Ugandans don’t celebrate their writers. Let’s change that! Did you know there is a Ugandan writer whose books once sold millions of copies? Not just once but continue to fly off the shelves long after that writer’s demise? Yes, it is all true.
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!Her name was Barbara Kimenye and you probably read one of her books growing up. Maybe even still one of your favourite books. She was the author of the Moses books. A series of eleven titles about a mischievous boy who just wanted to enjoy his teen years but he had to be in school. Some particular stand outs included Moses in Trouble, Moses and the Raffle, Moses and the Kidnappers and Moses and Mildred. Just the tip of the about fifty books this writer authored.
I remember sitting between my father’s feet on Saturday evenings absorbed in the misadventures of Moses, hearing my father click his tongue as he read the latest news from Kenya in The Daily Nation.
At the time, East Africa seemed to be gripped by the court proceedings investigating the murder of minister Robert Ouko who many people thought would one day be president of Kenya.
I was where I was because my father was my dictionary. If there was a word or an expression in the book I did not understand, I would stop and ask him. Kimenye rarely used complex words but she loved throwing slang here and there, especially from Swahili, which my father is fluent in. His friends too were.
If they were home visiting, and I asked an explanation for a term, they would chuckle and launch into exciting stories of their own adventures in Moi’s Kenya and Mobutu’s Kinshasa. All prompted by a simple request to explain the meaning of a word like, “Askari.”
In her own life, as in her books, I would come to learn that Kimenye was a bridge builder. For many years, because of her name, I assumed Kimenye was born and raised in Uganda. She was far from that. Kimenye was born in Halifax, West Yorkshire, England, in 1929 to a white father and West Indian mother and that is where she would return, when she wanted to rest, and eventually die.
But Uganda and Africa was her home and East Africa had crept into her heart and she failed to shake it off. From her fateful first marriage to Bill Kimenye of Bukoba in then Tanganyika, Kimenye seemed to instinctively feel she had come home when she touched down.
Coming to Uganda seemed to release in Kimenye a blazing ambition to write which never died out to the end of her days at 82 years of age.
Barbara Kimenye is known today for her Moses books which were a kids favourite in the 1990s and early 2000s.
I would argue though, they are not her best books. That honour should belong to two early books: Kalasanda and Kalasanda Revisited.
Until I stumbled upon Kalasanda Revisited, I used to think Doreen Baingana’s Tropical Fish was the best book of short stories written by a Ugandan. The Kalasanda books firmly belong in that category and should be as celebrated.
In Kalasanda Revisited, Kimenye captured on the page a slice of life in a village in Buganda Kingdom just before the traumatic events of 1966 upended this society. Kalasanda Revisited is a last lingering glimpse of a society fully confident in its beliefs, its hierarchy, culture and norms that it had no idea less than three to six months would be swept aside by a brutal force unleashed by Milton Obote it could not resist.
The overthrow of Kabaka Mutesa II and abolition of a kingdom that had existed continually for at least 800 years ripped a bloody gash onto the fabric of that society and the wider Uganda that it has never quite healed from.
Kalasanda Revisited sits on the precipice of that gash, looking back, unaware of what is to come. The denizens of Kalasanda that Kimenye brings are more concerned about the “civilising” efforts of the Mother’s Union which is determined to root out paganism by spearheading the cutting down of a certain sacred tree.
There is old Kibuuka, struggling to find what to do with himself after retiring from the Ggombola headquarters, until he is presented with a piglet that soon becomes his dearest friend. The desire to go abroad for further studies or the sheer prestige of it is not new either as we discover from Daudi Kulubya.
Nor is the excitement of purchasing your first motorcycle or car and the consequent hilarity that comes while trying to learn how to ride or drive it. The everyday, under Kimenye’s pen, glows with a uniqueness of tender moments frozen in time.
Being funny in the here and now is not hard though not everybody can be funny. Eliciting laughter fifty years later from each of the eight stories that constitute this slim volume is an amazing feat.
Find the Kalasanda books where you can. They are out of print but second hand copies are available online. This is a Kimenye you should know. In Kalasanda Revisited, Kimenye added a gem in the family of world literature we can all be very proud of. Find it, if you can.
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