 All the tribes that are not included here, we are war. Thank you very much, thank you very much. Thank you for allowing us. Thank you very much for the victory that we won. We just have one final presentation, then we can begin. Let's have Jelko Kumbau, who is the winner of the Lombardi Canal Prize 2018. I don't know if he's here. Jelko Kumbau. Okay, maybe as he prepares to come, I'd like to recognize... It's okay, just come. Please, Karibu. Jacob Karibu. I'd like to recognize the Googie family. And the professor Mkoma on Googie has come with his wife. She's come all the way from New York to be with us, Dr. Bach. Please just stand and wave to us. And the daughter Mugumi, just stand and wave to us. Sorry, Nyambura. Nyambura, thank you. Karibu Sana. Welcome, welcome. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. This is he. Thank you very much, Jelko. That's his trophy, and these are the training and Professor Komto on Googie We invite the BBC academics to come and take it over from here. Welcome our professor, Territi Yirongu. Thank you, sir. And our distinguished professors, it is Professor Nugia Wahiro and Professor Mukoma Rengugi, invited guests, staff and students of St. Paul's University. Good afternoon. I wish to welcome you all to St. Paul's University, the University of your choice. Right? Now St. Paul's University is where we train people holistically. I think I need to mention that before I even go ahead. And we are guided by two pillars, Christian spiritual formation and academic excellence. So that is why we say St. Paul's University is your University of choice. March for coming, I will not keep you long because I know what we are waiting for is to listen to our professors here. Here we are privileged to have... We are privileged here to host the Science of Nimuru. That is the two professors here. If you do not know, they actually come from Nimuru. And so we are very excited today to have them here. Professor Mukoma Rengugi is here as a visiting professor from Cornell University where he is a professor of literature. And we are so privileged for you to have chosen St. Paul's University out of the 70 plus universities in Kenya to come and be here. Yes, thank you, thank you very much. And to add icing on the cake, as if it was not enough, today he has actually brought to us his father, Professor Gugi Bathumo. Thank you very much. I was telling Professor Gugi Bathumo when we met this afternoon that when I was doing my own levels, back in 1983, I did one of his books as a set book. We were doing The River Between. And today I'm privileged to have him here on our platform. And that is a great privilege for me. So thank you, Professor, for agreeing to come. You can imagine how difficult it was then to read and understand that book and bring out the meaning that was in it at that particular time. But today we are very happy to have them here today to... I do it between the two professors. The two professors. So thank you very much. And one of the things that I really, really, really like about the Professor Gugi here is the fact that he's been away for so long but mother tongue is very close to his heart. You know, is very close to his heart. But for the time that Professor Munkoma has been here, the university has really benefited from him. This is the department of communication. The students have had a time to interact with them with him and I'm sure they will not be the same again. So thank you very much for this privilege to be here. As a university, we continue to do what we do best, that is to bring the best out of our students. And so we do everything that is possible to see that we expose them in the best way possible so that when they leave this place, they are able to compete with other students out there. And so we are very privileged as a university to have had Professor Munkoma here with us and to grace that with Professor Mugi. As I've said, I will not keep you here alone because I know what we are waiting for. So allow me at this point in time to invite our Vice-Chancellor, Professor Dustin Dalgalo to introduce the speakers. Thank you. Thank you very much, Prof. Professor Gogeba Nihongo, Professor Munkoma Goge, distinguished guests present here are these dear students, Munko, our faculty and staff members and members of St. Paul's Primary who entertained us here earlier and many others present. I want to take this opportunity to very warmly welcome you to St. Paul's University. Thank you for being here and for being part of this happy occasion this afternoon. Without further ado, I want us to get into the event for which we are gathered here today but allow me to do three very brief introductions before we get into it. In their house today, we are really privileged here at St. Paul's University to have two very distinguished world-renowned scholars, two great sons of this land, Kenya, who also happen to be father and son. The two hosted here by St. Paul's University will have a conversation, a conversation to which they will also invite us to participate at some point. The title that is given for this event is the Dwell on the Regis. And when Professor Irungu, Charity, mentioned this, Professor Wadyongo turned to me and in just laughing, said, I can tell you, the Dwell will begin after the event between him and the son. We wish you well. Let me just introduce very briefly because I have a very long written introduction put in my hand of this man and one lady that I want to introduce. I will make it very brief. Let me begin with the son, Professor Mkoma Ngugi. Professor Mkoma is a visiting scholar with us here at St. Paul's University. We are most privileged to have him in our midst, impacting great experience of learning on our students, as well as interacting with our faculty here and adding, bringing great value to us here. We are most privileged to be in your village here and benefiting in this way. Thank you so much for being here. Professor Mkoma is a novelist. He's a poet. He's a scholar. He is an activist. He is a professor of English at Cornell University U.S. He has a very impressive long list as you would expect of publications. Allow me not to read it to save time. He is a writer, theorist and distinguished professor in his field in English and comparative literature, just distinguished professor, who I will briefly introduce now, but a little more would be said by someone. I will ask to come and say something about a professor. He's a distinguished professor of English and comparative literature at the University of California. Most of us Kenyans and people in the region, we get introduced, whether you like it or not, to Professor Mkoma Ngugi, in the school. A name you would only hear from the books which are part of the set books. We call them set books. I remember from that, don't ask me whether I passed or failed. If he marked it for me, Mkoma would have passed very well. Wipknot child, you remember that? A grain of wheat book, literature in high school and A levels as well. In the house today. About him in a minute, just very briefly, let me just introduce one other person and then we will get into the event for the day. Today's event is organized, courtesy of our communication department in the Faculty of Business, Communication and Computer Studies. We are grateful to the faculty and to the department and I want to say a little help from none other than Mkoma Ngugi himself who had a direct line, I guess, to the older Ngugi and we are grateful that they are here and that this is happening today. The session would be moderated by none other than Dr. Joyce Jairo. We know her very well, I guess, particularly from her work that she does. She is a literary critic, just to say a few things. I think she is a doctorate by way of introduction but allow me to breathe this very impressive accolades of achievements that you have but only to mention we know her best as a literary critic, very well, musicians, novelists, artists, playwrights, cartoonists and art managers. Most of us may know her from her works, written, published works. Perhaps the most known one is the Tensities Public Sphere at the Spare Sculpture Club but also Kenya at 50. Anybody who knows that if you haven't ready to look for that, please. Tensities and the politics of belonging. She is in the house today and she would be the moderator of the sessions that dwell on the regions between the father and the son. I know you didn't come to be entertained or to be treated to this but without further ado we will now get into that but allow me to invite here very briefly Professor Bojona just to say one or two words by way of introduction about Professor Ngugiwa Diongo and then we get into these sessions. Please come and make it very brief. Vice Chancellor, Dr. Joseph Galgale, all protocols observed ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, I will not take your time. As one of Professor Ngugiwa Diongo students about 50 years ago, 72 years, pretty late, to say a few words about Professor Ngugiwa Diongo. Professor Ngugiwa Diongo is a rare and unforgettable and unforgettable lecturer, an incisive, thought-provoking teacher, transformative in the tradition of Paolo Freire, a highly acclaimed and celebrated son of Africa, a world-renowned canon writer and academic, a world-renowned literary and social activist. Professor Ngugiwa Diongo is native to this Lemudweria, this neighbourhood. He was educated at schools not far from here. Kamandura, Mangu, Kinyogori, you know them. He thereafter went to the prestigious Alliance not far from here before moving on to Worlds Beyond. When I myself joined the Alliance High School in the 1960s, Professor Ngugiwa's name was already gaining wider claim and popularity. His writings and stories have nurtured, inspired, informed, provoked and influenced generations