When I started the book tour for my debut book Strength and Sorrow, I wasn’t sure how it would turn out. I had put together a relentless schedule that involved visiting two cities, Nairobi and Kisumu, in between rushing home to see my mum in the village in Gem. A few friends had said nice things about the book, even got some critical reviews from noted Kenyan personalities but I still wasn’t sure. Kenyans are by nature polite in personal interactions and we can be economical with the truth where relationships are valued. Online, behind the veil of anonymity, Kenyans can be rabid and when they turn on the fury, the attacks can be relentless. With this new generation, there is no such thing as sacred cows. 

I was nursing this trepidation as I squeezed onto the middle seat on my KLM flight from Amsterdam to Nairobi. I was seated between an Asian lady and an older white man from America who I discovered was making a trip to a charity home he supported in Nairobi. Half way through the flight, we eventually broke the ice and curiosity got the better of him when he saw my copy of Strength and Sorrow and asked what the book was about. I asked him to read the back jacket and that triggered a conversation about his unresolved grief that he had not realised he had been holding. He talked about a complicated relationship with a deceased father and still nursed regret over the passing of a child. It was a conversation he had never ventured and decided right there on the plane to buy a book. This spontaneous confession was a harbinger of the tour that I did not see yet.

I was returning to Nairobi after a two year hiatus. The last time I was home was the first year memorial of my sister, Nyangi, who was now the prominent character in my book. It is something to return home after some time away. Home had changed in many ways, yet it had not, in a kind of same old but different way. The vibe was familiar, the actors younger, the pace faster. Roads once familiar were now dwarfed by high rise towers cropping around the city like wild mushrooms. The expressway from the airport straddling the city dominated the cityscape, a marker of a city in a hurry to grow up. I once wrote a piece, titled, Me, I love Nairobi and in it I recalled how I always carried a piece of Nairobi with me and the distinction was formed then. A city isn’t merely infrastructure, sights and scenes. A city’s soul is its people. 

I used to wonder whether I would change. Would I be like the other diasporasians I had seen who suddenly lost all sense of nuance after just a few miserable winters abroad, began to look down on their own? Stepping away seemed to have had the opposite effect on me and it took this book to really show me what it means to belong.

This notion of belonging was immediately tested as I faced my former public self. When I announced that I had published a book and would be going on a book tour, the reception was warm. I was reminded of how big Mantalk was, the weekly national column in the Daily Nation that I laboured over for a decade that has now become part of the country’s cultural landscape, a reference point to a bygone era, for many stuck in nostalgia. I was no longer the Mantalk guy. I had traveled far both within and without. I had grown up but to many of my readers, I was still that guy, who showed up every Saturday, a mysterious figure, who ruffled feathers. The man some female readers used to love to hate. 

I had been part of several life journeys unwittingly, something people grew up with. And like all fans of urban culture, I was a mascot for those bygone times. Yet here I was, older perhaps wiser, certainly a lot more humbler. I had just poured my soul into a book that detailed my own journey away from the glam and fame of the national spotlight and delved into trying not only to make sense of my unresolved grief but also the grief of a nation. The shift in persona was stark: From a young man who used to critique modern rules of chivalry to one sharing lessons on how to navigate the profound loss that follows the death of a loved one.

To reach these moments of connection, I first had to navigate the city itself. My first stop the night after my arrival was the Prestige Bookshop and Nairobi traffic, well, what has changed, the roads remained clogged and nothing quite captures Nairobi’s class dynamics as the expressway, raised above, smooth and scenic, with arresting views of flashy high rise buildings obscuring the reality of chaos that rules just underneath it, bottle neck traffic, matatu madness and bodas that now make matatus appear quite tame. It became a metaphor in hindsight of how we process grief, stoic and contained on the surface but underneath the facade, a bubbling volcano waiting to erupt.  

I remembered Prestige bookshop from another time, when the city centre was a little more serene and Mama Ngina street still had a taste of the bourgie back when 20th Century Plaza, the Hilton hotel and the International Life House were iconic features in the city centre. Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor was launching her second novel DragonFly Sea  in the small book shop. The shelves had been pushed to the side to create space for the fans and I was the MC of the day, here to celebrate one of Kenya’s finest novelists. I looked at the bookshop now, wondering how we had pulled it off, for there seemed to be hardly any room to swing a cat. 

When the people started to come through, I knew this was going to be special. Odd that despite 28 years of a public writing life, I had never signed an autograph. I remained struck that people would endure Nairobi traffic to meet over a book and demand of my bad handwriting inscribed on their personal copies. 

In a profession, where we prefer to stay away from the limelight, the simplicity of a meet and greet is a humbling experience. I didn’t know what to expect and then, as a new world and role began to unfold for me. Lost connections revived. People I had gone to school with, names I had seen or heard from in years. Friends, family, acquaintances, total strangers, with entwined pasts and reminders of a time once spent in communion and between the firm handshakes and tight embraces, it took me a minute to realise what was happening. 

I was being honoured and celebrated. When I went to Ukombozi library, to donate a copy of my book, I was warmly welcomed by Kimani Waweru, the resident librarian. This special archive had since changed location to a nondescript building on Moktar Daddah street, up a narrow stairway to the second floor and it held one the best collection of Pan African liberation text, rare books, many out of print. Even in this secluded location, people still came. I met Ogutu, who told me how the story of my father’s funeral process was also his story. I met Brian Malenya who I had played rugby against in the army side Ulinzi and he resonated with my tribute to the rugby phenomenon Benjamin Ayimba, and Eli the son of my late biking buddy and mechanic Joe Mwangi who was now a grown young man, a face that reminded of me of a friend I still grieved. 

