When I think about describing this book the phrase, “utterly delicious”, comes to mind. Initially I had a hard time getting into the book. Wainaina has a unique way with language. While the story is linear, the prose is borderline stream of consciousness. Once I gathered in the rhythm of the language, the harmony emerged. Certain passages were pure umami tantalizing the brain much like a morel does the tongue.
The Kenya described therein is an olio of languages.
“There are many understood ways to address someone: sometime you shift quickly into English; often you speak in a mock Kiswahili, in an ironical tone, simply to indicate that you are not dogmatic about language, that you are quite happy to shift around and find the bandwidth of the person to whom you are speaking.”
The book is like this too. It weaves in little snippets of African languages that give you a feel of time and place. Many words seem to be a mash-up of English and a tribal language.
This is a memoir. It is a coming-of-age story. It is a story of a troubled young man finding his way as writer, initially against his family’s wishes. It is a story of Kenya after the British left and turmoil that ensued. It is a story of a land trying to overcome its tribal traditions, and failing in many ways. It is a tale of a nation attempting to come into the 20th century Western world and not really succeeding with that either. Perhaps my picture of Africa comes for old movies, Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, and news clips from South Africa. Wainaina paints a much more nuanced picture that comes across as a kaleidoscope of images.
I found myself underling passages as I read. Either because the language was so rich, the imagery so beautiful, or it encapsulated a thought I found meaningful.
“After school, I spend a term at Kenyatta University, doing an education degree and majoring in French and literature in English. I am terrified I will end up becoming a schoolteacher. A fate worse than country music.”
And another:
“Everyone is doing the dombolo, a Congolese dance in which your hips (and only your hips) are supposed to move like a ball bearing made of mercury. To do it right, you wiggle your pelvis from side to side while your upper body remains as casual as if your were lunching with Nelson Mandela.”
Some introspective moments:
“I am afraid. If I write, and fail at it, I cannot see what else I will do. Maybe I will write and people will roll their eyes, because I will talk about thirst, and thirst is something people know already, and what I see is only bad shapes that mean nothing.”
“Cloud travel is well and good when you have mastered the landings. I never have. I must live, not dream of living.”
“He sounds tired. I wonder if I will ever manage to survive having children.”
Like a book of poetry this is a book to put down for a while and then pick up and reread.
The books is available from many sources including Amazon: One Day I Will Write About This Place
Being not smarter than the average bear, it took me until the very last chapter to understand the narrative vehicle. Stories written from another culture, particularly one which has roots in a history that is far older, far richer than our own Western one, makes for struggles in comprehension. To me, the story of the physicality of a soccer player and the rise of the benga as a “national” musical genre synthesized Binyavanga’s narrative approach to his memoir. The benga is at its root a story; all the instruments “simply accompany the story.” The soccer player is learning to read the moment where the unseen is seen before it develops. The modern African is learning to adapt at lightning speed, not just to a modern world, but a modern world informed by tribal certainties. In many ways, I see American Christianity much like the tribes of Africa; certain in their parochialism, fearful of the outer world, finally, taking on the coloration of the outer world while insisting they are remaining true to their received faith. Like modern Africans, American Christians find security in the faith of certainty that is modern muscular Christianity as practiced in mega-churches. Sin? Blame Satan. Do not look inside for darkness, that is Satan. Complexity is reduced to the seduction of your senses by The Liar.
As the narrator of this book grows up, he is struggling with the understandings of his family. He is in many ways, shapeless. Africa seems to be a continent fractured along the lines of tribal truths, a colonial heritage that is at once attractive and repellent, and a modern world that dismisses both tribal and colonial alliances. The episodic, dream-like narrative of the early part of the book allows the author to express his perception of the world in which he was growing. Because Africa has a history much older than America, its “rootless” citizens still find tentacles of their tribal past informing their current journey.
This is at once a personal and a national coming-of-age story. He is just as unflinching with national truth as he is with his own personal journey. The artist can be a translator. Whatever else Binyavanga has accomplished with this book, which commentary I leave to those much wiser, he has allowed this rootless Westerner a glimpse of Binyavanga’s world and an opportunity to take a look at his own modern journey.