of Kenyans, Africans and world citizens beginning with whip, not child and so on. I don't want to mention his ideas on decolonising the mind, the use of vernaculars and mother tongues are well known. I myself have been inspired by Ngugi's writings. In fact, three of my recent books, one is called God Speaks in Our Own Languages. It is available out there. Another one is Bible Translation and Culture, Critical Intersections and Reflections. And the third one issues in Bible translation. Navigating troubling waters and tempestuous waters. Now, Professor Ngugi and Professor Ngugi and Professor Moukoma believe, I believe this is a homecoming. Professor Ngugi Moukoma is himself an accomplished poet writer, as been said. Just to conclude, we are greatly honoured here at St. Paul's University to witness this retoke of paying a town. This return to the land of birth, to the native soil of father and son of a kind of duel on the regions. We warmly welcome these returning heroes and giants, father and son, who have had a powerful influence. And I stand here as an example of the influence they've had on a whole generation of us. Let us say hurray to Professor Ngugi and his son. Let us welcome them with Vighele Gele. Now, welcome, welcome, welcome, welcome. Thank you very much. You now realise we did not only manage to bring three generations of the Ngugi's here in this house, the father, the son and the children, grand children Yambura is in the house, but we also managed to fish out not only one of the recent students but from half a century ago. Here he is, the ex-bit is here. The stage is now set for the duel, the conversation between father and son, Moukoma and Ngugi. I will invite now Dr Nyairu Joyce, if you don't mind, please come and then let also the Ngugi and the Yongo, if they can come to the front as well, take the sits here. And from now on, I will hand it over to Dr Nyairu to actually take us through the event which you are here. Most welcome to this. Thank you so much. They've started. They can decide who will sit here. Thank you so much St Paul's University for doing this. Thank you for inviting me here. It's the first time I'm visiting your campus. So thank you. So what are we going to do? We're here to talk about creating expression. We're here to celebrate it. We're here to talk about the practice of writing. And we have a lot of students here. So what we have here, I'll just say for the benefit of my professors, we have students of language and literature. We have students of life. We have very accomplished literary critiques. But what tickles me more is to know that we have a few writers who've published one or two things. We also have a few people who would like to write but they're afraid. So this is a moment to catch some wisdom from two very accomplished creative writers. But I also need to say that the conversation we're going to have here today is not just from creative writers which the two professors are. They are also very accomplished literary critiques. As people who talk about the meaning of creative expression, the merits of the text are very important. So we will draw from all of those resources in the course of this conversation. I don't want to believe that there's anybody in this audience who hasn't read a single sentence. Just in case and you're shy to admit it, let's set the mood by asking the two professors to do some reading for us. So that we familiarize ourselves with what they write, how they write, just the sound of it. Is that okay we can start with some reading? What I also would like to ask, just say a few words and then read. We'll do that. Let me do this because I'm between father and son. And I actually happen to fall down in the middle there because Professor Gobi is my mother's age. No, no, no, sit where you are. I'm happy with you where you are. You won't fall off. But more seriously Professor Gobi actually was born in the same year as my mother so I really feel he is my father. And Mokoma here is my little brother. I don't actually have any little brother so I won't believe. But I will ask that since I am a father, can I for today for all confusion call you Mokoma when I ask the questions and the part of that here is hope. Is that okay? Yes. I'm Mokoma. I would not be comfortable with my mother. Let's do this. Let's ask Professor to move to the podium there and say a few words and Professor Gobi please hold your applause. Don't clap at that point. Please let me come back to this reading and then you clap at the end. It's like you have a little way of making sure we don't go to the presentation. Just come. I just want to express my gratitude. I'm a colleague of the nation. Okay, sir, sir. Please kind of connect me very much to you and remove the pain of me so much to me and my educational career and to my family I'm very grateful to take part for making this possible and of course we don't condition fight for Mokoma or I will be making it possible but I want to start by just thanking a few people who are here there are so many people so if I don't mention you because there are very, very many of you but I thought I better get this out of the way you know of course there's Professor Galo the Deputy Vice Chancellor Professor Erongo they organized with me a very wonderful Davula but I want to mention a few people who are here first I want to start with my family because they'll be so inspiring to me and I start with the older one T or the young one, Gogi, are you here? Can you stand up please you know he's the author of the book of short stories Seasons of Love and Despair he's also a very shy musician I think and he's composed some songs and he inspired me enough to start learning the piano at the age of a few years ago thank you can you say is he here? he's not here but he's working he thinks the writers don't work so he went to work all my family four of them are published writers of course I would mention him because today we are dwelling with him but the others his sister Wajiko Gogi with the Four of Seasons and Doshio so they inspire me a lot and all the others but I want to mention a few guests who are here because I don't want to forget there's one person I want to mention here particularly Waerimo Wago Gemiere Waerimo Waerimo Waerimo Wago Gemiere ok aha yeah yeah I want to introduce Waerimo to you he's Waerimo Waago Gemiere he's the one with the camera he's the one with the camera with the camera he's the rest of us everything he thought me but, you know I don't speak it but, I wanted to mention Patrickrators and you know yes Okay. Oh, oh, I have. Sorry. Did I switch back to the coin? When? Oh, okay. I said let me mention a few other guests. Okay. It shows you where my heart is, really, in terms of African languages, not just in Koi, but in terms of African languages. But let me mention a few others who have been pivotal in the promotion of African languages. And one of these, Kimani Jogu. Is he here? Yeah, please. Yeah. I worked with him. We were together at Yale, University, and other places, and we have talked African languages over and over again. Even now, at California, I'm emailing him all the time, so we keep in touch. Let me just press up Godokarioki and see here. I've said to ask him to please give me a bit of his beard, because mine has never grown beyond. Godokarioki, thank you for your services. Let me mention one more. I'm not mentioning all of you, but Peter Nyoro, who edited my book, I know it was very hard work, but he did a brilliant job. There are many others who are here, but before we do, I just want to say thank you. First of all, to all our musicians in all African languages, because they have really kept our languages live. I would mention all their names, but all African musicians have been very, very wonderful. But I want to mention one special guest, because I was not really expecting her here tonight, and I want her to stand up. She's a ghost person, or she used to be a ghost person, but now she, oh wait, let me mention her name. Lucy Mogambie, are you here, or did you go? Where is she? Oh, please, can you let people see your face, because I'm going to tell you where they can find it. Yes, nice. I've seen her films in equal language, and really the level of camera work, the editing, the relevance, and the act is really very wonderful. Even if you don't understand the coil, please look at her YouTube, just put Kanyanya stars, and you'll see some of the, you know, acting really brilliant. Like your film, Cinema Husband, it wasn't him, but all of them, you know, they are really every, so I'm very thankful that you were able to make it today, tonight. And now, having done it out of the way, and if I'm not to mention anybody, please, like Sam Bure and others, please know that I'm aware of you, but time now tells me that I should stop avoiding the inevitable, the duel between me and my mother-in-law son, Mokoma, or prof, Mokoma, or a goge, okay? So I'm going to do the reading first, although you don't know to applaud, but please applaud in your heart, and applaud for me, okay? Right? I knew her heart, that is. Okay. Yes, I'll read from this, but I'll need a little bit of help. Can I read from there? Yeah, sure. Yeah, okay. Yeah. I want to describe my latest book. It's an epic. The first epic I believe in equal language. An epic is a long narrative in a vast form, okay? Yeah. It's also my father's attempt at an epic, and I call it Kedam Ueru, or in English I shall be calling it the perfect nine, right? I want to tell you a little bit about the perfect nine. The Koio people say that, continue. Okay. He's whispering to me telling me, you know, don't tell them the secret. Just tell me alone, but I'll defy him. