* Africa: Saa Ya Kinyumbani

The music over the PA system, when I arrive at Nairobi’s Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, is relentlessly American. Kenny Rogers, Whitney Houston, muzak you can’t name but you’ve heard a hundred times before in a hundred generic interchangeable locations. It sounds especially ironic to me this time, given the purpose of my trip.

16 hours ago, in the UK, I posted the following entry on my blog:

“Migritude and I are going home. To an audience that may love us or loathe us, but cannot possibly be bored or indifferent. An audience more intimately connected to what we have to say than any other in the world.

The novelist May Sarton has a line in one of her books: ‘Perhaps, in the end, this is why one is a poet. So that once in a lifetime, one can say the right words, to the right person, at the right time.’

Almost 3am now. 6am in Nairobi - sunrise, and trees erupting into bird chatter. On Kenya Airways flights, Local Time At Destination is rendered in Kiswahili as Saa Ya Kinyumbani Ya Mwisho Wa Safari.

Literal translation: Time of the home at the end of the journey.”

I grew up in Kenya during the Moi years. When those who spoke out were routinely arrested, detained without trial, beaten, tortured, exiled, killed. We read daily news stories about journalists, activists, even students, jailed for “sedition.” Every so often, our literature teacher would tell us that such-and-such a poet had been “banned” – and we dutifully crossed out their name and poems in our school text-books.

We were taught that Kenya attained independence peacefully. Without bloodshed. The slaughter of over 300,000 Kenyans in the war of independence, the subsequent betrayal of the country by the establishment of one-party rule, was never mentioned.

I grew up in a world where brown-skinned Kenyans were “the Asians” - their Kenyan citizenship and nationality subject to constant question and attack. Black-skinned Kenyans were “Africans” – the real Kenyans. Africans of other nationalities – Ugandans, Somalis, Congolese – were suspect and unwelcome refugees, invisible in public life.

Now I’m going home to do excerpts from my one-woman spoken-word theatre show, Migritude, in which I unfold voices of Kenyan women telling of rape and torture in British concentration camps during the Mau Mau years. Speak the pain of growing up brown in black-majority post-colonial East Africa. Reclaim and celebrate the dignity outsider status. Do not disguise my radical queer politics. I am terrified. I don’t yet trust that we can speak of these things, even in the new multiparty Kenya, without consequences.

And beyond that, I have no idea how Nairobi will take to spoken-word theatre. Or slam poetry. Who will come out to hear my work? June Wainaina, PR and Marketing Manager of Kwani?, the groundbreaking Kenyan literary organization that is presenting me in Nairobi, tells me: “People here have never seen anything like you. We expect to sell out your show at the Carnivore.”

When Youssou N’Dour sang at Nairobi’s legendary Carnivore restaurant in 2005, he drew a capacity crowd of 4,500. We draw slightly less. A lot less, in fact. Only 59 tickets sold (we’d projected 200). Not even enough to recoup Kwani’s costs – or pay my artist’s fee. Most glaring, and personally disappointing, is the absence of my own Asian African community, aside from a few progressive activists, journalists, and friends. We learn important lessons from this about PR, community outreach, marketing, and choice of venue. But the press is there in force. KTN, the national TV network, films the entire show. Journalists from Kenya’s two national dailies bombard me with questions after the performance. Features on me and Migritude run in the papers every day for the next four days.

And the response to Migritude from those 59 people there is nothing short of electric. They surround me on stage afterwards, almost overwhelm me with eagerness, appreciation, thoughts, questions. I am amazed at how my work has sliced through ethnic and socio-economic boundaries. Some of the most enthusiastic responses and persistent questions come from a group of MCs and b-boys, who, I am later told, were all street children until a few years ago. One of them tells me how powerfully affected he was by the integration of history, politics, economics, into my poetry. He asks: “What obstacles will I face in writing like this?”

Someone else, Asian African, tells me he was moved to tears by Shilling Love, a piece about my parents’ sacrifices. He was embarrassed by his emotion, until he looked around and saw another listener, Black African, also crying. “I have never had this experience before,” he says, “of Asian and African sharing the same tear.”

In subsequent days I do back-to-back meetings, interviews, radio spots. I am asked repeatedly for my thoughts on “Indians in Kenya.” My recurring response is: “I don’t really have any knowledge about Indians in Kenya. But I have a lot to say about Kenyans of South Asian heritage.” I watch the eyes of Black Kenyan journalists widen with sudden understanding, and it affirms my faith in the vital importance of words. I am a poet because I believe that language shapes the reality we inhabit. When we reclaim and reinvent the language used to define us, we also claim the space and power to act politically.

Some journalists tell me that they have never heard South Asian Kenyans voice the radical politics they hear in my work. I point out that just as Black Kenyans who challenged the ruling powers post-independence were exiled, imprisoned, or killed, so also were dissenting Asian Kenyans silenced – through assassination, deportation, removal of citizenship.

On the night of the show, the TV crew tells us they will run segments of Migritude on KTN’s Art Scene program the following week. Later, we hear that the director of the show was concerned about the political content. Rather than cutting it, however, she chose to delay screening until her superiors approved it. Self-censorship? Over-cautiousness? What elements of the content caused the concern? All part of the ongoing conversation about saa ya kinyumbani. What time is it right now in Kenya’s history? Has the time finally arrived when we can have these conversations?

* Kenyan Indian poet and spoken word artist Shailja Patel has featured at New York's Lincoln Center, and venues across the US. She has drawn standing ovations in London, Glasgow, and Nairobi. Excerpts from her one-woman spoken-word theater show, Migritude, have aired on BBC radio, NPR, the National Radio Project, and Pacifica Radio, generating responses worldwide. Migritude was recently selected for the International Women Art Festival in Vienna in 2006. (http://www.shailja.com/)

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