Kwani? Journal

Kwani? 05 Part 02: Revelation and Conversation

Editor: Billy Kahora
ISBN: 9966-7182-2-2
No. of pages: 415
Size of book: 235mm x 155mm
Price: Ksh 650 ($19.5)
Year of Publication: 2008

This second 400 pages of a twin edition further examines Kenya in the context and violent aftermath of its 2007 elections. Here, writers, photographers, poets and cartoonists provide further collective narratives on what we were before, and what we became, during the epochal first 100 days of 2008. The issue also features an extended travel piece based in Uganda that comparatively explores the concept of ethnicity, and the history of a people in a space other than our own.  

Censuses have been ordered in key locations
and we have
body counts
– Keguro Macharia, ‘Kenya, in Retrospect’

 We are not looking for lilywhite boys,
lucent and incorruptible.
We are looking for a margin of human error,
a hasty scrawl of responsibility
-Marjorie Oludhe Macgoye, ‘Transparency’

...Of course I had heard the rumours; rumours were everywhere. I called the government like crazy,
but you don’t wait for such rumours to be confirmed. You take precautions. The people in town
decided, let’s call reinforcements. By the 25th, at six in the morning we had reinforcements from
Naivasha and other places – what everyone calls Mungiki...
-Rift Valley Testimonial

...Kenya, I cannot avoid thinking, should see what Uganda did to itself before plunging headlong
into the mess. When people speak of ethnic hatred, they have the confidence of those who have
not yet fallen and broken a limb...
-David Kaiza, ‘Benediction in Oyugis’

 Read the full editorial here