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The Koio people say that their founder was Koio and Mombi, man and woman, okay, and God somehow brought them to the top of testing, testing. Hello. Hello. Can you hear me? Oh, great. Yeah. I'm sorry, but I like using my hands a lot, so I hold one mic. I feel like I'm tied, okay? Anyway, let me tell you about, they had nine daughters, and the nine daughters, actually they were ten, but they say nine, but they are ten. So when they say they are ten, they say keda mo yuru, but otherwise they say keda nine, keda mo yuru ten, okay? And they make the nine, ten clans of the Koio people, every Koio person belongs to one of the ten clans, okay? Right. But I was always bothered, I'm sorry, I don't know if anybody, but I was always very bothered by description of our clans. There was never a negativity all the time, even when a few are very proud of their clans, you know? They would say, oh, that clan has witches or something, it's very good with witchcraft. That clan sold a child for whatever, I mean, very negative things. It bothered for a long time, but I did not know what to do about it. Until sometime in the University of California, Irvine, overlooking the Pacific Ocean, I had, I realized this. Those ten girls or women did not have any brothers, okay? So really, literally, there's one man and 11 women. So those girls had to do everything. They must have known, and they must have known how to build, how to make things, right? They must have known how to make weapons, to defend themselves, so they must have made weapons, okay? They must have been known how to hunt, everything, and they must have known how to plan, use their mind. And I felt like a revelation, literally. And in fact, I thought this was, wait a minute, this is actually the origin of feminists, right? So one night, literally, I woke up and started writing the epic. And it says, generally, I'll give you a brief outline. The nine daughters or ten daughters were born in the shadow of Mount Kenya. Oh my God, they are so beautiful. And nine ostriches rode on the waves of the wind, like horses, with trumpets. These are big trumpets talking about their beauty, okay? And wherever young men were in the continent, each would see the beauty in their dreams, and each would wake up to pursue this dream of beauty in their minds, or the beauty in their dreams. They would follow the rivers, whatever was the nearest river, but then they found other young men had similar ideas pursuing this beauty. They followed the major rivers of the continent towards the mountain of the moon, or the mountain of ostrich whiteness, what we call Mount Kenya. Some fell on the wayside, others this. So only 99 passed, came to the home of Rikoyo and Mombi. Now, remember there are 10 women, 99 men. Go tell them, Mombi, tell them now, now you have to prove who you are, testing. You'll go back to the mountain and bring me each some handful or whatever in a good or that moon whiteness that's on Mount Kenya, bring it home. At the same time, I want something else. Let me explain. The ninth daughter, who normally is not hardly mentioned in the myth, is called Warigia, and she's born without firm legs, okay? So she is, how shall I say, grown woman except for the legs, but there's a cure for her. And the cure lies in a hair that cures all, and the hair grows in the middle of the tongue of another man eating over, okay? Right? And something more, the over actually is invisible except for the tongue, occasionally, when it comes to capture any of them. So these are tasks they are given, but the girls are not left behind. They go with them. They will go through whatever difficulties they come through. They will be part of the challenges they meet on the way, okay? Of course, you're going to read the rest for yourself in this, but let me tell you, again, they were mothers or matriarchs or the nine clans of the good people. And have you heard of them, Dongi? Some of them. Oh, can you tell us a little bit about one of them, maybe? Can you come here? Sure. Okay. Is there a one boy here? Oh, one boy, right here. Okay. One boy? Yes. One boy. One boy. Okay. The clan, okay, the clan of a boy. What do they say about the clan of one boy? One boy, one boy. Okay. Ah, sure. I got a little hard on. I'm not going to get a good one. Yes. I'm going to get a good one. I'm going to get a good one. What's your name? I'm a farmer. I'm a farmer. I'm from Whangarei. Whangarei? One of the daughters was called Whangarei. Whangarei? What is Whangarei? Ah, right there. Oh, yes. This one is dedicated to you. Whangarei. I'm a farmer. I'm a farmer. I'm a farmer. I'm a farmer. I'm a farmer. I'm a farmer. I'm a farmer. I'm a farmer. I'm a farmer. I'm a farmer. I'm a farmer Whangarei. I'm a farmer. I'm a farmer. I'm a farmer. I'm a farmer. I'm a farmer. I'm a farmer. This one gets up and head over to go and see her. I had said that their father and mother were the people who were brought there by God because the people never say they did things by them. They always say, God help me do this. God made me come to the mountain. But in my narrative, they must have come from elsewhere but came to the mountain, but they don't say, I brought myself to the mountain. They say God, you know. And they were, oh my God, when they, page three, oh yes. When they came to the top of the mountain, they saw the beauty of the land in front of them and were totally, that's how they knew they had got to the right place. That's why they said God brought them there because the beauty of the land was absolutely mesmerizing and they simply fell into a song or they broke into a song. And they were, oh my God, when they, page three, oh yes. Okay. If you want to read more about the clans and all your clans and what happened to all that, of course, the book is selling outside, I believe. It will eventually be translated into English and that is the perfect nine. And I understand there is a translation about to go into operation, into Kipsiges. So we might actually see it translated to other African languages before the English one or at about the same time. And Kiswahiri, I hope. Thank you. Since I'm taller, somebody might have to adjust the mic. I was trying to make fun of his height, but you guys missed the joke. Yeah, and actually, while I was sitting there, Dr. Joyce Nyaro passed me a note to say that Fafa cheated in the duel because he brought somebody on stage to help him. So as you're thinking about who is winning, keep that in mind. Some of us are not playing fair. So I, on the other hand, have only my pen. So let me begin by thanking SPU and, of course, to Dr. John Davula, who really, and of course, the powers that be here by this Dr. Davula, who really made my visit possible and all the connections and networking and so on and so forth. And, of course, also to Dr. Joyce Nyaro for agreeing to moderate. Yeah, she wrote this, it was a review of my brother T's book. It's called the Goga's Jukebox Dance. I don't know, that stayed with me, you know, the idea of, you know, because it turns out in all our writing, you know, the Goga's and all their writing, we all have a jukebox. I don't know why, you know, but for those of you interested in writing and psychology, that would be a good start. Yeah, also, I wanted to say it also means a lot for me to be here in Limuru. I grew up in Gheto Gaudi about 15 minutes from here. I went to Tigoni Primary School, went to Kenya Secondary School, then went to Kanunga. So, you know, yeah, in other words, I'm wondering why I call a local boy. But don't call me boy. Maybe just a local prof. You know, yeah, and then also to be in Limuru also, and to be on this stage with my father, to share this stage with my father, and of course with my brothers and friends here as well. But also, equally importantly, with my wife here, Maureen Buck, Dr. Maureen Buck. She's a real doctor, unlike Papa who has honorary doctorates. Okay, I really enjoy that one, I have to say. Yeah, so yeah, Dr. Maureen Buck and also my daughter Nyaburoa Mokama, who is named after my late mother. So, but let me begin. Yesterday was Kimadi's execution date, right? It was his date of death. And I was thinking about, you know, about all the things we don't know. First, we don't know where he was buried. What about our Kenyan history don't we know? And I've been, I'm writing a book now on Africans and African-Americans. And one of the surprising things that I've found was that actually Malcolm X came to Kenya in 1964 thereabouts, but he had also actually come into Kenya in 1959. But anyway, when he was here, he met with Pyogama Pinto, who was a trade unionist, you know, a radical trade unionist of an Asian Kenyan. He also met with Jaromogi, met with President Kenyatta then. Then he went to Tanzan, he went to Zanzibar, met with the revolutionary Babu. But when he was in Kenya, he also gave a talk, he gave a speech at the Kenyan Parliament. Now, I've been going around asking Kenyans, you know, how many of you know Malcolm X was in Kenya? Bearings of hands. And don't raise your hand if you have had it from me, because I've been saying that a lot. But how many of you know Malcolm X was in Kenya? All right, two, three. Yeah, so, okay, five. Okay, let's say even 10, you know, to be generous, right? You know, so I think there are very deep questions about what we, we don't know where Kimathi was buried. We don't know the history of Malcolm X in Kenya. You know, and just to work quickly, the fascinating thing about Malcolm X and Pyogama Pinto is that Pyogama Pinto is either assassinated within four days of each other, right? You know, I didn't read all these questions, we don't know about our Kenyan history. But I wanted to be, to read a poem called A Collage of Death Masks in Memory of Dead and Kimathi and all the revolutionaries, thinkers and, you know, and fighters and so on and so forth that we have lost over the years. A Collage of Death