Billy Kahora’s short fiction and creative non-fiction has appeared in Chimurenga, McSweeney’s, Granta Online, Internazionale and Vanity Fair and Kwani. He has written a non-fiction novella titled The True Story Of David Munyakei. His story Urban Zoning was shortlisted for the prize in 2012, The Gorilla’s Apprentice in 2014. He wrote the screenplay for Soul Boy and co-wrote Nairobi Half Life which both won the Kalasha awards. He is working on a novel titled The Applications. A short story collection The Cape Cod Bicycle War and Other Youthful Follies will be released soon.
As Managing Editor of Kwani Trust he has edited 7 issues of the Kwani journal and other Kwani publications including Nairobi 24 and Kenya Burning. He is also a Contributing Editor with the Chimurenga Chronic. He has been Kwani Litfest Curator since 2008 and recently curated Kwani Litfest 2015 Writers In Conversation: Beyond The Map Of English. Carey Baraka talked to him about his short story on Enkare Review, World Pawa, and his fiction-writing.
INTERVIEWER
In your short story, “Selling World Power”, the main character, Jemimah, tries to Kenyanise a Chinese business venture, or a business venture ran by a Chinese man. What is the meaning of this? Why is it so important to the two of them that the business have a Kenyan-sounding name?
BILLY KAHORA
I guess every reader will intuit their own meaning to Jemimah and Han So’s attempts to Kenyanise their venture. I’m always quite amazed by our very human (read Kenyan because that’s where I am writing about) attempt to make even the most foreign of things our own. This natural instinct to familiarize of course has possibilities in both the absurd and the comic especially when Kenyan hustle and survival is involved. And that’s what Jemimah is all about. Kenyan hustle in an absurd sense.
At a practical level both characters hope that there will be more of a buy-in by the locals if they go with a Kenyan sounding name, which of course in a ‘global’ world is absurd because what is local anymore? What is global? And what is Kenyan? These are the questions I try to raise in the story…how everything is familiar and unfamiliar in our immediate physical locations and our virtual world and the in-between of both that we live in …
INTERVIEWER
I’m also curious about the lunch dynamics of this workplace, with their chapo madondo and chapo ndengu. And here I’m also thinking of the rumour train in the workplace, ‘the rounds in Accounts, spreading to Wires and Cables, and will finally be legitimised in Field Division.’ These chains of storytelling and lunches, how important are they in the Kenyan workspace?
BILLY KAHORA
I find many Kenyan workplaces (especially government) hostile to the individual in the way they are structured, mostly because of abuse of power but also because of the absurdity created by the fact that nobody really wants to be there or is suited to be in many of these places. And this leads to all kinds of complex relationships between individuals and all the intricate power structures found in the workplace.
Workers learn how to manage fear and ridicule, and be subservient all at the same time. Stories in workplaces are important because they illustrate these relationships, help individuals survive and retain sanity as a form of making meaning. And because it is through stories that the ultimate success or failure of these places is decided they become very important.
INTERVIEWER
At some point in the story, some of Jemimah’s colleagues start referring to her as ‘Beejing.’ What are you trying to say by having this nickname in the story? How does she, an African woman, become Beijing?
BILLY KAHORA
This refers to the popular (and cynical) use of ‘Beijing’ as a key signifier post-1995 after the International Women’s Conference of the time to make fun of women’s rights by Kenyan men…
INTERVIEWER
Jemimah is, I think, an extension of the image of ‘Wanjiku’ to refer to the ordinary Kenyan mwananchi. There has been a lot of talk of about how China is trying to colonize the continent, so I’m wondering whether there will ever be a point when the ordinary Kenyan mwananchi will be ‘Beejing’, rather than Wanjiku.
BILLY KAHORA
Depends on what you mean by ordinary. Jemima has a formal job – minority of Kenyans have formal jobs. Jemimah is only Wanjiku through her need to do as many things as possible to make ends meet even as she has a formal government job. A formal job in her case like in most doesn’t mean anything other than a regular salary at the end of the month and doing anything to make sure that she doesn’t lose it even if it means actually doing her job when she cannot get away with not doing it.
INTERVIEWER
This story was written, of course, against the background of increased Chinese investment in Kenya, and the continent. How integral is the Chinese story to the Kenyan story? Is there a point the two intersect?
