By his ‘royal demeanour’, Ken redefined the image of a writer

In 2015, I received an invitation from Sportlight Publishers to a Creative Writing workshop for school teachers in the Rift Valley.

When I got to their offices in Westlands, I was surprised to learn that I was going to work with famous Swahili factionalist and veteran broadcaster Ken Walibora, famous playwright Timothy Arege, radio journalist Hassan Mwana wa Ali, and a few other big names in journalism and teaching.

I immediately felt outclassed. At the time, I had only published one anthology of short stories with Kenya Literature Bureau, and so I felt like an omena (small fish) among these experienced writing sharks.

My initial surprise graduated into an uncontrollable nervousness when Ken showed up. I am an occasional introvert, and sometimes I am never sure how to behave in the presence of important people. Especially in public.

Ken was the last to board the new, spotless bus that Sportlight was taking us to Bomet in. The front passenger seat had been reserved for him.

As he walked to his seat, I was struck by the neatness of the man, his stylishness, his polished manners, and his priestly humility. He was in a Nation Media Group branded blue T-shirt and dark trousers.

In his hand, he carried a classy suit which was still in the laundry packaging. Ken was a tall, handsome man.

He walked with calculated, presidential steps; his gestures were assuring and calming. His smile was of the kind that confuses the daughters of kings.

It is often said that writers can get clumsy and untidy. But by his deliberate, exceedingly exquisite appearance and his royal demeanour, Ken redefined the image of the writer.

When he greeted us with the simple words, ‘Habari zenu?’ my nervousness dramatically dissipated. And to make matters even easier, Ken proved to be a great talker; he told stories throughout the road trip.

We spent the cold night in Bomet Town. The following day, we discovered that the teachers had come in great numbers, many of them out of the desire to meet face to face with Ken and Tim, the two great writers whose books had been studied in secondary school.

Naturally, the omena was the first to speak. As I talked about the technical aspects of fiction writing, such as plot, point of view, characterisation and dialogue, I kept wondering what Ken the shark was thinking about this omena.

However, when it was Ken’s turn, he referred, repeatedly, to my own presentation, and this made me feel very good.

One of the enduring lessons I picked from his talk was the power of the first sentence in writing a story.

Drawing examples from Charles Dickens, Chinua Achebe and Ngugi Wa Thiong’o, he explained that the first sentence was the key to good writing.

In the afternoon, we broke from the small groups and gathered in the football field for a final lecture from Ken. A number of speeches preceded his own.

I noticed that Ken was a very good listener. But even more striking was the fact that whenever a speaker strayed into Kalenjin, Ken looked very pleased. This surprised me a little.

My own belief had always been that in professional gatherings, and where the audience consisted of people from diverse ethnic backgrounds, neutral languages such as English or Swahili should be used.

Only when Ken spoke later did I realise that he was a passionate believer in African indigenous languages.

As a matter of fact, he began his lecture by greeting the big audience in the Bukusu language. This in Bomet, where perhaps 98 per cent of the people did not know this language.

“Muriena mwesi?” He beamed. As the audience chuckled, he explained how he was a great believer that Africans must decolonise linguistically.

As a writer, broadcaster and university professor who had worked in Africa and the US, he explained that he was a competent user of English, but he was most comfortable writing in Swahili.

He believed that even creative writing is best done in the writer’s indigenous language, or at least in a language the writer is comfortable with.

Much later, in 2019, I sat at the Kenya National Theater and listened to Ngugi Wa Thiong’o talk about how the African renaissance lies in African mother tongues.

I immediately drew parallels between Ngugi’s beliefs and Ken’s. Most creative writers are introverts who are happy to dialogue with themselves, both in public and in private.

Most of them are prone to bouts of absentmindedness as they grapple with a new idea, a new project, or a new deadline.

This is not a disability; it is just a state of being. It is scary to think of that tragic moment, that very minute when the iron body of a mini-bus collided with the princely body of Ken.

Whether he was absentminded at that very minute, whether he was imagining a new novel, or whether it was the matatu driver that was deliberately blind, as most of them tend to be, is a matter of great mental and emotional agony for this country and the world of creative writing.

Mr Chetambe teaches Literature at Kenyatta University