Binyavanga Wainaina's Memoir Launches in Nairobi

A year after its release in the US and in the UK, Binyavanga Wainaina’s critically acclaimed memoir One Day I Will Write About This Place finally came home to Kenya, with a launch at Nairobi’s Railway Museum.

“I hope that the beautiful cover of the Kenya version of the book will make up for the delay in launching it here at home,” Binyavanga said, and explained the grim situations that conspired against the original plan to launch the book in Kenya before its international debut. It was a combination of things—the Kenya shilling weakened against the US dollar, and then Binyavanga had a stroke, and then he lost his father just before the book came out.

The Nairobi launch was a cosy, intimate affair. Bibliophiles and literature enthusiasts huddled together on tightly bound bundles of hay. Heads and feet bobbed to Just A Band’s DJ set of house, funk, disco, and all the pleasant noises in between. And in the background, rain pounded the rustic remains of locomotives that once, between the forties and seventies, plied East Africa.

The Nairobi launch of the book coincided not only with Kenya’s Independence Day celebrations but also with Queen Elizabeth's Diamond Jubilee celebrations (coincidentally, it was while at Aberdare National Park in Kenya in 1952 that the Queen learnt of her father's death and her own forthcoming coronation).

That the book is written in English is quite plainly attributable to Kenya’s colonial heritage. Perhaps, then, there is something to be said of the Railway Museum as a venue for the book launch, with its quaint locomotives both as symbols and as residues of colonialism. Or, perhaps, that is excessive reading between the lines?

Following several brief introductory speeches, Kwani?’s Managing Editor and 2012 Caine Prize shortlisted writer Billy Kahora told anecdotes from years of working with Binyavanga at Kwani?, a literary magazine that Binyavanga founded upon his winning of the Caine Prize in 2002.

Copyright Mwangi Kirubi

Binyavanga held a short reading of his book, introducing the audience to his eclectic, breathing, twisting words, to the vibrancy and innocence and swirling colours of his childhood. It is a childhood that most of his Kenyan audience was familiar with, judging from the ease at which grins and chuckles broke. He read:

Nakuru is a high-altitude town at the bottom of the Rift Valley. This geography-class contradiction confuses me. Ciru and I like to call Kenya’s tallest building Kenyatta Cornflakes Center.

Brown is near. Green far. Blue farthest. The hills in the distance are dark. Maasailand.

From here you can see Kenya’s main highway- the Mombasa-Kisumu Road, where there are often long, long lines of army tanks and trucks going to the Lanet barracks. Uganda is still falling. Idi Amin ran away. They killed all the prisoners and left blood and guts in the prison. Some bodies had no heads. Tanzania and Museveni attacked Amin. Mum is on the phone a lot with uncles and aunties. Most of them are now all over the world.

President Moi says Kenya is an Island of Peace. President Moi says Somali Shifta bandits are trying to destabilize Kenya. Somali Shiftas don’t tuck in their shirts. The king of Rwanda is nearly seven feet tall and is always standing outside Nairobi Cinema, where women come and kneel in front of him. He is not allowed into Rwanda. He is a refugee. He used to flirt with Mum before she met and fell in love with Baba.

After the reading, Binyavanga had a conversation with Granta’s Deputy Editor, Ellah Allfrey. The chat was frank, on wide-ranging topics such as childhood masturbation, death in the family, generational (and general) differences between East, West and South African writers, the manifestations of colonialism in literature, the machinations of the global publishing industry, the delicate balancing act between the need for candour and the risk of naked vulnerability in writing, what makes Binyavanga’s book a memoir and not an autobiography, and whether or not it was written as Africa’s answer to books such as No Mercy: A Journey Into the Heart of the Congo, Dark Star Safari and The Zanzibar Chest.

Copyright Mwangi Kirubi

Binyavanga recounted some of the bizarre and less bizarre events that brought him continental and international acclaim, the ensuing struggle to live up to and even scale his own past successes, and his plans for the future. He also revealed that a West African version of One Day I Will Write About This Place is forthcoming from Farafina Books.

Eric Wainaina, perhaps the most recognisable, most socially conscious face in Kenyan music performed Joka, a song penned by writer Parselelo Kantai. And then, as though in self-fulfilling prophecy of the title of the song, long, winding queues snaked their way to the book-signing table.

—Claudette Oduor