Sheltered from the blazing Kenyan sun by trees that have witnessed times of both colonisation and revolution, Café Moniko’s is where Kenya’s intellectual Bohème meets. Yvonne Owuor’s red jacket glows in the afternoon light as she strides towards a free table in a silent corner of the café. Her gestures are energetic but measured. She is passionate about her characters and the state of her nation.
Her first novel, Dust, which has just been released, focuses on the death of a young man, shot by police officers in Nairobi’s violent streets during the 2007 upheaval, and the stories it triggers about the equally young nation. Having previously written about her country’s history only in short stories, she explains, “When I set out to write Dust I was very clear about what it should be. But then, when Kenya exploded in late 2007, the story acquired its own life and it wanted to be told.” Owuor describes the writing as a very natural process, noting, “Something was unleashed and suddenly all the characters began telling me their own stories.” This can be seen in her relationship with her characters, whom she describes as being “very musical – before I see them I hear their music, the songs they love and the ones they hate. Each character tells their own, different story of fear, longing and admiration. It took me seven years to put it all down on paper.”
Every once in a while during our interview, Owuor halts to scribble an idea into her notebook, each question that I ask her releasing a stream of words. This clashes with the sentiment expressed in the novel by the young man’s father, who notes that three languages have defined Kenya since its independence: English, Swahili and Silence. Owuor comments, “We Kenyans are very good at covering our rage up with silence,” explaining how, “since the independence, people were infuriated, about the land others had stolen, the people that had gone unpunished and the vile things that happened decades ago.” In Dust, she collects these stories. She asks, “How come nobody ever said anything? The rage had acquired a space of silence in which it was unnoticed – it was kept and sustained for decades. Yes, we’re good with silences. It might be the most Kenyan language of all three.” In Owuor’s novel, these stories are finally given space.
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The characters’ relationship with their country is difficult, the stories raised forcing them to question their allegiance in confronting ‘the Kenyan ideal’. In terms of its history, she argues, Kenya “did not treat these memories the way it should have”. History was recently removed from the Kenyan syllabus, which means, she says, “Some feel detached from their heritage.” In the book, this attitude is embodied by the protagonist’s sister, Ajani. Owuor relates, “On returning to Nairobi, [following her brother’s death] she seeks something that’s supposed to make her feel complete. She had experienced the world through her brother, and now she’s discovering herself through his death, the empty space he’s left. There is a young generation that has lost whatever it was that defined them. All of them have a place of longing, somewhere they want to return. But then she discovers that sometimes people can be places, too.”
The book seems, then, to be asking a question of what endures, the characters only finding consolation through the prospect of starting over again. “Yes, they do,” agrees Owuor. But she also notes, “Our memory is like dust [and] things evaporate – everything also begins with dust. And that’s a message not only to the Kenyan people.” It is this that allows the characters in her novel to find some sort of peace. Owuor offers a perspective on the importance of forgiveness that is especially poignant when considered in the context of her country’s history.
In her words, “There’s a difference between forgiving and simply forgetting. What happens with the power and energy of forgiving is that when you meet that particular memory, you don’t meet it armed to kill, you may meet it to say, ‘You’re there. That’s your shape, that’s who you are.’ The chance to start all over again – and our memories – are what defines us, it might be all we have. And it’s all we need.”
It’s easy to see why Dust was celebrated by the New York Times and the Washington Post as a “remarkable novel with a brave healing voice” and listed among the ‘50 top books of 2014’. It is a brilliant novel from a writer who deserves far more attention outside of the place that she describes, with the book currently nominated for the Folio Prize.
