Inside Kombani's autobiography as memoirs come to classrooms

A couple of days ago, I received a package from Oxford University Press East Africa, courtesy of Kinyanjui Kombani, who has come to earn the title ‘the banker who writes’.

In the package was a copy of his latest title, Dear Mama, an autobiography that has already been approved by the Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development, the technical arm of the Ministry of Education.

The autobiography by Kombani, who is best known for his award-winning breakout novel, The Last Villains of Molo (2014), will now be studied at Grade 10 under the Competency-Based Education system.

The autobiography takes the form of short letters that the winner of the Burt Award for African Young Adult Literature (2013) addresses to his mother, who died when he was still young.

Now, one of the most remarkable things about this epistolary mode of presentation is the kind of emotional weight it carries. As you read the letters, you feel the depth of the bond between the writer and the departed mother.

This heartfelt wave of emotions calls to mind Mariama Bâ’s So Long a Letter, that African classic in which the protagonist Ramatoulaye writes to her lifelong friend Aissatou, reflecting on widowhood, polygamy and the condition of women in post-independence Senegal. Perhaps what makes the message in Kombani’s autobiography much more powerful is that it is a factual account of his own life.

One striking aspect of the autobiography is the boldness with which the author casts his relationship with his other relations, other than his mother. Another remarkable thing is that in a country where autobiographies are penned by people in their sunset years, he chose to do his at the prime of his life.

The autobiography traces the arc of the author’s life right from the time his mother died, through the ups and downs, to the present moment when he is a top banker with one of the top lending institutions, which has stationed him in Singapore.

The book also blazes the trail on one of the most momentous global events of our time, and about which I feel our literary works have yet to scratch the surface. I am talking about the Covid-19 pandemic, the event that changed the way we look at life and the way we live, perhaps on a much larger scale than the whole colonial enterprise, which spawned the biggest names from Africa and shaped the African literary tradition from the late 1950s to the postcolonial aftermath of the 1970s.

Readers in Grade 10, especially those aspiring to become writers, will especially be empowered by the author’s search for mentorship, which shaped his writing career after he shared his early writings with his teachers.

There is a lot to be said about the decision to include memoirs, biographies and autobiographies in the school curriculum. For one, this obviously gives the learners insights into the pitfalls and masterstrokes of those who came before them. Often, such works are written by people whose lives are intertwined with the life of the country or even the world.

Reading Francis Muthaura’s autobiography, A Moving Horizon, for instance, gives one a clearer picture of how the East African Community came to birth in a way a history class never could. I am yet to read Chief Justice Martha Koome’s recently launched autobiography, but I am sure it offers more than a sneak peek into the workings of the judiciary.

I have read books by many professionals and top figures and it is shocking how little the public knows about the inner workings of many institutions. It is the feeling I got after reading Frank Njenga’s City Boy, Thomas Letangule’s Trailblazer, Daniel Kaniaru’s A Call to Serve, Walter Masiga’s The Old Lion of Africa, Moody Awori’s Riding on a Tiger, Isaac Kalua’s Green for Life, John Gatu’s Fan into Flame and many others.

Of late, just like I had a sneak preview of Dear Mama long before it rolled off the press, I have had the chance to see the upcoming autobiography of a 90-year-old Elijah Waiganjo, a retired teacher, titled Through the Eyes of a Teacher, which captures the history of teaching in Kenya from the early 1940s to the late 1980s. The autobiography, I came away convinced, will not just contextualise the history of education in Kenya but will be of immense benefit to those in the teaching profession.

Mainstream genre

Beyond revealing the events and moments that shaped the land, autobiographies, memoirs and biographies go a long way in giving meaning to the debate on heroism. Who are our national and international heroes? Sometimes you read one autobiographical account and change the way you look at some of the people mentioned therein.

Of course, there is always the tendency to suppress one’s failings and sometimes to push the blame to others for the blots on history, but this does not change the fact that it is better to have a redacted or exaggerated account rather than to grope in the dark. For it is where a people have come from that shapes the path to where they are headed.

Beyond the benefits of autobiographical content, there is a need to mainstream this genre, especially since our leaders now embrace writing autobiographies.

This followed persistent calls from writers in these pages urging those with a front-row seat in history to document not only their great deeds but also admit where they slipped and let future generations down, and record lessons for those who will inherit the nation tomorrow and beyond.

As debate grows on autobiographies for schools, some publishers favour non-political works in the genre. Yet politics shapes nearly every aspect of development in this country, and learners should explore autobiographies across the spectrum, including those by politicians.

Having helped ghost-write several political memoirs, I know authors sometimes exaggerate ‘heroic’ deeds or embellish facts to win public favour.

Such excesses are what the Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development should remove from school editions, allowing learners — as in Kombani’s book — to see the odysseys that shaped Kenya without filters.