Masks, what I did was, I loved biographies, so I read all their biographies and then extracted what I found was the most pregnant thing about them, right? You know, in some quotes I do word for word, others are me imagining them, right? A Collage of Death Masks. Steve Biko. With our two hands, we ply open my chest for arrows, tips poisoned with black ink. I write what I like. A milk or cabral. To be a past midnight, I have returned to the source. Che Guevara. Next door, a single gunshot announces my friend's death. Hours later, a kid turns and I stand on my wounded leg, shoot coward. Your guillotine can only kill flesh, not what it dreams. Franz Fanon. We are nothing unless lives to a cause. In my militant servitude, I find freedom. Ruth first. When I fell, it was only to go find Mont Blanet to tell him Mozambique was free and in Azania, freedom had begun to thaw. Garcia Locker. In the distance between the bullet and my heart, I cannot remember the prayer my mother taught me. Tell her that her love negotiated this passage for me. Rosa Luxemburg. They keep drawing blood from the toiling oxen. Don't they know that death and democracy are infinite, that we each get ours in the end? Mont Blanet. I read Marx's struggle only to realize I was reading him a second time. Karemi Dudu. Possibility of life actualizes in the fact of freedom. I do not fear them or their death. Arthur Noge. This suicide, final plunge, this my last poem, will it erase apartheid? Malcolm X. I do not see bullets or death huddling toward me. I see truth and if it fails to heal, then it can only kill. My blood soaking into the earth to heal its wounded limbs. My libation. In my future, I see Kimadhi always on his feet, in arms. Let me read you a poem. There's a time I'm very much interested in the question of African languages and more specifically translating between African languages, right? So I started taking classes in Icinghosa in sometime in the 2000s and while I was taking the classes, I wrote a poem called Isitandwa. So I'll read it in Icinghosa and then read your translation, unlike some of us. No, Papa made it too easy. Isitandwa. My dear, walk to me. It is hot today, but tomorrow will be cool. My dear, come to me. I want to ask your question. What will tomorrow bring? What do you say? What is it with you? Speak. Home is home. Repeat after me. Home is home. Listen well. We are here and it is late now. Let us go home. Thank you. Well, I'm going to do one in Lour. And furthermore, I'm going to say further, I'm going to teach them Lour in two minutes. Two minutes, okay? In our Lour language. When you want to refer to me, I, is A, okay? A, correct? What do you refer to you with in front of me? It is E, like the one which begins with your India. E, okay? You got to me so far? What do you refer to him or her? Home is O, or O, O, like zero, okay? Is there a Lour speaker here? Is that so far? Right? So, if you know that, all you need to know is just a wrap and fit it there. Say, for instance, you know what is V, which is to go or going. So, you say A, V, E, V, A, V. You can even now play around with it. Say, A, V, D, A, A, or E, V, Nairobi, or V, Kisumu. And then you can put elaborating. Then you go to V, where I'm now going to order, but don't teach you one. When I went to Kisumu, I said I must, I mean, I'm going to talk Lour language spoken here. I must also, you know, so what, the book we are celebrating is the book published by this African edition of publishers, and it's called Somo Bear, okay? Somo Bear. So, I thought Somo Bear, I sometimes have it coming in my mind. Somo Bear, Niko Bear. And if you have Niko Bear, Somo Bear, Kisumu Ma Bear, okay? And you heard Kisumu Ma Bear, Kenya, Ma Bear, and you heard Kenya, Ma Bear, Africa, Somo Bear. So it goes like this, Somo Bear versus Somo Bear, then I said it can say Niko Bear, Kisumu Bear, Kenya Bear, and then all of us, Africa Ma Bear, okay? So remember, if I say Somo, Somo Bear, the other side says Kisumu Ma Bear, all of us, Africa, let's try it. We shall end up becoming those speakers in two. Okay, we just said Somo Bear, Kisumu Africa Bear, therefore Somo Bear. Well, okay, not too bad, but um, let's see if it works. Yeah, please let us know if you, yes, we're trying to share mic here. You can't? Okay, so I was trying to free their hands so that they could fight properly, but that's okay. That's why he's losing the fight. Except a generation of them. No, we won't do that. You know, there's a really important point that they have just raised, particularly Prof here, about language and culture and the need to not only battle for the right to your own culture, but to have a responsibility to learn about the culture of the other person, yeah? But we're not going to get into that right now. I want to start in a slightly different place, um, because I think I had Prof say something about writing at night. So I want to ask, because you're a man's family or at home, your secrets are safe here, is there something that most people don't know about the way you write? Like is there a particular t-shirt that you have to wear to write? Do you write lying down? Like, what's that thing? What's that habit that you have cultivated over time that always works for you as a writer? Prof, shall we start with him? As you can see, I was so generous, I was giving him the microphone. I can't keep that in mind. I want to make a joke and say I'm like Bruce Lee, you know, not to make him scared of the duo, but in terms of being so good at everything that I don't have one specific way of doing it, okay, okay, I'm joking now anyway. No, the only thing I can think of is I tend to write in one space for maybe intensely for maybe a month and then exhaust that space. So I have to keep moving, I have to keep moving to different spaces, but I'm not the sort of discipline writer who will say I'm going to write from six to nine and so on and so forth. So I write in intense bursts of energy. Yeah, so yeah, yeah, I don't have anything special I wear. Well, in a sense, I'm like that a little bit. I don't have writing hours, I don't sort of say from six to seven. It depends on my mood, but the mood, if I get a very interesting idea, like when I wrote Kedomo Yuru, I could write whenever I've got time. I mean, between my teaching, if I find a little bit of space, I can go and write. The other thing is when I get used to a place, even at my home, I sit on a particular chair when I begin to write. I, no matter what I do, I have to keep on sitting on that chair or if it's facing a particular side of the house, I find myself always doing the same for the duration of that work. But in terms of time, I remember when I was writing Wizard of the Crow, which to me about 10 years to write, but I was really obsessed with the novel so much so that I really began enjoying waiting at airports because it gave me space. And one time I missed my plane at the airport because I was so engrossed in it, I was in Chicago actually, I was engrossed in it that I lost count of time and went to the wrong gate. So it really depends on what I'm writing. But I don't have the discipline of working at six o'clock and doing it. But when I'm in the mood, I can even wake up in the middle of the night and just write it. I can scribble, I can be in a lecture like this and if the idea is I can find myself writing while also listening to the lecture, that kind of thing. Any space can be exploited. I'm not going to keep score as we go along. I'll ask you at the end to be the judge. Mokomai, I have a question for you specifically. When I go through the streets of Twitter, Kenyans on Twitter, I see an incredible amount of talent as far as which is concerned, clever white clay. There's a fair amount of unwirly invective as well. But there's certainly some creativity there that I see from Kenyans on Twitter. I don't know that you've paid as much attention to it, but do you think given that wealth of talent, we are seeing as many Kenyan writers emerge as that talent suggests? Yeah, so at first I think it depended. I would have to go back to the question of language. In fact, I wanted to highlight this as we're talking about in the earlier section where this is where Professor Mahala introduced Farfah and I earlier. And the book is called God Speaks in Our Own Languages. And I've been going around and saying, this is the most ascent understanding of why we should be writing and thinking in our own languages. Because I keep making the joke, I mean, would you be chilling somewhere and then God come and speaks to you in Latin or French or whatever? So I think the question of what language. Now, when we did the last Mahabati-Kisweli Prize for African Writing, we had 116 manuscripts. There was a time we had a Kenyan policeman who had been working on his novel for 20 years. So I actually beat in Farfah 10 years of Wizard of the Craw. And sometimes I ask myself, okay, who is a real writer? Is it that guy who is sitting there writing that novel in Kisweli for 20 years with no hope of publication? Or is it me who has a literary agent? I already have this connection. So there's that question of language of what language are we talking about? But I think people are writing. I've judged several poetry and short fiction contests. I think people are writing. We just need to increase more avenues for them to create. I keep saying we need more of everything. We need more journals, literary praises, in all languages. And also I just wanted to add that, and I'm not saying this is what you're asking, right? But the idea that we don't have a reading culture, I think that's a myth. Because if you're a Twitter, you're reading Facebook, you're writing some of it is terrible, but you're still writing and reading. So what do you think, Prof, what is it that makes writing you know, some clearly