Friday was first day that I spent a whole day at the museum to enjoy the textures of Kenya’s real literary festival. I spent the day mostly meeting up with authors and getting a full feel of the museum and what was happening about.

Take for instance the “Diaper Mentality” exhibition curated by our good pal Boni Mwangi of Pawa254 fame. He has been doing a lot to bring to light the ills that our greedy government has been to us as a society. Also I had to check out the morning session that was being run by Disraeli a UK rapper and L-ness a Kenya emcee. I know L-Ness as one of the more respected emcees in Nairobi right male or female. You can check out her material on Mdundo and you know that she knows her craft.

The Disraeli fellow I didn’t know much about apart from him being some hip hop aficionado. He was here on the invitation of the British Council and I’m thinking… typical Brits and their arrogance bringing us some white boy to rap in Africa. By the time I left that Dome, one of the most crucial venues at the festival, I had a new respect for that Disraeli dude. He can beat box and he can play the guitar and he can rap. L-ness and he taught us the tenets of Hip Hop which are beatboxing, rap, graffiti, turn tabling (first time I heard of DJing being referred to this way) and street fashion. Did I miss something?

The day included a stop by the lunch stand where I had a sample of the food that was being given to the artists. Artists were the people who were doing all the sessions that folks will be taking part up and down the venue over the next few days. The food offered was rice, potatoes, sukuma wiki (kales to you foreigners reading this) and some meat. It was so horrible that I was forced to buy food at the same food which was very nice. It looks like the people who were there were doing it in such a way that you had to buy their shawarma or eat that nasty stuff they were picking from that huge pot in the back. I didn’t appreciate that. If you want to give food to someone give them something edible.

Away from that food issue I enjoyed chatting with some of the coolest individuals as the day progressed. I met for instance Ciku Kimeria who is a development worker who also has a book out called Of goats and poisoned oranges . Also met Ndiritu Wahome who is usually based in North Carolina, you couldn’t fail to notice him pronouncing it North Karr-raina hehe, who has written a fantasy book The Sad Artist and Other Fairy Tales. Then there is Prajwal Parajuly the author of The Gurka’s Daughter and The Land Where I Lie which was being launched at the festival. It was a full house up in there.

The evening was reserved for the gala which was to be held at the main courtyard with Wole Soyinka as guest of honour. The gala had a Kshs6,000 price tag to get in so some of Nairobi’s leading folks were in the house including Senators like Anyang’ Nyony’o father of Lupita Nyong’o of Oscar winning fame. Who knew the day would come when Prof Nyong’o, famous as he is, would now be referred to as related to a more famous person who was his child no less. Also in there was Dr Auma Obama, seeing as we are going with people and famous relatives, who was the sister of some President dude from a minor North American country. The ambassadors and the first ladies of counties were in the house.

Before settling at the gala I made my way to the Dome another venue in the museum for the Afreeka poetry do. The number of dreadlocks was quite high compared to the gala area and it was really happening with emcees introducing one poet after another; this was clearly the hip event this evening. As I was there the poet I saw performing was Vuyelwa Maluleke the South Africa who reminded me of a once famous Kenyan poet called Caroline Nderitu. She wasn’t horrible with her content like Nderitu but her look was text book CN. It was really surreal watching someone who looked like our poet spitting out some pretty good poetry.

I eventually went back to the gala area and here I saw many performances. One of these was these from Botswana performers Berry Heart which was performing some of their traditional songs. In their brown skin like outfits. With their brown skins. There was drooling in the audience. There were several other performances with some of the people performing at the other venue coming to show us what they are made of. The girl group KIU who I first saw perform at the Etisalat event a few weeks ago and they blew away the crowd.

I started really enjoying myself as the headline acts of the night Eric Wainaina went on stage to perform with Chris Adwar on keyboards. It was great. As I did this I saw a guy who looked familiar and I’m like,
Me: Hey. Were you are a bash in Loresho the other day?
Him: Nope.
Me: Oh. Or maybe you are celebrity or something,
Him: Or something.
I dismiss the guy until Eric Wainaina states; “Can Kagwe Mungai come to the stage?!”
And then this guy goes on stage and starts jamming with the Kenyan music icon. That was embarrassing.

As I danced to the two performers I entered this twilight zone as I saw some guys from the old AIESEC days; Deogratius Onyango, Gerald Maithya, Wallace Kantai. It was really great catching up with these people some I haven’t seen for over a decade (except Wallace I see him interviewing government officials on TV and laugh at the vein popping in his face as he wants to ask them the tough questions but the advertising to his media house forces him to play ball).

With the performances over I headed home to chill out and prepare for the next day of Storymoja. It was to be a great day as this would be the day I would be doing the How Do Africans Kiss Session.

The Storymoja Hay Festival is the biggest literary festival in Kenya having happened for the last five years and seeing many thousands of guests. This year’s event the five in the series is a bit special. The 2013 edition of the event was badly affected when terrorists attacked one of Kenya’s best malls at the time the Westgate. One of the most prominent of the event Ghanaian Prof Kofi Awoonor was caught up at the mall and was killed by the blood thirsty terror agents. This led to the festival being cancelled halfway through as the city of Nairobi was in trauma as well as in respect of the actions a couple of kilometres away.

This year’s festival will be happening from 17^th to 21^st September and there promises to be a whole load of festival artists for you to see. The biggest name in African literature Wole Soyinka who recently turned 80 confirmed that he would be coming for the festival this year. This was in response to the attack by those terror dudes (and white widow) who dared try and mess with our artists. A pox upon them and karibu Baba Wole.

It’s not just Nobel Laureate Soyinka on the cards though. There is a whole bunch of really cool artists for you to check out. There the bunch of the Storymoja “usual suspects” like poet and Njeri Wangari, Beverley Nambozo N. the poet and award creator, Tony Mochama of the many definitions and a few more. These are the folks that have been the bread and butter of the festival in the last couple of years and it is unimaginable to have this festival without their appearance.

There are also some of the returnees from the previous festival with American poet and doctor Neal Hall, M.D. and Ghana/Jamaican poet and write Kwame Dawes set to make an appearance. I am not certain why they are on the bill this year but I suspect that they may have wanted to see a full session of the festival. In fact I recall some bar talk about Teju Cole wanting to return to see a whole festival but it just stayed in that bar as I have never heard of it again.

There are also a few East African commentators we may be familiar with if you follow the business keenly. Doreen Baingana is the biggest name as far as I am concerned. The winner of many prizes including the Commonwealth and the Miles Morland Scholarship last year has a very serious resume and I look forward to seeing her speak. Oduor Jagero has been in the media business for a bit and styles himself as a poet/author. The author he borrows from True Citizen the book he recently unveiled and that was the reason he was on The Trend on Friday alongside Caine Prize winner Okwiri Oduor and Caine Prize regular shortlistee Billy Kahora. Then there is Jeff Koinange who is currently on a quest to make his book Through My African Eyes into a one million seller. If you want to know how he intends of achieve this crazy feat (I know I do) then you want to head to the festival and see what he has to say. Other East Africans are Rasna Warah, Alexander Nderitu, Michael Onsando, Ndiritu Wahome, Shaleen Keshavjee-Gulam and Liyou Libsekal.

For a more complete look at the artists to see at the Storymoja Hay Festival please check out the official guest line up at the official website. Please note that the list keeps expanding as more guests confirm.