book talks about the life of Koinange from his birth in Nairobi in 1966 through his school days first at Hospital Hill Primary School. He transfers to St Mary’s School and then has a stint at the Pan Am as part of the flight crew before he starts college in the United States. On graduating, he starts the climb to the top of his game at CNN as its Chief Africa correspondent.

I have to confess that I loved this book very much. It answers some of the questions that I have been wondering about. He talks about the Koinange family he was born into. His father Fredrick Mbiyu Koinange, son of Chief Mbiyu Koinange, ran a string of businesses including a popular petrol station Koinange Petrol Station in Kariakor. The elder Koinange died when Jeff, the last born of the family, was two months old in 1966 leaving a widow to take care of four kids; two daughters and two sons. The funeral was attended by none other than President Jomo Kenyatta as he was a brother-in-law to the Koinanges.

Jeff tells us of growing in Kiambaa, a village not too far from the city of Nairobi then starting school at the Hospital Hill School before transferring to St Mary’s School. He sticks with Saints until he leaves high school followed by a two year stint as a cabin crew dude with Pan Am Airlines. Here he meets two women that will feature prominently in his future; Sonya and Shaila. He marries both of them first Sonya a naturalised American who helps him settle in the US, then Shaila who he meets when he is back home after his first divorce.

The bulk of the book is less about his life as a family man and more about his adventures as one of the most well known African journalists in recent times. Adventures that saw him decorated with some of the most prestigious awards internationally including an Emmy, a Peabody and a slew of others. As one reads his adventures through the continent I couldn’t help but get a Forest Gump feel about the tale of this young man from Kenya who gets to rub shoulders with Bill Clinton, Nelson Mandela, Joseph Kabila and his father, Yoweri Museveni and a bunch of others. He talks about the best and the worst of many African countries like Kenya, South Africa, Niger, Ivory Coast and Nigeria. He even goes as far as to cover the Hurricane Katrina disaster in the US and the Iraq war when it was at its worst. For me this part of the narrative was the most fulfilling as it showed that if one is diligent in their career then one can go far.

He acknowledges some of his flaws in his book. He was unhappy when he failed to be the head boy at St Marys School and he eventually became a bit extreme in his role as deputy head boy and had to change his attitude to leadership. He also states that he had a hard time with writing the scripts that he submitted to his bosses at both Reuters and CNN. In fact, he recollects how he would get chewed out during the annual periods of being assessed at the Atlanta offices. In spite of these challenges he goes on to be known as the “king of the net” for his stories from around the continent on CNN.com. He gets so good that he becomes one of the top tier of journos from CNN alongside Christiane Amanpour. Not bad for a boy who grew up having sno cream ice cream and Kenchic chips after church on Sunday in Nairobi, no?

The book is really an easy read and I rushed through it in a forty eight hour period. It doesn’t come without its flaws of course. He interviews the former president of Zimbabwe Ian Smith as part of his job in coverage of the so-called land grabs crisis in that country in the early 2000s. Ian Smith was never president of Zimbabwe but was in fact the prime minister until the black dudes took over. It’s not that big a deal in the whole scale of things but you have to wonder that if he didn’t this correct what other little inconsistencies are there in the book.

He also mentions a woman at the beginning that he was allegedly involved with but fails to give further information later on in the read. Was he trying to acknowledge that he knew about her alleged involvement his life but wouldn’t dignify it with a response? I will never know unless he writes another more scintillating expose on the same.

Apart from this I have to say that this was one of the most enjoyable read I have had in the recent past. Best Biography I have read this year without a doubt. I recommend it highly.

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Ken Saro Wiwa daughter Noo is a travel writer

Noo Saro Wiwa Photo by Chris Boland / www.distantcloud.co.uk

Ken Saro Wiwa was a Nigerian writer, television producer, environmental activist, and winner of the Right Livelihood Award and the Goldman Environmental Prize. He died at the hands of some very bad men running the government of Nigeria in 1995 when he was led a nonviolent campaign against environmental degradation of the land and waters of Ogoniland by he Royal Dutch Shell company. It was not Nigeria’s finest moment.

Noo Saro Wiwa the daughter of Ken Saro Wiwa has taken her dad’s mantle; as a writer. Brought up in England, she would be dragged back to Nigeria every summer to a country where she had to give up her creature comforts like regular running water and electricity. For the city folks who used to be dragged to shags aka the village all the time you know what she was going through.