very talented people who never actually emerge as writers, and I think Mokoma has hinted slightly about institutions. But why is writing also something that some people, no matter how they try and escape it, they will end up there regardless of what they were doing? What is it about this particular, shall I call it a vocation or shall I call it a job? How do you like to describe it? Sometimes like an obsession, I can't help it. And I know this, first of all let me say this. Imagination is the greatest democratic equalizer. You know, imagination does not know PhDs or primary schooling, woman, man, child, you know, we can create our own imagination. And again, it's not a specter of the father of the human novels. Someone can write their first novel and becomes more readable, more interesting than the one who has been writing novels all his life, you know, or like me, who deliver between in English and even today people, when I meet people, they say that, oh, hello, great writer, whatever, I read you, you are even between. And I keep on saying, can they at least mention that? In other words, Chinua Chebe means fall apart. His first novel, in a way, is still the most outstanding novel in his work, right? What he wrote later, you know, so imagination, you who are here, each one of you has a book, okay, and you can write, that's gone. But it's also hard work. This is where the difference comes in, you know, I can work. If you know what, remember my first four novels, five novels, I wrote long hand, we didn't have, but we had to keep on, keep at it. So when I read the whole man is all over again, from beginning to end, or whatever. So there must be that drive has to be there. When I went to, when I was put in prison, aha, yes, some of you know that, okay? I tell you, don't tell anybody. I might do my job in California, right? You know, I was once put in, uh, committed maximum security prison, huh? All because of the play, Guy Cadet, uh, uh, why anymore knows this because, as I said, good one, Mary, Patrick show, the killer. Some of you may not, you may not know him, but I was like, a killer fellow here called Patrick show. Yeah, and, uh, you know, God, okay, they are bear witness that they had gone, they were waiting for good one, Mary in his house, house in his house. And it happened that in a Matato, he was driving from Nairobi to his home in Galariga. They, he was told that Patrick show is waiting for him. Okay. So he got back in the same Matato, one foot Nairobi, and he went underground reappearing in, uh, Zimbabwe. So anyway, uh, in my case, it was after, I don't mind when I want that I was put in, Govambili was put in, what? Being hunted after, uh, mother seen for me or my to Yuga, you know, I, uh, after Guy Cadet, and I was put in a maximum security prison, committed maximum security prison. And I'm telling you, um, what saved me really to survive a professor yesterday, chairman, chairperson of our department, well known writer of the world, you know, being in a prison cell, no books, no paper, no pen. It was really, I know it's, it's, you're used to books for your life and then you don't have it. It fell, it fell to my imagination in a way. It really helped me. Two things happened to my imagination. At some time, I realized I was breaking jail every single night. Right? It's amazing because I could visit home. I visited you at home, comma, to check whether your music, you know, I'll take on your music and others, you know, uh, I'll record on my head, then I'll come back to prison. Okay. I did so many things, you know, and I did this imagination was making me break through the three prison walls and I felt such power that they cannot give my imagination. It's something almost a sensation that I felt they cannot, the one thing they cannot do is imprison my imagination. The only thing they can do now is kill me, otherwise without killing me. And I got imagination. I can break jail every time. Okay. And that's when I started writing. And then in the same prison, as I think about African languages and English and so on. And that's why when I made a decision to now start writing novels in equal language. Okay. Before we go to language, you know, you've raised a really important point there about the risks of writing, the risks of knowledge. Um, and also you pointed out, uh, one big difference or is it an advantage? Yeah. Technology. So he wrote long hand. You've never had to write long hand. So can we give the price? It depends on when I started writing, because when I started writing, we didn't have computers. I mean, you know, I didn't see a computer until, uh, 1990. And those were the old ones. But, but finally, I, you know, yeah. You, you, you grant him that? Well, begrudgingly. Begrudgingly. Okay. So I know that you mentioned it briefly when you were on the podium and you kind of tried to slide past it, but I'm still going to ask this question because it's disturbed me for the longest time. There is this one scene that runs through the writing of all the Guggies, whether we are talking about Wajiko, we are talking about tea here. We're talking about dad and we're talking about you. So the scene, it's a bar, a pub. There's one of the characters who, there's music playing in the background, but one of the characters stands up, walks to the jukebox, puts in a coin, selects a song and starts to dance. I miss it already. You're missing that scene. Either dancing by the jukebox, usually dancing alone, but selecting a song and dancing. So, so this jukebox, is it that you people as a family own jukeboxes? Do you manufacture them? Why does this trope keep coming up in all your writing? You can't avoid it now. You have to answer it. Yes, that's what comes. I will remind you of the minutes of glory in secret lives. They're not jukeboxes. There was a jukebox in minutes of glory. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, no, I mean, so, yeah, I mean, one of the things I loved was actually going to a bar, you know, of course, you know, I don't want to reveal the age I started going, because my daughter is here. But anyway, no, but really, but one of the things I loved was going to the, that whole process of, you know, you have some coins, you have to go get changed from the bar, and then, you know, then you select, then you spend some time going through the, you know, those are the days when you have to flip them right. And then you find this song, and you're trying to read the mood of the bar, then you select the perfect song, and then sometimes people get up and dance. So that aspect of it, but the whole idea of music as well, but that's physicality of it. I love that. But there was a friend of mine who is now, who has now passed away. He was a South African, called to a Seasway, a freedom fighter, and he was in exile in, I believe, in Angola. So, and he was telling me this story one day about how he went to a bar, right? And, you know, he played some music and the bartender who was a woman, you know, came and they danced, and they said they danced for hours, they didn't talk, you know, and then they just parted ways. Yeah, you know, yeah, and I think in a lot of ways, anytime I'm thinking about music, anytime I'm writing about the jukebox or music in general, I'm trying to understand that conversation they were having, yeah. Yeah, music, I think, I think, I know what, I know it means my friends in my family, but not from my side of the family, at least not me from me, you know. And we just, we just heard him sing, but he's not a musician. But their mother, Nyabura, was actually a very good singer, came from a family of singers. So, there's a kind of something that runs through the music. The young here is actually a pretty good composer, a shy one, I admit, but a composer, you know, all the same. When they were children, one thing I have, I'm not forgotten is still the composer's children, about a person who is bringing water, we didn't have water then in our house, so we asked somebody with a donkey to bring the water, we, you know, and we kind of bought water. And the composer's song, What do you mean, I'm not a family? What do you mean, I'm not a family? Something, correct? No, but the need is a children. It's a very, very, it's stayed in my mind. Let me do this way. For me, it's stayed in my mind. I'm not a composer, but I stayed in my mind. Okay. During Gahika, I don't know if you can bear witness to this, some of the best melodies in Gahika Adera were melodies actually composed by Theonga. I gave him the words, he put a completely new melody, and they were very, very beautiful. Kimu Nya also gave me words and he called it another melody. It was some of the most outstanding melodies in Gahika Adera. So all I'm saying is kind of a running theme in my family. Me, I can hear music in my head, but it's a problem. I want interest to come out of my mouth. I know what happens. Now I've started at 70 years of age, I enrolled in piano classes, you know, so I've been playing a piano a little bit, you know, but even then, not tune can, well, the important thing. I can only play that which is on paper. I can read music and play, but I cannot sort of create even a simplest tune that they're able to do. So there is that element. But having said that, let me just say this about music and rhythm. Actually, music and rhythm is in all our lives. You just watch people actually walking. In California, I sometimes stand, sit, and just watch people walking because I realize people are walking rhythmically. They are walking musically, right? Yes, you see there, if you sum up one beat and others to make the same, they make two of them. So you get a full note, half notes, quarter notes, and so on. You know, when they are walking, and then you look at their combination. And it's really very, very interesting. You try