THE RISE AND SHINE OF A NEW NATION

By Peter K’ouma- UoN, Kikuyu Campus

So last Thursday we had an East African Poetry class, and just as the unit title suggests, we were looking at the poetic works of East Africa writers and those that echo the same. Our lecturer Dr. Alex Wanjala is an interesting young man, so his class is ever lively and real. He ensures everyone’s participation using all the gadgets available (including listening to music in class). This is attributed to the fact that poetry is all we do, say, inquire and all that’s around us.

To deviate slightly from the content of this, Kenya is a country within East African boundaries consisting of forty two ethnic groups (tribes). Somebody will give a figure that is slightly higher than this if we start considering the white settlers and the Indians that arose during the Kenya-Uganda Railway construction period. All that’s happening in this Riverhood country is shaped by this ‘tribal thing’- appointments, politics, education, postings, recruitments, hospitals admissions… It’s the Kenyan tradition. We speak different languages and differ in our cultures. It’s these tribal footsteps that led to the massive killings of innocent children, women and men during the 2007/2008 PEV. It’s again this tribal mark that

ITALIAN WRITER ON GLOCALISATION PLATFORM

ITALIAN WRITER ON GLOCALISATION PLATFORM

                                                                                                                         BY PETER OUMA 

By no prejudice induced, most of the literature works (that I have engaged) by European writers during and in the post-colonization era, and Joseph Conrad‘s Heart of Darkness, is an example, the black characters have always been silenced, abused, imagined, formed and constructed.  Conrad has presented the black characters as those who do not have voices. They lack agency, marginalized, subliminal, and insulted and any other high voltage word fitting the same diction.

Surprisingly, an Italian writer, who unbelievably is a prosecutor, has been the first of his kind to bridge this gap of literary misconception. Gianrico Carofiglio in his novel, Timone inconsapevole, translated as Involuntary Witness, has made his negritude character, Abadou Thiam, a Senegalese, accused of abducting and killing an Italian kid, Francesco Rubino and is locked behind the bars, to regain his voice on a legal perspective.  Gianrico gives Abadou agency. He is presented wholly; his weaknesses, strength, innocence and resilience. Instead of highlighting the colour consciousness, Gianrico presents human consciousness.