TELL YOUR TALES

This summer I was blessed to read some of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s work and it has been an amazing literary journey. Although Ngũgĩ is a renowned and successful author whose works have been read, studied and even translated across the globe, it is his wife’s story that intrigued me the most.

Here’s a little back story: 

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o is a Kenyan author who often writes politically charged work. This  wasn’t highly appreciated by Kenya’s dictatorial regime back in the 70’s. His pursuance in critiquing the government led to his arrest in 1977. He spent a year in detention without trial. In 1982, Ngũgĩ went on a self imposed exile in London and later moved to the United States where he taught comparative literature and met and married his wife Njeeri wa Ngũgĩ. After 22 years in exile, Ngũgĩ decided to visit Kenya in 2004 and Njeeri agreed to accompany him. During their trip they were attacked in a politically motivated attack that was cloaked as a theft and burglary. Njeeri disclosed that there was an attempt to rape her. However, she later recanted her statement and said that she was actually raped in the ordeal.

She says:

“It would have been very, very easy for me to take your word as attempted rape, get on the plane and go to America and heal myself.”

“She thought about hundreds of Kenyan women and children, who go through a similar ordeal but do not have the resources to help them overcome the trauma. She said she was speaking out about her ordeal because silence had led to the stigmatisation of rape victims.” Mathangani Patrick, “Kenya: Njeeri: Why I Will Not Hide My Pain.” allAfrica 17 August, 2004.

Back to my writing:

Needless to say, I admire her courage to speak about her experience, her honesty in doing  it and her vulnerability as a wife of a political refugee, a victim of rape and a woman existing in 2004 Kenya. She did not have to yet she did.

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o has been away from Kenya but that has never stopped him from writing about his place of birth or writing in his native language. And while Ngũgĩ insists that we own our own languages, I insist that we should own our stories, the good, the bad, the ugly. Being ashamed of our backgrounds, beginnings and the trajectories of our journeys is what makes us fake our lives on social media for approval thereby losing ourselves and the power we have to tell, defend or grow our own tales.

Ngũgĩ says “All my fiction is based in Kenya, and yet all but one have been written away from the country.”

As a content creator, I have a sense of what goes on behind producing the type of content that appeals to masses. The edits, the perfecting, the adjustments so hard you lose the genuineness of your creations and sometimes even yourself. We get lost in keeping up with trends for social approval that we can never quench. Another favorite of mine, Stromae, also alludes to losing ourselves in the social media abyss in his song Carmen.

Knowing who you are and where you belong is as important on social media as it is in real life. You cannot educate against stereotypes if you already failed to own your truth in the first place. It goes beyond telling your stories to believing that your stories are worth listening to and being part of larger conversations. Owning your story gives you a place at the table and ensures that you take part in the discussions at the table.

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o constantly emphasizes how the distortion of the language of a people serves to disempower them. In Memories of Who We Are, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o says that erasure leaves room for a colonizer to plant new memories and tell stories that are not our own. Your stories only matter more if you tell them. It is important that we tell them ourselves because when we don’t, they are stereotyped and assumed, projected from other people’s imaginations and kept vulnerable to constant manipulation.

So plant your stories and tell your tales, in your classrooms, in your clubs, on your social media platforms and in your white-filled workplaces because they matter, especially if you own them. Telling your stories gives them power because you maintain foothold of your own narrative.

For me as a Kenyan woman and an African it is important that African destinations are seen as a source of intelligence and civilization just like Western destinations are, that I am proud of my Luo as I am of my French, that I put in the same effort in African and black spaces as I do in white spaces and that my African womanhood, views and opinions are given the same respect and attention as that of my female Caucasian and African American friends. And that is why I hold on to and embrace my known identities as I continue to discover the unknown ones.

“Memory is what makes us who we are”

~Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o

Now that we are telling tales here’s an update: I can finally shaku shaku (took blood sweat and tears with help from the ancestors and well dedicated friends), I’m almost ready for classes but I’m still kinda scared.