to watch people here outside, you'll see they are walking musically. Mokoma, you want to say something? Yeah, no, I was going to say, yeah, so I have a novel that's coming out with Cassava Republic Press called We Sing That Tisita to Embryo Are Dead. And it's all about, okay, if you don't know Tisita music, just go to YouTube and Google Tisita. It's a form of Ethiopian music. It's more like blues, right? But it's more about, it's almost as if the musicians are fighting about this soul of Ethiopia, right? And nobody can tell you exactly what it means, but when you listen to it, you can feel it. Yeah, so in that novel, I have four musicians who are competing to see who is the best Tisita musician. So the remarkable thing here that you're both saying, if I understand you correctly, you know, when you're a creative person, the intertextuality, it's writing, it's music, it's sound, you're also an observer of life, like the people watching you've just described and the kind of thoughts that run through. And so we will be talking about language, but the other important thing you've said here is that music is also a language, if I understood you correctly. Let me ask, we've talked a little about writing, practices of writing, habits of writing. Let's also talk about mentoring, because when you get to a certain stage in life, particularly when success is around you, mentoring becomes part of what you do. So if we could just talk a little about that, I'll start with you Mokoma, you know, in the lottery of life, life in some ways is a lottery, okay? So you found yourself the son of an incredibly successful creative writer, and you grew up with an immense, give him credit where it's due, please. You know, not just the son of an incredibly successful creative writer, but also you grew up with the privilege of books around you. It is a privilege, sometimes when we talk about privilege, we think about money in the pocket, but let's talk about the other privileges that we have. So you grew up with books all around you, that's something that your father gave to you, you did not earn it, you did not apply for it, it's a lottery of life. What's the one thing that you would say your father has gained from the fact of you being a writer, that because you became a writer, there's something magical that happened in his writing, in his creativity, is there, or did you just take, did you give? Oh well, but he's one who should answer that. No, I want to hear it for you. She's your sister, remember? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right, yeah. But okay, so as I think about that, let me address the first part of your question, right? Yeah, no, I completely agree, and the reason why I've come to think about the absence of structures, right, the absence of structures is that I understand my owner bringing in how lucky I was, I had to be surrounded by books. You know, I keep saying, when I sent down and said I wanted to write about a book, I had no doubt, like, there's a time I attended a memoir at 14, you know, yeah, so of course it was very short, you know, but even then, you know, like I never had any doubt I could sit down and write a book because I was seeing it being done, right? I grew up reading Richard Wright, I mean, even from a very young age, because I read whatever I could in the house. Yeah, so that's how I ended up thinking about, okay, so for me, I had, I could see the, I don't know, this stairway to the book, so to speak, right? But for most people, and some of the questions I get talking about mentoring, some of the questions I get, they tell me that that person doesn't have a ladder between their dream and the actual book, right? So in that sense, I understand the privilege. But for us to create those, that ladder, it has to be a collective effort, right, you know, because I'm talking about a, you know, I mean, in, for example, my daughter's school right now, right? She's eight years old, she's taking a nap as I talk, understandably, but I didn't read in her school, they do some form of creative writing, right? Around them, you know, they have little magazines and so on and so forth. The little town we have probably has more magazines than, you know, literary magazines than in Kenya, for example, right? So we have to create those structures. Anyway, to answer your question, I would like to believe I've met my father a better writer. Yeah, but I can't think of a single, you know, of a single instance, yeah. But you know, when we exchange banu scripts, you know, like we talk about writing all the time. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, actually, we do discuss a lot, you know, our writings, generally. And I personally get, first of all, I get, as a writer, I get inspired by the fact that I have four published writers. Can somebody check to see if we can win the Guinness Book of Records, because now that it's five of us who have published, somebody who really needs to look into that, yeah. I'm not going to tell you about the Kibera family because I don't want to break your heart. The last two, the last two, you know, all my kids, you know, are also, you know, so they're this one who is very, very good. He's called the young one, like the young one. Yeah, yeah, TK. He's T and he writes very, very well, you know, he's very talented, but he needs to put more work, you know, you know, I get the freelance person, they are managed to me not to correct them. Like I also do exchange my money to them because when I'm writing, oh my God, for me, I don't know about other people. I do really care that somebody can give me, even five minutes, I don't mind to listen to what I'm saying, because there's always a doubt, you know, I may write 10 books, but the next one, there's always that element of doubt all the time, you know, and sometimes you may need somebody, your partner, your son or sort of treat us, treat them and then they say something. It made me a comment about not what it's not working, which really energizes you, you know, so I feel very privileged really as a father and as a writer, you know, to have, you know, all these, you know, around me, and I feel very privileged when they let me, it's not shying away from showing me their manuscript, sometimes they show me, you know, and I comment or something, I mean, it's a nice kind of, you know, literally relationship that I really value. Can I add something quickly? It's very interesting, we're talking about mentoring. So I think for writers, no matter how many books you have as Fafa is saying, you know, that doubt is always there. Personally, I go with the Marx thing that, you know, that you're only as good as your next book, right? Yeah, but there's something I read a while ago, I could never find, I never found this source, but you know, somebody who was saying that a writer is half confidence, half doubt, you know, so, and he works very well, the doubt will keep you pushing yourself to become better. The confidence will help you not bury your own writing, you know, be scared of showing it and so on and so forth, so you need to strike a balance, don't let one overcome the other. No, that's actually remarkable, you know, remarkable in terms of that advice to those who would like to write, but also that admission of what it feels like to be a writer, the amazing community of practice that you have within the family, and Prof, you did something remarkable the other day speaking of mentoring with the support of the Gota Institute in Nairobi. You spent half an afternoon there the day speaking to young Kenyan writers, Kenyan Jewy Kombani, Gloria Mwanege, who wrote in the papers and shared with us on Saturday what she learned from you. Was it him or me? It was you, that's the way Gloria wrote it, and I believed her. Did you meet Kenyan Jewy Kombani, one of our writers, and Gloria? I think so. Okay, okay. Yes, it was in Karin. In Karin. Oh, sorry, with the support of the Gota Institute in Karin. So you spent some time with these young writers, and the kind of thing that you're saying that sometimes as a writer all you need is somebody to give you five minutes to listen to you, to share the experience, but I want to ask that question from a slightly different direction. What did you learn from those young writers, those young Kenyan writers? First of all, let me say, especially those who write in the languages, they really inspire me. I'm surfing through YouTube, and I find there are very many schools that are now writing or sing poetry in the core language, and I'm always very, very inspired by that. There's one called Kehei Murafeti, I think. Yeah, and I saw him on YouTube, but there was a telephone number there, and I called him, and his mother who answered, you know, and I just felt I want to connect with this person just to say how much I appreciate what they were doing, really, because some ways it's a collective thing, you know. It's individual, I know, but you do get inspiration from what, yeah. Another good example is when I talk to the guild, was a literary guild, I can remember, he had it as, you know, and he was young, right, he was published a poetry book on his own, Inigekoyo, it's Kariyuki Samurai, I think, but I'll get a name right, some or other, and he brought this book, who he has published, Inigekoyo, and I would even have almost very touched when he said that his first publication of his poetry was in an online journal I added called Motiri, which you can find in Motiri, www.motiri.com, okay. There's very good poetry there by various people and so on, so when he came to me, his own book, his own, I was very, very excited by that, you know, so I do learn a lot from efforts of other people, and as I said, I do learn from my kids, when they're very excited about something they are doing, you know, I feel not simply because