At the United Kenya Club, I met a stranger named Clifford Derrick who had just buried his mother and the book triggered his own spontaneous reflections of his moment of loss. At Nuria bookstore on Moi avenue, hosted by the gracious Abdullahi Bule, streams of people came through. There was my old schoolmate Omenge Nyamato who also had published a book titled Praxis, Power and Passion documenting his medical journey through Africa. He was still grieving the recent loss of his mother and he confessed my book would be a guide through grief that he was no longer interested in suppressing. I met the co-author of the Big Conservation Lie, Mordecai Ogada, a critical read that challenges the entrenched colonial legacy of conservation in Kenya. We exchanged signed copies. I spoke to a man called Rollex, who pointed out that it was the death anniversary of his father and he wanted a particular chapter signed in dedication to his memory. 

The collective sharing continued in Kisumu when I arrived at the Text Book Centre at the United Mall. I met Sharon who told me that she had just gone through a season of loss, family members who had seemingly died in pairs, as if calling out to each other from the other side and it did not make sense until she found a page in Strength and Sorrow that precisely spoke to her unique grief. She showed me the pages underlined on her personal copy. There was another reader sent by a husband with the explicit dedication to a father, recently passed. The next day in Kisumu I met a smart young man called Akal from Lolwe bookshop who filled a room with eager listeners, joining me in a conversation about death and funerary practices. What had death taught us, what was it continuing to teach us. 

All the people I met, had either recently gone through loss, were trying to make sense of  a death from the past or had come to the realisation of the inevitability of our mortality and were seeking the language to understand it. I realised that I was not just selling a book. I had opened the space for something deeper, through mere presence and perhaps holding a mirror to parts of themselves that they could not see or had forgotten existed. 

In the various bookstops I made, through the branches of Text Book Centre, Half Priced books, Bookstop Yaya and the cute little colourful bookshop in Ngara called Sema Nami, the meet and greets turned into spontaneous grief circles and I found myself, counseling strangers who found resonance in my reflections on loss. Together, we could broach pains that they were afraid to touch for fear of what would erupt. 

In every shared story, I relived the anguish of confusion that comes after sudden loss of a loved one. I was here to hold space for people dealing with complicated and conflicted losses, the unresolved, the forgotten and sharing pathways for people looking back to fetch what had been lost. I was no longer that spirited young man who was grappling with the challenges of modern masculinity. Life had reconstructed me and now I had returned almost in the mode of a death doula. 

Strength and Sorrow is my gift to my country, to my people. It is evidence of our shared humanity in the face of this human inevitability. 

Then, just as I concluded the book tour, this shared human inevitability was amplified on a national stage. 

The second chapter of Strength and Sorrow is titled, Baba’s Gone is dedicated to my own father. 

The first line reads…

When Baba died, I became numb. 

He had died of a heart attack….

Now, a national father figure, the one, the country fondly called Baba,  the former Prime Minister of the Republic of Kenya and perhaps its most consequential leader, the enigmatic Raila Amolo Odinga, has died. 

The same sinking feeling returned. I was numb. 

Now, the biggest tree in the homestead had fallen and the family was in disarray. 

As the phone calls started to come through, I recognised the emotion immediately.

It was…Shock! 

My cousin described it precisely. 

“I don’t know how I am feeling”. 

I remember only ten days ago, sitting at the back of a boda and just as we arrived at the city centre near the University way, adjacent to the Uhuru highway, we encountered a most unusual sight. A flight of bats had covered the sky above. The flight of bats by day in a modern city is far more than a biological event. I thought about this moment for a long time afterwards. 

It seemed ominous. A bat is a creature that flies like a bird, active at night so its flight during the day is  an anomaly. I immediately thought, there must be some symbolic resonance to this sight. In esoteric traditions, the bat is a symbol of death and rebirth.

When I received the shocking news of the death of the Baba of the nation, Raila Odinga, I thought of those bats again. The people had not been prepared for what was clearly the end of an era and the jumbled response to the news of his passing, spoke to the repressed anxieties bubbling underneath that we will be forced to confront as a people and as a nation in the coming weeks, months and years. 

Baba is gone and our nation’s politics is about to be plunged into painful but necessary collective transformation. I pray that the passing of this legendary figure we called Baba, will usher us into a new understanding of grief and not just leave us raw and fearful of its searing pain.

But now, allow us to lament.

Woyi, gimi chamo e mari, ( Young man, want you eat is yours to keep)

To gimo dong, ( What remains)

To kik i geneee! ( Do not depend on it)

*******

Tho obamba, atwo ( Death has laid me out to dry)

Tho obamba, atwoo! ( Death has laid me out to dry)

Tho omoya, aliya, ( Death has laid me out to dry, like dried meat)

Tho omoya, atwo,  (Death has laid me out to dry)

Tho obamba aliya, Wuod Joka Ogola,  (Death has laid me out to dry, like dried meat, son of the Ogolas)

Woud Joka Ogolaaaa! ( Son of the Ogolas)

Omoya, atwoo,     (Death has laid me out to dry)

Tho omoya, atwo!  (Death has laid me out to dry)

********

Nyiri kwodho wa, go osogo olila, 

Nyiri kwodho wa, go osogo olila’

Ting aaa, Ting aaa! 

Ting aaa, Ting aaa!