novelists-from-kenya

"Her therapy was simple for there is no greater psychologist than the one who graduates from the hard school of life."

"I have heard rumours also; but most say it is just Western propaganda. Anyway you doctors can do miracles these days. A mere VD cannot elude a cure for too long."

"You may be twice my size, but I have three times your courage"

"The women’s halls of residence, ‘the Box’ as it was known, was the hunting ground for all and sundry, and big cars were very evident especially on Saturdays when well dressed, well-to-do men descended upon the place. It was the thing to have a girl friend on campus…there were two categories of girls—the fast-moving "Mercedes" types and the "clipboards."

"Bitterness is poison to the spirit for it breeds nothing but vipers some of which might consume your very self. Pain and sorrow all humans feel; but bitterness drops on the spirit like aloes—causing it to wither."

"You must realize that little irritations become more glaring, when there is that basic difference…I can’t imagine anything more annoying than their talking to their son, and your children, in a language you cannot understand. It makes you even more of an outsider than you are already."

"All the fears of her childhood were coming back. There was a vice-like band around her head and she thought she would faint. In her head one thought went round and round, beating its wings like a trapped bird. “My child - not you, not you!"

"How can you know where you are going if you do not know where you are coming from?"

"Though she was very wise, one could hardly say that she had been born in the wrong era; that had she lived in a different era, she would have been a great intellectual, a pioneer and a leader of humanity. In truth, such clarity of vision and strength of person are a discomfiture to all men of all ages and she would therefore never have really fitted in that, this or any other century; for human beings prefer to be left alone to muddle along in confusion—it is more comfortable than to suffer the pain of self knowledge."

"He’d better be careful; I hear there is a disease called AIDS waiting to pounce on any careless person these days"

"A home without daughters is like a spring without a source"

"In the United States, there’s the Nevada desert — and football stadiums, if you count Jimmy Hoffa."

"It was always a herd boy, venturing into the depths of the forest, who found the dead body. In our instance, he happened to have a cell phone and so we were able to get to the body in a matter of hours."

"In Kenya, if someone with enough credibility told you that he or she was going to send you to Ngong, you had better back down unless you could get them there first."

"More than just being flat broke, you could say we were like boxers who, having slugged through predictable wins, were ready to finally fight a worthy opponent. We were ready for a case like the one that nearly broke us, our first case together..."

"This place, it reminds me how lucky I am — just to be alive, to be walking out of here."

"Whoever killed him took the casing."

"DNA was useful only with a large criminal database — Kenya’s was in its infancy, and unless we were extremely lucky, there would be no match. And dental records? Forget about it. We just had to hope that the body would yield some secrets."

"It was around midday but it might as well have been midnight, with us canvassing for clues in the light of a full moon — the canopy of the ancient trees let in an annoying in-between light, too low to see well in, yet too bright for flashlights."

"There was nothing more to do but get the body to the pathologist. We didn’t have any body bags and the Administrative Police, or APs as we called them for short, had to carefully roll him onto a woolen blanket."

"..was a little better in a few respects. It was relatively round less sooty and mysteriously, absolutely flea-free. Mice and bed bugs there were, but there were less famished and consequently less hostile...."

"There was no policeman in sight they sprinted across the road and hopped into the largest of the supermarket dustbins. They snuggled close to each other for warmth and immediately fell asleep intoxicated by the foul smell of rotten vegetables"

"Among the people, urging anyone with any information that might lead to the discovery of the cause of the fire to step forward."

"If the sun must set for me, If all must come to an end, if you must be rid of me"

"Days run out for me, life goes from bad to worse very soon, very much soon, times will lead to the end."

"...various kinds of fruit in various stages of decay... slices of stale, smelly bread and a few pieces of dusty chocolate."

"In Kenya we want deaths which will change things, that is to say, we want true sacrifice. But first we have to be ready to carry the cross. I die for you, you die for me, we become a sacrifice for one another. So I can say that you, Karanja, are Christ. Everybody who takes the Oath of Unity to change things in Kenya is a Christ."

"African countries, as colonies and even today as neo-colonies, came to be defined and to define themselves in terms of the languages of Europe: English-speaking, French-speaking or Portuguese-speaking African countries."

"“I would hate to see a train run over my mother or father, or brothers. Oh, what would I do?” [Mumbi] quickly exclaimed. “Women are cowards.” Karanja said half in joke. “Would you like a train to run over you?” Mumbi retorted angrily. Karanja felt the anger and did not answer."

"Gikonyo greedily sucked sour pleasure from this reflection which he saw as a terrible revelation. To live and die alone is the ultimate truth."

