PEN Kenya – where we are in 2009
In April 2008, we got working vigorously on the re-birth of a vibrant PEN. Kenya had gone through an election fiasco in 2007 and the country was burning. Many writers in Kenya realised that they did not have a common voice and they needed one. Some of us had been writing but also participating in public life with faith that we could help our country grow. Suddenly, as it happens with politics here and in other parts of the world, we found ourselves helpless and voiceless as the media, churches and other platforms of self-expression had been swept into the confusion.
We wrote to writers and asked them to organise for a meeting. PEN Kenya has a membership of 30 writers and this year, high profile journalists and writers have joined. We do know and value the history of the more quiet PEN Kenya in the years of the Moi regime. However, this nation needs voices as our own language tends to be used by politicians to split the people and also weaken the values of community life. PEN as a community of writers who come from different backgrounds naturally was in a wonderful position to feed debate through its writers.
The defence of free expression is obviously a need here and many were happy to sign the PEN Charter. In the first year of PEN Kenya in its new incarnation, we had a strategic planning meeting in which one of the main achievements we aimed for was making writers part of the national psyche, forming communities based on values, and using our languages and writings to invigorate debates.
We have had readings on a national scale. The first was in memory of Mahmoud Darwish, the Palestinian writer and ambassador of peace, as many called him, who died last year in America. His writings and life challenged the many Kenyans who gathered at the Kenyatta International Conference during the Berlin Literature Festival. At that event, Martin Luther King Jr's speech 'I have a dream' was read and discussed in local languages. Novelist and poet Marjorie Oludhe Macgoye who sat with us, wept to hear the young women from the slums that had been hard hit by violence, dream of unity in their villages now torn by ethno-politico animosity. We also had writer Taban Loliyong of Sudan with us, and an empty seat with hat and a pair of sandals representing the presence of Mahmoud Darwish.
One other memorable event was the readings we arranged to remember G.P.O. Oulo, a blogger and his colleague Oscar, who were shot down in the city in what many people call an assassination as they worked with relatives of disappeared people in Kenya.
A happy event was Burns Night which a small group of PEN Kenya members celebrated with Linda Cracknell of Scottish PEN at Wasanii Theatre. In most poets’/writers’ minds there could be no ‘Immortal Memory’ speech that didn’t call for national healing, because we had gone through a difficult period. The BBC today still reports that it is not over, as the political leadership continues to fail the people.
PEN Kenya has taken readings from Michela Wrong's 'Its our turn to Eat' (a book that deals with Kenya's corruption) to Kisumu and Mombasa, cities distant from the capital of Nairobi. Local people received PEN with enthusiasm.
If this is a difficult time for Kenya, with 10 million people facing starvation, stark consequences of environmental degradation, and militia gangs at work, the challenges PEN Kenya faces are myriad. For one, popular voices are repressed and the President of PEN Kenya has been arrested a number of times. The most recent was when she, the Secretary General and Treasurer read a "Poem of the Day" outside the office of the Anti corruption Boss. The boss has since caved in and resigned under pressure and the Commissioner of Police, who was also mentioned in the poem, was sacked but given another national job.
The challenge for PEN Kenya has been how to protect the PEN which is mightier than the sword and stand up for freedom. We had assumed as writers that one regime end - from KANU to Narc and now Government of National Coalition- was the beginning of the respect for the freedom of conscience! We have sadly learnt that vigilance is the price to pay for freedom all the time.
PEN Kenya like many centres does not work from one office. In Nairobi, it is difficult to keep an organisation running on a voluntary basis, but we are determined to continue with our readings and writings. It is therefore greatly appreciated that other PEN centres in the world and PEN International offer opportunities to help our growth such as this internet publication.
We are looking forward to having PEN Exchanges. The first is to Djibouti where again our representative will bring us experience on how to run a centre. We have great dreams, have had many challenges, but we keep repeating the words of Kingwa Kamencu, our Secretary General, now in Oxford on a Rhodes scholarship, that "PEN Kenya will make it, she has her own magic!"
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