After her father, activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, was killed there, she didn’t return for several years. Recently, she decided to come to terms with the country her father given his life for and has written the Granta Books published Looking for Transwonderland: Travels in Nigeria. Its Amazon page describes the book thus;

“Saro-Wiwa travels from the exuberant chaos of Lagos to the calm beauty of the eastern mountains; from the eccentricity of a Nigerian dog show to the decrepit kitsch of the Transwonderland Amusement Park. She explores Nigerian Christianity, delves into the country’s history of slavery, examines the corrupting effect of oil, and ponders the huge success of Nollywood.”

A book about Nigeria and the options for travel there. Looks good. The folks at Good Reads give it a 3.76 rating out of 5 which mean that I want to check it out. I assume you do too.

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A review of Invisible by Kevin Mwachiro

Book: Invisible

Author: Kevin Mwachiro

Publisher: Native Intelligence and Goethe Institut Nairobi

Number of pages: 111

Year of publication: 2013

 

In which I review Invisible by Kenyan writer Kevin Mwachiro which gives tales from Kenya’s queer community.

 

Our friendly neighbour President Yoweri Museveni this week signed a new bill making homosexuality a criminal offence in Uganda. This followed an uproar everywhere an uproar could be had with people on either side of his remarkable action making their views felt very strongly. As the furore dies perhaps it is a good time to look at Invisible, a book launched at the Goethe Institut a few weeks ago with stories from Kenya’s queer community.

In his introduction Mwachiro explains that he used the term “queer” as opposed to LGBTI as the latter term is a creation of the NGO community which make sense.

The way I imagined the book was that it was a bunch of tales from people and their first sexual encounter. This was not to be as it was a bunch of tales that would make any erotica writer cringe as there is no sexual enjoyment to be had if you enjoy erotica in whatever form whatever sex you are. If you want gay erotica you would probably get more exciting fare at the gay section of literotica.com.

So its not a book on queer guys and gals banging their brains out. What I discovered was a book about a wide variety of people in Kenya who are queer and how they came to come to terms with their sexuality. It covers everyone in the queer spectrum; gay, lesbian, transsex, bisex and everything in between. Some have embraced it with zest like a Western Kenya born Rena Otieno in her tale Darling!That storyteller, who also happens to an activist on all things queer, refuses to be forced into marriage by her close knit family.

Others aren’t as forceful in their embrace of their sexuality. In some cases, people marry women to hide their real desires and it doesn’t end well. It doesn’t end well for the guy who marries in Turkana, Nothern Kenya or the Muslim guy from Coast who marries a family relative as it all ends in divorce. From my reading this “marrying to be normal” thing is quite a common phenomenon in the queer community and sometimes works.

Some of the people in this little book see drama as they go about their queer lives. A transwoman Barbra is almost lynched by a mob as they are moving to a new home as they realized that they were not safe anymore. There are also drama filled incidents with families not accepting.

The book also includes letters to authority figures with the writers seeking their approval.

Ultimately, I was not very impressed with the book. This is because it shows queer people going through the same emotions that the rest of us have; seeking approval from parents, betrayal from loved ones, yearning to be loved etc. Usually these kind of emotions are easy to find in most written forms in Kenya as every book I encounter is usually about a man and a woman having a relationship. The novelty for the reader is that this may be the first time (to my knowledge) these emotions where same sex relationships are concerned are seen in print on these shores. Sadly with the age of the Internet this really doesn’t blow my mind as it would have if I read it twenty years ago.

One thing, this book would have been much more fun reading if it had focused more on certain aspects of the gay lifestyle. We learnt from Mwangi Githahu that the queers are here and drinking their beer in his excellent piece in the star the other day. In this book there is an offhand comment in chapter 13 My beautiful tomboy where the anonymous writer talks about beauty pageants, movie nights, film festivals etc. I would love to have seen more of this lifestyle here. Maybe in Invisible 2: Naxvegas Edition perhaps?

Do I recommend this book? Yes. The poems aren’t very good but some of the tales will make you realise that being queer isn’t a choice any Kenyan in their right mind would wake up one day and state; “OK people, I do guys now.” The drama that many of these folks have to go through for their sexual identity tells me that for all of them especially in our conservative society one has to be in a serious corner to come out. We have little choice but to accept them in all of their weirdness. I refuse to be hit on though; I draw the line there.

Looks like there are now three things in life that are inevitable; death and taxes. And gayism.

 

Gayism is a Kenyan term for being queer. Leave me alone.