they are my sons and daughters, but there's something good about another writer or creative artist trying to do something, you know, I get inspiration from Kenyan musicians, particularly in African languages, either they are surfing through the YouTube, and it's a little lady singer, I thought her voice was magical, I didn't follow what she was saying, but her voice was magical, I'll go back to the YouTube and look her up and so on, yeah, because I like to get inspiration. Let me talk about one more inspiration, because it's very, very important people do know this, you know, first of all, two people, and they happen to be here, I mentioned, I'll be very brief about this, is Halima Gekanti? Yeah, Halima Gekanti, she's already this guy says, and so I don't know why. Halima Gekanti is the daughter of one of the leading, literally leading, literary intellectuals in America, and Gekanti was one of the people who edited my first equal language novels when he was working with Heine, or with an Islamic education publisher, so whenever I meet him now, I would say thank you, you know, because of what he did then, he gave attention to, he gave all he could to equal language editing and so on. Let me just mention another one here, Moses Kiloro, can you please stand up, Moses Kiloro? I hope we should talk a little bit about translation, but I must have mentioned this, this young man, he's working with a group called Yalanda, the Collective, and they decided to focus on translation, to bring one translation issue, okay, African to African language translation issue, and you can Google it as, well, she'll give you the link, okay, but let me say, he contacted Mokoma, said, can you ask your father please, whether he can give us a story so they can get the project going? I'd not have a story then, but in my box somewhere, there's a story I'd written for my daughter, Mombi, okay, called in English the upright revolution, but in the quote it's called, so I give the English version, you know, in fact, well, anyway, he, the story has now been translated up to now, or he can tell us more about it, into 78 languages in the world, 50 of them African, he has a global reach, and I know he has been invited to Harvard, to Amherst, Cornell, I think, you know, and other places to talk about this phenomenon, because it's a kind of, we're talking about it as a phenomenon, you know, in Vienna, I believe, no, it's Vienna, Venice, it's Vienna, yeah, they had an expression about the transitive project for a whole year, and so on, you know, he's very Kenyan, most of the glory, and I get, I think it's inspired by him, Richard the War, and others you work with, you know, right, yeah, it's very inspiring to, okay, I'm told we're running out of time, but we can add something because we were talking about the young people here as well, sure, yeah, so just to add to what Fafa said, so what Moses Kilala and his team did was to make literary history, right, you know, so now Fafa's short story is the most translated short story in African literary history, so if you're a PhD student or you're thinking about being a master's, at this is in writing and so on and so forth, you know, will you do the same old tired thing of, I don't know, Wood's words, I don't know, you know, or will you look at how translating between African languages and create theories that are dealing with how translating between African languages might be different, very different from translating between French and, let's say, French and English, in other words, the future of originality, as I understand it, and now I've put on my scholarly heart, the future of scholarly innovation and originality and so on and so forth, lies in the untapped resources in our African languages. It's interesting that you've gone in that direction, I'm told we're running out of time, but what I am going to do, we always have time, what I am going to do with the permission of our organizers, I'm going to ask three more questions, okay, from here and then I will take two questions from the floor and we are not going to do that Kenyan thing that says, mine is not a question, it is a comment, no. Ask a question that starts with where, when, why, how, what, okay, and then we'll take it, but let's come back here, we were just getting scholarly, which is exciting. I was thinking, so 50 years ago, Prof, you led this great movement with others like the late great Henry War and Yumba at the University of Nairobi, 1969, you led this great movement to decolonize the curriculum. And we saw more brown and black names come to the curriculum, a kind of black aesthetics, and then the whole development of what we call oratoria or oral literature, the kind of performance that you saw here from the drama group and saying that that too is literature, it doesn't have to be written, it doesn't have to be in a language that belongs to the canon, it can be an African language, and that was a remarkable revolution. I want to ask Mukoma, what's the balance of the work with that? Do you think that you as a scholar have pushed the frontiers of what your father and others in his generation did to turn the practice of literature to the next level? What's the balance of the work in that decolonizing of the curriculum? Yeah, so what decolonizing the mind and the whole decolonial movement, if you want to call it that, has done is to make me try to understand why it's as if it's pushed me backwards actually, to look back into our literary history. And in my book that just came, my scholarly book that just came out last year called The Rise of the African Novel, in that novel I'm asking why we begin our literary clock, our African literary clock with Chinua Chepe, Oymoso Tuyola when we're most generous, and then we move on to Adici and so on and so forth, where we don't talk about, for example, early South African writers who are writing in African languages from the 1880s to let's say the 1940s, and who are writing in African languages and then getting translated into English. And there weren't just one off, literary critics, when we talk about them now, we talk about them as if, oh, it was just one guy out there who was writing, there were a movement, there were the same people who started the ANC, then the same guys who gave us them, in course it's Sileli Africa, right. A person like Saul Plage had gone all the way to the US, met with a WEP, in other words, you know, they were a movement, right. So the question for me becomes why do we begin our African literary clock at the wrong historical period? And then you can go back further and ask, okay, Amharic literature itself begins in the 1200s, right. Why don't we talk about Amharic literature, Afro-Arab literature, 500 AD, why don't we talk about, you know, our slave narratives, black American slave narratives as part of African literature. So, yes, part of the colonizing is not just about moving forward, I think it's going back and recovering this history, because the literary history is there, you know. So at some point as a scholar, I just failed to understand how this happened, right. But I do have an answer in the rest of the African novel. Okay, and that's a fair point that there's a lot of going back to do. But what about going forward? I'm sitting in, I'm thinking, you talked about your children, four of your children as published writers. And I'm asking myself, why have they all been so conservative in their treatment of the novel as a Western form? I heard in one of your interviews, one of your joint interviews, how your father introduced you to this fictional character as a family, he'd always tell you stories about Mwangi Cowboy. And Mwangi Cowboy is something that you all share and everybody has added to that story. You have several detective novels, yeah, Nairobi Heat, There's Black Star, There's Mrs. Shaw, Doshu has a detective novel as well, Wanjiko's The Fall of Saints is also a detective novel. Why hasn't Mwangi Cowboy become something that you guys all write, so that we have a published novel that is by four or five people? Why are we sticking to the Western tradition that says the novel can only be the creation of one individual who gets credit, and yet we've just talked about how communally you work. So I'm thinking with form, have you been a little conservative? Is there a little boundary that you can push? So I mean, okay, okay, it's a fair point when it comes to Mwangi Cowboy, right? We haven't mined Mwangi Cowboy well enough. But I would say, I mean, as far as I understand myself, you know, that I'm one of the people who are pushing the boundaries actually, right? First, even when we think about aesthetics, right? The detective, the detective novel or popular fiction, hasn't had much respect, right? Now it's happening, you know, and it's happening because it's not just me there, you know, I think there's a movement amongst my generation and younger generation of saying, no, the novel cannot just be one thing. You know, and I would go further and argue that Udhi Ambo, for example, right? Udhi Ambo in Nairobi Heat is actually Mwangi Cowboy, right? In other words, to me actually, you know, he is Mwangi Cowboy in that regard. But definitely, definitely there's room for innovation and I think, you know, younger African rangers are doing that, you know, better than, you know, better than my generation. It's a wonderful challenge you've put there about translating between African languages and just pushing those frontiers all the time. I'm going to ask, I think let me do this because we could talk until tomorrow. I'm going to ask you, Prof, one last question. He gets the last word. Do you want me to give you the last word? I will. To do with the same question, I promise. So, your career has been so successful in terms of just your sheer productivity, how prolific