A unique summit took place on February 9-11 at the Acacia Premier Hotel, a majestic edifice with a stunning view of Lake Victoria and Kisumu International Airport. From its terrace made of marble, glass and shiny steel, one gains sight of the distant and rocky Riat Hills.
It is here where the who-is-who of this region, led by the former Premier Raila Odinga and the rising nouveaux rich of this vibrant town, dwell. The hills roll like a hem to the revamped lake city of Kisumu under the leadership of Governor Anyang’ Nyong’o.
Interestingly, is this the only town in Kenya with a name and a surname? Known as Port Florence in colonial times, Kenya’s third city may can be referred to as Florence Kisumu.
The summit mentioned above brought together scholars from Kenyan universities who share research interests on the cultural heritage of the Indian Ocean and the coastline we share with Somalia and Tanzania as well as several island republics.
The team came from the University of Nairobi, whose iconic Department of Literature that had been abolished last year now stands reinstated after international outcry and internal varsity deliberations.
They were led by UoN’s Dr Godwin Siundu, the editor of East African Cultural and Literary Studies, who co-hosted the summit with Prof Peter Simatei, the director of the Moi University African Cluster, a centre of excellence in Humanities research. The latter funded the summit with support from the German government.
Others from the UoN included the two Folklore dons, Dr Kitata Makau and Dr Kimingichi Wabende. Both scholars have ongoing research interests in the cultural arts of the Mijikenda and the Washirazi of Kwale county respectively. They are keen to unravel the complex indigenous knowledge systems of these communities and how they shape the current artistic output in the folk arts.
Dr Simiyu Busolo from Pwani University in Kilifi county presented archeological concerns regarding the history of the Coast in terms of settlement in the era of antiquity. The county is home to some of the oldest urban settlements in Kenya, including the famous Gedi Ruins located between old Malindi and the tourist haven of Watamu with its white beaches famous locally and yonder.
Dr Remmy Shiundu of Kaimosi Friends University College, a constituent institution of Masinde Muliro University of Science and Technology, presented reflections on the literature of the 2021 Nobel Prize winner Abdulrazak Gurnah of Zanzibar. His insights revealed how the ocean remains a livid and vivid influence to the literary imaginaries of writers of islandic backgrounds both at the level of form and content.
His research work juxtaposed with my own on the life writings of writers of the Asian diasporas in East Africa. In its fourth and fifth generation, this community has MG Vassanji, the Kenya-born and Tanzania-raised novelist, as its most vivacious voice.
He has penned many novels and memoirs about the experiences of the East African minority whose roots rest across the Indian Ocean in South Asia. Dr Siundu’s paper was based on Vassanji’s memoir And Home Was Kariokor: A Memoir of East Africa (2016).
The book bears on its preliminary pages a dedication to me. Vassanji and I have been literary friends for close to two decades now. Parts of the journeys described in the book we did undertake together across vast Tanzania.
Vassanji and his wife Nurjehan have played a significant role in archiving the artistic sensibilities of this unique and important community of East African region. They run a publishing house from Toronto in Canada.
Known as Mawenzi publishers, and named after the highest peak of snow-capped Mount Kilimanjaro, the famous rooftop of Africa, their outlet has steadily published books of value, including the memoirs of Prof Zul Premji, the internationally acclaimed malaria researcher who has served as the Head of the Department of Pathology at the Aga Khan University here in Kenya.
My research paper focused on his life musings, Malaria Memoirs (2021). I chose to read it as an act of what I call gerontopia – the subset of non-fiction writings devoted to memoirs, autobiographies and biographies of ageing luminaries. Gerontology deals with the study of the process of ageing and in some ways memory, too.
For instance, the recent memoirs of Ngugi wa Thiong’o can be classified as gerontological works or literary arts based on the memory and experiences of an aged writer. These include: Dreams in a Time of War: a Childhood Memoir (2010), In the House of the Interpreter: A Memoir (2012) and Birth of a Dream Weaver: A Memoir of a Writer's Awakening (2016).
In the Kisumu colloquium, the views of Dr Jackie Koskei, a post-doctoral researcher from University of Witwatersrand in South Africa, cross-questioned the emergent field of hydrocolonisation. She approached it from a myth studies perspective. This research field is larger and trans-disciplinary.
Horn of Africa piracy, international terrorism in Northern Mozambique, the ongoing Kenya-Somalia maritime tiff as well as the return last week from exile of the Chagos Islanders after their epic legal fights with Britain, serves to illustrate the rise in Indian Ocean affairs as a realm within 21st Century humanities.
The rich heritage of the Swahili civilisation was brought to sharp relief by the reflections of Prof Tom Olali of the University of Nairobi. A Swahili cultural scholar, Olali has published widely on Lamu archipelago culture and folk arts.