You have heard that in some places this sort of skill, built upon from the local pasts of people, from skills from other places, is taught in schools and community centres. Because it is a human thing to do.

Now that the very Rift Valley, home to mankind, has groaned and shuddered. For a while, it seemed about to faultline again for the first time in a few million years, and drown this nation in a red sea. Now that planting is paralysed; national schools are balkanised; a city burnt down, “foreign” wives evicted to home areas. Now that whole slums of Nairobi packed up their paper bags and corrugated iron to move elsewhere; now that landlords evicted Luo tenants before asking who would come and rent; now that rich St Mary’s yuppies who once played rugby with chemical perms – have met in a chi-chi Nairobi bar to raise millions of shillings for a panga wielding militia to defend the honour of their “elected” president…
After all that.
We find one thing has not yielded. Every single Kenyan has had to make room these past few months: to lose homes, incomes, supermarkets, shares, land, hope, faith, schoolfees, food, jobs, whole industries, your oldest friends, many in-laws. Rich, poor, middle-class, rural, urban – we carry heavy shitty costs.

Certainly Jambo Bwana is a very Kenyan ideology. We know that Jambo is a word that has travelled far beyond our shores, to that mysterious place of power that feeds our middle-class who are only asked to look at income statements and balance sheets and understand them and shut up about everything else and it will be alright. Occasionally, a drunken German tourist will encounter you, the accountant, walking home and she will misread you, and grab your balls, and you will freeze in terror and speak English and say;

‘Madam’, or ‘Pole madam, I am just the hotel accountant’.

The Illustrated Book - Coming Soon

How to Write about Africa
Oxfarmmed
and other stories

By
Binyavanga Wainaina
Patrick Gathara
Daniel Muli

Part 1 of 3

Part 2 of 3

Part 3 of 3

Video credits: McFly3330

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