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Commonwealth Writers non-fiction workshop for Uganda

Ella Allfrey.

Not everyone can write fiction. That’s not really a bad thing if you think about it as there are other forms of expressing yourself in the written word like memoir, literary reportage, essays et al. For those who want to get into that part of the writing game then the Commonwealth Short Story Prize cats have a something just for you.

They will be hosting a workshop to explore different ways to approach creative non-fiction led by the Chair of the 2014 Commonwealth Short Story Prize and former deputy editor of Granta, Ellah Allfrey. This workshop will be hosted in Kampala, Uganda from 9th -13th June and writers from Kenya, Malawi, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda, living and working in East Africa, are eligible to apply. There will be two places allocated per country.

To be considered, please apply to [email protected] by Friday 28 February. You must include the following, otherwise your application won’t be considered:

1. A submission of 2,000-5,000 words of a creative non-fiction piece in English (eg life writing, memoir, literary reportage, essay). The sample may be published or unpublished.

– Attach your story as a Word or PDF document, formatted in 12 point font, with double-line spacing
– Each page must be numbered
– Each page must feature a header showing your name and the title of the piece

2. Name, age, nationality and gender.
3. Postal address, email address and contact telephone number
4. A paragraph about yourself (giving your writing history, and saying something about any other occupations, eg what you do for a living, family life, interests, etc)
5. Three lines about what you hope to gain from this workshop if successful.
Commonwealth Writers will let you know whether or not you’ve been selected to take part in the workshop by 21 March 2014.

Don’t ever say I never told you what’s going down….

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Malkiat Singh Sells his rights for 1 million dollars

Malkiat Singh looks a lot like this Salim Lone dude.

If you are Kenyan educated then you must know the name Malkiat Singh. He is the guy who has written over 100 books that are used as textbooks in Kenyan schools. It has emerged that the writer has sold off the rights to all of his books to Longhorn Publishers for Kshs83 million – I million dollars. He has sold off the rights to the 43 books that are his money spinners in the education business.That’s a lot of money being paid to the 75 year old.

What does this tell me? For one, this means that the publisher decided that it was cheaper to pay off the man than give him his usual royalty check every month. This tells me that he was raking in much more that many would have imagined.

Can you see the rights to your books selling off for One million dollars? This dude has shown the way.

For more on the story and the man please follow these links;

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Zukiswa Wanner goes back to the roots with Maid in SA

South African writer Zukiswa Wanner emerged onto the South African literary space in 2006 with her thought provoking book The Madams. It was about a character who is black and opts to have a white maid (in Kenya we call them house helps) and the drama that goes with it all. It was an insightful look into the race relations dynamic from a fresh new voice.

She has since written several books with a wide range of topics including Behind Every Successful Man a book about a woman who leaves her marriage to start a business. Also in her list of books is Men of the South about three men and their relationship with one woman. She also has books for children and edited an anthology called Behind the Shadows with Indian/UK writer Rohini Chowdry.

The South African has gone back to her roots on discussions on the domestic workers situation in South Africa with her latest offering Maid in SA published by Jacana. The book is a tongue in cheek non fiction look the domestic worker that employers or madams will encounter as well a look at the madams themselves. The author has given an excerpt of the book on her blog and for those without the inclination to click to that blog here is a sample;

“With some exceptions, the middle-class African madam is a single parent/divorcee.

Which is great for you as you will have to be an epic fail before she fires you; after all, she needs consistency in her child’s life (at least you are not like that stupid bastard who always claims he will come and see the child and never turns up). You know how much she needs you because once you overheard her on the phone after your leave saying:

“Eish choms, I have finally established that uRefilwe is an alien or a super Mary Poppins. I don’t know how she manages to cope with such an energetic toddler and still find time to keep the house clean, laundry washed and ironed, dinner cooked. When she returned, I was so exhausted and it had only been one week. Eh. Eh. Neo is so exhausting, I decided I was going to take an extra day off work and just sleep. Ja neh? I don’t know how housewives who don’t have helpers do it day in and day out. Or those women with four children? Ja sies.”

 

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Dr Julius King’etich book on KWS coming soon

New book on the way.

Dr Julius King’etich is currently the chief operating officer of the Equity Bank the biggest bank in Kenya by customer base. He has also stints at as a professor in the University of Nairobi as well as at the Kenya Investment body. It is however his stint at the Kenya Wildlife Services that he will be forever be remembered for. He took over the then moribund body given the responsibility of managing the country’s wildlife resources and revamped it into a world class service.