you've been, but also, you know, dissertations have been written, awards have been given, many, many awards, honorary doctorates, one only from a Kenyan university, what is wrong with us. But you have received a lot of recognition. And then, so it's 2016 and you get nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature. And you knew I was going to go there. Let's go there because we're at home and you can confide in us. So you get nominated, articles are written, you know, in the mainstream media, in social media, these expectations, bets are placed, breaths are held, there's a drum roll, we're waiting, we're waiting. And then the Nobel Prize in 2016 goes to Bob Dylan, a white American pop singer who is recognized for his contribution to transforming the American folk music. How did you feel that morning when you woke up on Thursday, October 13, 2016, and you got the news of Bob Dylan's award? How did you feel? You're amongst family, you're amongst friends? I can tell you a few stories. I'm a storyteller basically. So let me tell you a story, not about that particular one. It was one time when the South American guy, or I had one, and they had to put in the press that outweighed, okay? And even my universe was so excited that they sent, oh, there's a picture, is it here? No. I don't see it in my Nobel Prize picture. I think that one was a Nobel Prize picture. So the University of California, but the University of California, Arvind, because we have many others, you know, they sent photographers to prepare. At first they set up a press conference at 11 o'clock the following day, and they sent photographers to have pictures ready for which they would spread the whole world, okay? And now, and my wife, Jerry can tell you this, at four o'clock, you know they announced it at mid some, at the time when they announced it in Sweden, it is actually four o'clock in the morning in California. What happened was, we thought there was paparazzi outside our house. They come outside my house, okay? It's a movie who actually heard that someone had won. So it was very interesting. We opened the door for the journalists, and they came in and they were so sad. Now, all those things, is my wife was conserving them and made them coffee, you know. Let me just say, no, right, at least I don't write for prizes. However, if a prize comes, I have no say, remember I have no say whatsoever in the decision making. What is my control is what I write. But I appreciate, there's one Nobel prize I really appreciate, what I call the Nobel of the heart. Nobel of the heart is when I meet somebody here in Kenya or India or some places who comes across, I read your book, blah, blah, blah, and this what happened to me. It has changed my life. And I say, my God, it was worth writing. That's what I call the Nobel of the heart. The other one I have no say whatsoever. Yeah, but of course you as my daughter, I know if you are a member. No comment. Well, you know, and thank you, thank you for sharing that, you know, the Nobel of the heart, literature is transformative. It transforms the life of not just a person who writes, but the one who reads and receives it. And the reward of the writer, the greatest reward of the writer comes from sharing with that reader. Now, my little brother has demanded the last word. So I'm going to ask you as a literary critic, do these awards matter? What do they do for the discipline? Oh, I thought you'd just give me an open space to speak. No, no, no, we're not doing comments today. We're answering questions. Yeah, of course. And I would say the ones that matter. Okay, I know I know the case where the praise matters, for example, right? I know it matters because in fact, I had this feeling of when we had just had the award ceremony this past Saturday, right? And the books that won last day had been published when booking an order, right? And I'm, you know, and there was a whole ceremony. The, you know, the guest of honor was the vice president, the minister of information was there, right? It was a whole ceremony, right? You know, they even had a cutting ribbon cutting of the books, you know, but at some point I was like, yeah, you know, sometimes you get tired of working on the praise, but then I look at that and I realize that those books wouldn't exist if the praise didn't exist, right? So for me, I'll say those praises matter, right? And I think the more praises we have for African languages, the more they will matter. But really the last word I wanted was to say, Thank you. Thank you for that. So we selected the two questions and you can wrap it up to the commentator. Yes, you can do that, please. You remember we promised today we are on our best behavior. We are asking two questions. Let me do this. I think we should auction the shall we auction those questions? Who's absolutely ready? Remember, you, they are two and you want to be fair to the other person. So your question won't take 10 minutes. Please ask your question. Start by telling us your name. My question goes to Professor Ngugi. You talk about how African language, then have the work translated into English, for example, not other African languages, because you know most of your work has been translated also into English. You write in Kui and then you have translated English. What is the Russian language? Thank you. So the second one, right at the back at the top in green. Please start by telling us your name. And if I look like I favored only the girls, that's because I did. We are still in the battle to give African women voices. Because you are told to start the questions with when I was nine years old. I read a, I read Ngugi's Jabanene and the Pisto. And so for me, it's a lifetime of conversations. But the question I want to ask for relevance at this point is, I have read work and I love his, not fiction, because it tells me that stories are grandmother, my grandmother told me halfway. But I've also read like his last book, secure the base and I've recommended it to anyone who either works in the church. I'm a St. Paul's alumni of Divinity. And so my question is to both our professor in Mokoma. Because we are exposed to his nonfiction work, I mean his fiction work in the schools. How do we create a space for books like secure the base, which would be really relevant for courses like international development or African studies. Asante. Thank you for being so brief. No, we will not do this. How do we, where do we start? Age before beauty or? Well, maybe we should start with beauty. Let's start with beauty. Yeah, no, no. No, first I wanted to take just a little tangent, you know, because I was in a, you know, we're in a place of theology. So I just want to throw this out there as something we should think about. Because something that really, really bothered me. I was in Ghana just two or three weeks ago and I went and visited the slave castles there, right? You know, and the most striking thing for me there was that you'd have a dungeon where the slaves were kept, you know, before they were shipped off to the point of no, you know, the point of no return and so on and so forth. But you'd have a dungeon there and then on top of that, you'd have a church literally, like there's no, you know, the church isn't twice removed and so on and so forth. So I'm just going to leave that image out there for us, you know, to think about that sort of relationship between, and of course I understand the concept of liberation theology and so on and so forth. But I just wanted to share that with you so it's not with me. Yeah, so, I don't know, I think we need, we need to take ourselves seriously, right? Talking about, you know, creating spaces for literary theory. We need to take ourselves seriously and start introducing literary theory and start asking questions, like I was asking of why we begin the literary novel in the 1950s and so on and so forth. So for me, I would say, yeah, I think we need to take all our total cultural output very seriously. Yeah, yeah, you mentioned secure the base. Many people may not know what you are referring to, but do actually have a book called Secure the Base, Making Africa Visible in the World. The book has not been published in Kenya yet, so, but I am sure it will be published in Kenya. But the question of secure the base is very important, even in the way I look at languages. Having your base in enough in language does not in any way mean that you are antagonistic to any other language. That's very, very important. It's a personal relationship between language that matters, right? I love, after all, I love English language. After all, professor, I'm not a distinguished professor of English and comparative literature. It's a beautiful language. It gives us great writers and so on. I love French. I love Russian literature and so on. You know, it's a relationship between our languages that I fight against. You know, my philosophy is found by this sentence that if you know all the languages in the world and you don't know your mother tongue or the language of your culture, that's enslavement. On the other hand, if you know your mother tongue, and add all the languages of the world to it, that's empowerment, right? So, for instance, in Kenya, say mother tongue as the foundation, the secure the base, okay? Kiswahili add to it. English and a number of other languages, okay? What I have been fighting against also is going to hierarchy. It's doing a lot of harm in relation to languages all over the world, not just in Africa, where we can never see language in terms of network, where they relate on base of equal given take, but they relate in terms of hierarchy. Okay, I don't like English hierarchy or being at the top, but then I go ahead and say the course should be at the top. You will reproduce the hierarchies all the time.