Bookstores and literary salons are like the fabled rags of the Orient. It is said that each thread, each design on these carpets without peers, is a narrative or one within another, each an account of breathtaking dimensions.
Such is the manner that we ought to see bookstores of our land, too. These habitats of books weave in words the stories of those who have walked the earth in the past, present and even future. In their lives and lifestyles, we collect lessons of our own life like a snail collects dew of dawn for its trail of silver.
A story is told of three places you would catch a specific South African President in Nairobi. He is now retired but his cerebral approach to leadership and his gift of the gab remain as echoes of his lovely oratory. If Thabo was not at State House Nairobi whenever he visited, you could find him at his hotel, devouring a pile of books carried from his office in Pretoria.
To fail to find him in either location in our green city under the sun would not be a suitable reason for panic. You would definitely encounter him if you did an impromptu tour of all the bookstores of the city. Behold a leader; behold a reader!
His favourite — bumped into him on several occasions I did there — was a wonderful bookstore on second floor of Yaya Centre, along a famous road. The road is named after the only Kenyan politician in history with five official names, a passionate legal defender of the Mau Mau: Clement Michael George Argwings Kodhek.
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Near this bourgie neighbourhood is another to its west called Lavington. The quarter to the northwest of the Central Business District is home to some of the finest trees and foliage in Nairobi.
Tucked in this leafy surburb of a formerly all-white neighbourhood in the heydays of colonialism, today one finds a book house that is causing ripples across the land. It has become one of the hotspots of literary socialisation in Nairobi. It owns the name: Comrades Book House. Njuki Githethwa is the proprietor and curator of this hacienda of books and bibliophiles.
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A good critic is a directory. He can guide you to one or more roads where you can find this or that piece or person of literary arts. This is how, over the two decades I have plied this trade, I ended up knowing more than a handful of who is doing what in Kenyan literature, here and abroad.
Some I have shared a live encounter with over a drink or walk, whereas others I have enjoyed long mail correspondences with. Others, especially in the wake of Covid 2019, I have formed acquaintances with through the plethora of social media platforms available today.
It is through social media that I made the acquaintance of Njuki Githethwa first. We share many friends in the book world together. I became a fan of his regular gigs at the Comrade Book House.
Some of the writers he has hosted in his literary salons, I know as well. For instance, Njuki has worked lately with my mentor, the prominent poet Micere Mugo, a retired professor of literature and the first woman in East Africa to be awarded a doctorate in that field. It is she who penned the foreword of my debut book of poems, Nest of Stones (2010).
It was inevitable that sharing bibliophilia, a beautiful city, a phalanx of friends and a passion for the black beautiful letters, Njuki and I were bound to meet at some point. Meet we did last Saturday, as he invited me to address a gathering of book lovers at the Comrade Book House in Lavington.
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The evening was one resplendent with the light of the sun setting Westwards. Its amber rays sifted through the trees as I alighted from Thika Road in one of our tiny cabs that Nairobians love. The driver had a lost look in his eyes and poured endless reasons in stories of his intention to occupy the house on the hill come Monday.
Njuki received me at the portico of his well-manicured house of books. Inside were writers of various generations: Lexa Lubanga and other literary millennials sat next to Kingwa Kamencu, Lutivini Majanja and my generation.
We remembered Gaakara wa Wanjau. He was jailed by Britain for his literary activism during the State of Emergency. We reminisced on Grace Ogot through my peer and fellow literati Gilbert Mwangi. I spoke about my old friend buried at the Lang’ata Cemetery in 2021 at 82 — Charles Mangua of Son of a Woman (1971).
All three died in the month of March. Gakaara was the first Kenyan to introduce the notion of our vernacular as a literary medium in modern Kenya. Ogot was the first Kenyan woman writer to pen a novel in English. Mangua bagged the Jomo Kenyatta Prize in 1972.
Njuki commemorates black writers here in Lavington using a calendar series he started two years ago. It features one or more writers each month, depending on the month they left us. The calendars are a unique memento to their life and times. They go for Sh500 at the Comrades Book House, a wonderful place to visit. You may bump into people of note there — including presidents who read.