"Unknown to those around him, Kihika’s heart hardened towards “these people,” long before he had even encountered a white face. Soldiers came back from the war and told stories of what they had seen in Burma, Egypt, Palestine and India; wasn’t Mahatma Gandhi, the saint, leading the Indian people against the British rule? Kihika fed on these stories: his imagination and daily observation told him the rest; from early on, he had visions of himself, a saint, leading Kenyan people to freedom and power."

"What is a blood relation? [...] What does it matter if people are alike or not? A child is a child. We all come from the same womb, the common womb one Kenya. The blood shed for our freedom has washed away the differences between that clan and this one, this nationality and that one. Today there is no Luo, Gĩkũyũ, Kamba, Giriama, Luhya, Maasai, Meru, Kallenjin or Turkana. We are all children of one another. Our mother is Kenya, the mother of all Kenyan people.""

"Why, we may ask, should an African writer, or any writer, become so obsessed by taking from his mother-tongue to enrich other tongues? Why should he see it as his particular mission? We never asked ourselves: how can we enrich our languages? How can we 'prey' on the rich humanist and democratic heritage in the struggles of other peoples in other times and other places to enrich our own? Why not have Balzac, Tolstoy, Sholokov, Brecht, Lu Hsun, Pablo Neruda, H.C. Anderson, Kim Chi Ha, Marx, Lenin, Albert Einstein, Galileo, Aeschylus, Aristotle and Plato in African languages? And why not create literary monuments in our own languages?...No these questions were not asked. What seemed to worry us more was this: after all the literary gymnastics of preying on our languages to add life and vigour to English and other foreign languages, would the result be accepted as good English or good French? Will the owner of the language criticise our usage?"

"Many of us talked like that because we wanted to deceive ourselves. It lessens your shame. We talked of loyalty to the Movement and the love of our country. You know a time came when I did not care about Uhuru for the country anymore. I just wanted to come home.”"

"“In a flash, I was convinced that the growth of the British Empire was the development of a great moral idea: it means, it must surely lead to the creation of one British nation, embracing all peoples of all colors and creeds, based on the just proposition that all men were created equal.”"

"I would even say that too much education can be a form of foolishness.""

"At Githima, people believed that a complaint from [Karanja] was enough to make a man lose his job. Karanja knew their fears. Often when men came into his office, he would suddenly cast them a cold eye, drop hints, or simply growl at them; in this way, he increased their fears and insecurity. But he also feared the men and alternated this fierce prose with servile friendliness."

"[Mugo] had always found it difficult to make decisions. Recoiling as if by instinct from setting in motion a course of action whose consequences he could not determine before the start, he allowed himself to drift into things or be pushed into them by an uncanny demon; he rode on the wave of circumstance and lay against the crest, fearing but fascinated by fate."

"You two are wrong. A thief is no worse than a witch, and a witch is no worse than a thief. A thief is a witch, and a witch is a thief. For when a thief steals your land, your house, your clothes, isn't he really killing you? And when a witch destroys your life, isn't he stealing everything you own?""

"As a worker, I know very well that the forces of law and order are on the side of those who rob the workers of the products of their sweat, of those who steal food and land from the peasants. The peace and the order and the stability they defend with armored cars is the peace and the order and the stability of the rich, who feast on bread and wine snatched from the mouths of the poor—yes, they protect the eaters from the wrath of the thirsty and the hungry. Have you ever seen employers being attacked by the armed forces for refusing to increase the salaries of their workers? What about when the workers go on strike? And they have the audacity to talk about violence!""

"Colonialism imposed its control of the social production of wealth through military conquest and subsequent political dictatorship. But its most important area of domination was the mental universe of the colonised, the control, through culture, of how people perceived themselves and their relationship to the world. Economic and political control can never be complete or effective without mental control. To control a people's culture is to control their tools of self-definition in relationship to others."

"Soon everyone will know that he has created and then killed."

"They looked beyond the laughing face of the whiteman and suddenly saw a long line of other red strangers who carried not the Bible, but the sword. […] The iron snake […] was quickly wriggling towards Nairobi for a thorough exploitation of the hinterland."

"Why not marry her? She is beautiful! Why not marry? Do I love her or don't I?"

"Then the white men had come, preaching a strange religion, strange ways, which all men followed. The tribe's code of behaviour was broken."

"Well – yes – no. I mean, nowhere in particular."

"Look, Sister,You know I want the boy to grow in the Lord."

"Stay well, Son. Go well and in peace, Mother."

"Different! Different! Puu! They are all alike. Those coated with the white clay of the white man’s ways are the worst. They have nothing inside."

"The whiteman told of another country beyond the sea where a powerful woman sat on a throne while men and women danced under the shadow of her authority and benevolence. She was ready to spread the shadow to cover the [Gikuyu]. They laughed at this eccentric man whose skin had been so scalded that the black outside had peeled off."