BILLY KAHORA
The story is based on a pyramid scam that happened back around 2004 set up by some Chinese and Kenyan individuals in Kenya. The scam went on to fleece a lot of Kenyans. I came across the story in a newspaper…I guess the Kenyans who were scammed bought into the scheme because they’d bought into what you describe as the ‘Chinese story.’ The scam, the hustle is, of course, a common story trope. The intersection is where myth (Chinese money will make everyone rich) overtakes the reality (it wants to take everything from you –your forests, your elephant tusks, etc.) … it’s at that intersection that when I, you or a Jemimah or a Wanjiku get taken …
INTERVIEWER
You’ve written a lot about urban Nairobi, and this story is also about urban Nairobi. I didn’t grow up in Nairobi, so I’ve always thought it odd that there is no Oginga Odinga Road or a Kenneth Matiba Road, or a Pio Gama Pinto Road. In short, the naming of the roads after people, which is often a vanity project, is an indicator of a country’s, or a city’s values, ours being very pro-KANU. SO, could we, in a few years have a Mao Road in the heart of the CBD? And what would that say about our national values?
BILLY KAHORA
‘Ours being very pro-Kanu?’ I’m not sure I know what you mean here.
I think when people used to talk about ‘national’ values – seems like such a long time ago– they meant what had been imposed, sold, fed to all by elites within national borders. Increasingly, this kind of elitism seems to have disappeared because it is so difficult to impose anything in what we used to call national unless you are a Trump or Mugabe supporter and you believe what he’s feeding you …
I feel the ‘national’ has been lost between our local and global sense of selves. I’m always either Buru (where I grew up) or in the local of where I am living at the time (Westlands, etc.) and, at the same time, mentally and spiritually elsewhere (on the Net for instance) but never anymore in the ‘nation’. Don’t you think?
I think in the future there will be Kenyan roads reflecting more of the local – maybe a Nonini Road…or a World Pawa Road in Karatina if a Jemimah makes her neighbours there rich by introducing a retail scheme that improves their lot. Or if they read this story and see themselves in it and like it very much…what’s the name of that very young Chinese entrepreneur billionaire who came to Kenya some time last year? I wouldn’t be surprised if a road is named after him in the future. Especially if he invests in Kenya…I am sure someone has already named their kid after him…so why not a road.
INTERVIEWER
This story is taken from the collection you are releasing this year. At the same time, you are writing a novel. Tell us a bit about this novel.
BILLY KAHORA
Nope.
INTERVIEWER
Tell us a bit about your writing process. When do you write? And how?
I try to write for at least 5 hours every morning at least 4 times a week and between longhand and online. I probably end up doing 3 sessions a week and these are either much shorter or much longer than 5 hours. Depending on what phase I’m in with a piece of writing my sessions get longer and longhand, by the time I’m trying to finish a story or a chapter, I’m binge-ing. But mostly I struggle to do more than ninety minutes to three hours a day a day.
INTERVIEWER
Which writers have inspired your own writing?
BILLY KAHORA
I tend to draw from books rather than writers. And it depends on what I’m working on, whether short fiction, the novel or non-fiction. I’ve been obsessed with idiomatic voice and idiolect for a few years now and Patrick Chamoiseau’s Texaco has been every important over this period. The Information by Martin Amis seemed to strike a note when I was writing Nairobi-based short stories. Baldwin and Gordimer awhile back as classics too. Zadie Smith and Franzen I find incredibly amazing in their ability to draw the wide contemporary canvas of their social reality.
INTERVIEWER
Which new-age Kenyan writers are you most excited about?
BILLY KAHORA
New-age sounds so old school. You’ll have to break this down for me further. As Kwani? Editor, I used to follow everything that came out in Kenya till a few years ago when I started becoming more and more caught in my own writing. And slowly I stopped reading new Kenyan stuff as much as I used to so that I could concentrate on my own writing and reading obsessions.
So, I just haven’t read enough ‘new age’. Tell me who I should read. That said I’ve been reading work from South Africa as an external examiner for the M.A. Creative Writing programme at Rhodes University and the work I get is highly excellent in experimental ways.