The good doctor has been quoted as having his best decision as joining Starehe Boys after high School when his contemporaries preferred Iten High school and his worst as leaving as the head of University of Nairobi’s Student Welfare Association. It seems that the star manager has now decided to chronicle his experiences in the Kenya Wildlife Services in a new book entitled Doing it my own way! Fighting to do the RIGHT thing; A transformational story. As you can tell the Kenyan top executive has the liking for the extremely long title for their books.

The book will be available in bookstores from August 2013.

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Banker Martin Oduor-Otieno’s biography now on kindle

We have all heard of Martin Oduor-Otieno on these East African shores especially if you are interested in big business and specifically in banking. He came to national prominence when he was ‘plucked” from Barclay’s Bank to be in the “dream team” of technocrats who worked with the then Secretary to the cabinet Richard Leakey before their boss resigned in 2001 and they all left.

The bank executive was then head hunted by the KCB Bank group where he did his best to revive what at the time was a dying sleeping giant and changed its fortunes. He resigned recently and has taken a new role at the Deloitte.
The banker wasn’t just doing a good job for his bosses wherever he went. He figured that some folks would want to know what his experience in life was and thus came his biography Beyond the Shadows of My Dream: The Biography of Martin Oduor-Otieno. The book was written by Barrack Muluka, Rosemary Orlale and Odhiambo Orlale.

The book which is published by Mvule Africa Publishers launched to much aplomb with former Prime Minister Raila Odinga showing up to support the banker.

The book is now available on amazon and is described thus;

“The story of Martin Oduor-Otieno, even in its interim, captures the essence and wisdom in these words. That the subject of this biographical work towers head and shoulder above the standard good business leader and manager is not coincidental. It has its foundations in a disciplined even if somewhat regimented yet most stimulating childhood and upbringing under watchful and focused parents…

 

Pick up a copy and tell us what you think.

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Pumla Gqola book A Rebel Called Simphiwe now in stores

A renegade called Simphiwe now out.

Just after being appointed the chair of the new Etisalat Prize for African writing Wits University professor Pumla Gqola’s latest book A renegade called Simphiwe is now in South African stores. The book is set to be launched in Johannesburg on the fourth of July.

The book is a look at South African singer and activist Simphiwe Dana who is one of that country’s leading figures in their cultural circles. The book is a series of essays and has been described this way on the Amazon website profile;

“A Renegade called Simphiwe is award-winning feminist writer and scholar Pumla Dineo Gqola’s exploration of the public lives of the artist Simphiwe Dana, a rebel with several causes. In eight essays, Gqola shows why Simphiwe Dana is arguably the most significant cultural figure working in contemporary South Africa today…”

This means my Kenyan friends that you too can buy that book online and know a bit more about the contemporary South African icon. To buy the book please go here.

>> Other books by Pumla Gqola

:: What is slavery to me?: Post-colonial memory and the post-apartheid imagination

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Scenes from Shailja Patel’s Unsilence! Public lecture

Shailja Patel

Shailja Patel is one of Kenya’s more respected poets both of the reading and performance version as well as a human rights activist. The US based artist is also highly respect for her work Migritude a 90-minute spoken-word theatre show. It uses her trousseau of saris, passed down by her mother, to unfold hidden histories of women’s lives in the bootprint of Empire, from India to East Africa. Migritude is also a book you can buy on Amazon.

The performer last week unveiled her latest work in Nairobi’s Goethe Institut a public lecture “Unsilence! Writers & Society: A Public Lecture” which is a series of poems and other pieces. The event was attended by a cross section of those in the Nairobi literary community with a strong showing from Pen Kenya led by its president Khainga O’ Okwemba. They included Prof Chris Wanjala, Prof Elizabeth Orchardson-Mazrui, Dr Tom Odhiambo, Dr Waveney Olembo, Eliphas Nyamogo and Tony Mochama.

Here are some images from that event.

Prof. Wambui Mwangi

 

Author Marjorie Oludhe-Macgoye.

PEN Kenya President Khainga O’Okwemba

 

Kwani Trust Board Chairman Tom Maliti.

PEN Kenya Chair and Nairobi University Literature lecturer Prof Chris Wanjala

Kenyatta University Lecturer Prof Elizabeth Orchardson- Mazrui

Kenyatta University lecturer Dr. Waveney Olembo

Poet Stephen Partington

PEN Kenya Secretary General Tony Mochama