June 52025
Greetings from the Munda wa Chitedze Fa r m w h e r e I relocated from the hustle and bustle of your city. Peace, and only peace reigns supreme here.
The village library was burnt on May 28 when the literary patriarch Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o dropped his pen and the ink stopped oozing petals of blood. Dear Diary, as we speak, the little grain of wheat was finished and the little girls married when they wanted, especially the boys they met at the river between. And then, as we watch the library burn, he tells us: Weep not children.
That the Kenyan writer was an elephant of a baobab goes without saying. You would admire him over and over again for his militancy in tackling socio-political issues. We petty men, as they say, peep about his huge legs.
He has left an indelible mark as an author whose respect for African languages goes beyond our power to fathom. Not only did he drop his ‘Christian’ name James for the indigenous Ngũgĩ, he also let go of writing in English and resorted to his native Gikuyu.
Why, Dear Diary, was I at grapples to try to bring some of his books like Petals of Blood, Grain of Wheat, I will Marry When I Want, The River Between and Weep not Child in a nonsense sentence. It is all because of what I got from the litany of eulogies by people from all walks of life on his death.
From most of the posts I saw by my fellow Malawians, the posts were mostly about the days when reading for pleasure was the norm. Only God knows how we lost that reading culture.
I asked myself: If we all loved reading Ngũgĩ, why is it that no one is talking about Matigari, the novel he published in 1986 in Gikuyu before it was translated in English a year later? Why is no one talking about his 2006 satirical Wizard of the Crow?
It is evident that most of us stopped at Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart to never appreciate the intriguing plot of Anthills of the Savannah. It goes without saying that Scarlet Song was the last time we knocked at Mariama Ba’s door and never got to appreciate So Long a Letter.
Because George Orwell’s Animal Farm has been highly touted, we have foregone the futuristic 1984, the book, in my view, that prophesied the coming of the CCTV apart from making the rest of us frown on communism and grasp, at least, social democracy.
Those who look back with nostalgia to the time they could read the Junior African Writers before graduating into the African Writers Series and later Pacesetters, James Hardley Chase, as the journey continues, are not entirely wrong.
In those days, every district used to have a library where everyone could read a book they could understand. In every district you could find the Malawi Book Service, where you could buy Dala ndi Chiwala at a very fair price.
What happened to the MBS? The last time we heard about it was when Kanyama Chiume was chairman of the board during the Bakili Muluzi regime. It was about this time that libraries began to cramble.
We saw it with our own eyes when the library in Limbe literally crumbled upon our eyes. The remaining library in Blantyre turned into a reading room where those who wanted to prepare for their ABE, ABMA and CIFA examinations would go. To enter the library you had to pay a fee.
Which is why here at the Munda wa Chitedze Farm are happy that the Standard Bank has done more. The bank has pumped in K55 million to restock the National Library Service’s book shelves.
This way, the patriarchs like Ngũgĩ will sit by the river and nod their heads in concord that all is well.
You see, my flowers to Standard Bank on the literary front go to them for oiling this year’s Atem theatre contest. It can be more! Dear Diary, all the theatre giants we talk of in Malawi passed through the Atem furnance and for Standard Bank to literally light up the Atem stage, one can only say: We are not always pessimists.
