Oral East Africa>Part 2 The village of many writers At the hut of the story

Written by Otiato Guguyu

Writers sprout out of Maragoli hills like mushrooms, in their numbers and talent most of whom have gone ahead to win national acclaim.

When we visited Florence Mbaya the author of several titles to her name; A Journey Within, Heritage High, Sunrise at Midnight, and The Morning After, she causally mentioned some of Kenya’s writers who were born just around her village.

Kenya’s pioneer publisher, the late Henry Chakava is her neighbor and so are the Imbuga’s, who have given this country Francis and Prof Mabel, both of whom have earned their stripes and national acclaim.

Maragoli is also the birthplace of Bernard Chailu, Arthur Kemoli, and my friend Stanely Gazemba who comes from Mbale, just around the area.

“My husband (Ambassador Boaz Mbaya) is also a writer,” she says chuckling. “I do not know if this area was meant to have writers, I hope one of my grandchildren will also be,” she said.

No library on the stony hills

Despite the icons that have been produced on these hills, the tallest buildings in the area are the piers of evangelical churches rather than a library to cultivate these manured fields.

“Before he died, I had talked to Dr Chakava about why can we not even have a library even here in Vihiga, I hear in Kakamega there is something that has opened up there, a library by Egara Kabaji, I hear he has opened something, I have not been there,” she said.

Alienation of urban and rural populations have drained away the best brains into the squalor of the capital city while potential economies lie unexploited back home.

Mrs Mbaya knows the impact of what bringing back home our imagination can do to transform village life having chosen to return to Chavakali in Maragoli after years in foreign service.

After she insisted she wanted to live back in the village, she quickly found out that it was easier said than done. Just getting to her house was a challenge, scrambling her Peugeot on the rural road over the muddy road when it rained was just impassable.

She drove the clean green sedan with stoic knowledge of her rights as a tax payer to the local public works office and demanded that the road be fixed.

“They were quite surprised when I went there and demanded that the road should be fixed. I heard that they thought I wanted to vie for elections,” she says with a conspiratorial air of the Government Inspector image that comes to my mind.

She says they fixed the road alright, but only up to her gate. Then she stormed their offices again and demanded that it should be extended to serve the whole village and not just herself. They came back and moved it.

Return to the village

I was amazed that the impact of new imaginings and taxpayers’ expectations can actually bring physical change to our otherwise dysfunctional colonial state.

Ms Mbaya did not just inspire a road into her village. Together with her husband, they started a secondary school and are leading the transformation of rural dairy agriculture through Sabatia Sub County Dairy Farmers Cooperative.

“When we came here we wanted electricity, and someone told us if a secondary school is near that area, the government will bring electricity so we really pushed for it,” she says.

Through her efforts, the local dairy economy is booming from training, aggregation, equipment and has helped organize for better pricing while leveraging her connections to pool in resources from all over.

She said that when she started the cooperative, they thought about funding and decided to issue shares, and very many people bought into the idea, even those who were not in farming like Mr Henry Chakava.

Sample farm

She gives us a tour of her farm, a little Eden all fired up by biogas. She had managed space like a model holding pens for goats, with a large dairy cow staring out of a brick-built home with shuttered louvers on the top side that let in the air.

A narrow passage led to the coop where gees sat on some ugly duckling, with some spotted Guinea fowls, and chicken out clucking each other in a house nigger field nigger contest.

She had the cleanest largest boars of pigs that grunted disturbed by our tumbling entry. One snorted violently over the rickety door that divided the pounds of beast from us but seemed to calm at her familiar presence. She let us in on a secret, pigs are not incestuous. How about that. Apparently, when you need to mate your gilt, it better not be her cousin.

Missed opportunities

My experience covering Mrs Mbaya showed me how remarkably wrong I have been about rural farming and what the idea of returning back to the village represents.

It means the opportunity for bringing back the knowledge, exposure and expertise we have learned across the world and using that knowledge to transform little parts of our communities.

Although she regretted that the whole of Chavakali had no significant library to speak of yet the area had produced some of Kenya’s famous writers and the legendry publisher Mr henry Chakava, she hopes the legendary writer will be a beacon of inspiration beyond these Western Kenya hills and across Africa.

She said she had told Mr Chavaka about the idea of creating a Chakava Prize for writing which would inspire new mushrooms to sprout for the exhilarating joy of stories.

“I think we should have something like the Chakava prize for writing, it is something I talked to him about and he would tell me, you know I cannot be the one to initiate that. I have even talked to Kamua Kiarie and asked why could we not have something like that, because he has done so much for writing not only in Kenya but Africa,” she said.

“It can be annual, biannual then you have a competition where people write and give stories then we have prizes to give out.”

Read also: Part 1 The Village Writers