:: Sunday Salon rocks like whoa!
16 June 2008

It had been quite a weekend. I hadn’t really slept all that much after all the exersions at Chaguo la teeniez the previous night. However, my body woke up off its own accord at 8am and I lay in my bed trying to get it to do some more sleeping. Nothing doing. I got a call from Angel our beloved Ghetto radio personality and she was asking me to come on the air at 11am. She has a show with Linda called "Chanuka Dada" and it is as you can tell from the name targeted at young ladies and how they should get combed he he… She wanted me to discuss a topic of interest to her that was bugging many of her audience: why do guys cheat. What do I truthfully know about this topic? Truth be told not much. But I am a dude and I was therefore more likely to know something about this topic that I might divulge to the Ghetto Radio audience. I was game. And my body was not in a mood to sleep anyway so I headed to their studios at the old Shan Cinema. One word to the new look to this place; Damn! The complex looks really cool why lie. I went up did the show and felt like I had at least achieved something this day and not just lay around flipping from religious channel to religious channel this Sunday morning. I was thinking about heading home and finally relaxing the body but Sunday Salon was set to be happening at Kengeles Lavington Green as it usually does. I had to think long and hard as to whether to head to Lavington in the evening or head home; Lavington won out. I figured that I would have just gone home and slept in doing jack.

I was quite early to the event which was to start a 7pm. I run into Storymoja’s Anto Mwangi and June Wainaina of Kwani and we started just having a chat as the people checked in for the event. It was a bloody freezing June evening but our host was kind enough to get us some jikos which warmed us quite a bit. And the people kept coming by and saying hi to our table. Shan Bartley who I love to bits was with her brother. Al Kags was spotted with Neema Ngwatilo. And off course Eudiah Kamonju who I love so much was in the house. And there was Misiko Andere looking her mysterious best. And off course there was the whole Kwani contingent in the hizouse; Binyavanga, Annette, Mwangi, Mike, Angela. The whole crew was there. I was introduced to Susan Njeru who was going to be doing a reading this day. She is a civil servant by day and an author by evening I guess. She was also extremely enjoyable company with her pal. The people kept checking in. There was Muthoni Garland the Storymoja founder (and... wait for it... Caine Prize nominee 2006). And before I could say simsalabim we were joined by Njeri Wangari who works for East African Educational publishers. She also runs a great blog of the Kenyan art scene called Kenyan Poet. You can read her review of the event which is much more factually and less Tusker driven than mine. She came with her boss Dr Chakava. I said hi to him and it turns out the dude went to school with my father. I never knew that I had friends in high places like that he he… There was also Prof Wambui of Generation Kenya and her Odiero jamaa who’s name I keep forgetting. He was walking around with his camera recording everything that moved or didn’t move like his life depended on it. There were many other people in there but these are the ones that the Tusker I was imbibing allowed me to remember. The place was full!

There were four authors reading their work this day. One was Ken Kamoche a professor of some note who read a book of his about a Malawian dude who impregnates a Chinese woman in Shanghai. Compelling stuff that. Then there was the funny part of the evening with Samuel Munene reading a piece explaining how Barack Obama is his uncle. It was really funny and the pal was really good reading the piece deadpan as if there was nothing funny in what he was saying. Another piece was written by Saga McOdongo who read from her prison memoire and it was scary stuff she was telling us. She explained before she read that would write her stories on toilet paper and hide the papers in cracks in the prison wall. It was powerful stuff this. My favourite author for the evening though had to be Susan Njeru. She had two pieces; one comparing relatives and family and the other was on the kind of relationship she was looking for which should have been a rock. Now this author is just brilliant she just doesn’t seem to have a clue. She would calmly read from the paper and you see the audience just being wowed by her prose and grasp of the matter that she had chosen. What a find this is our Kwani friends have dug up. Remember that name.

Sunday Salon seems to have hit that critical mass required for an event to happen. Interestingly, when I was there I remember attending a Sunday Salon last year at the same venue. A lady who been doing humanitarian work around the region was then telling us that Kenya could just as easily become a basket case as these other countries. The lady actually started crying as she made her contribution and at the time all I thought was, “ah these overemotional liberal women/mothers. What does she know.” Off course she knew something as we went to hell at the beginning of 2008 and the wise counsel this lady gave will probably go with me to the grave. Kenyans are Africans NOT Europeans. We are still developing and must guard our fledging lifestyle wisely as these things are to be worked hard for not handed out on a silver platter.

Hopefully I will see at the next Sunday Salon

>> Related links
:: Sunday Salon may
:: Eudiah Kamonju
:: Obama, My Uncle - brilliant!
:: Kenyan poet reviews the same Sunday Salon
:: Storymoja
:: Kwani
:: Al Kags
:: Neema Ngwatilo
:: Generation Kenya
:: Caine Prize
:: Ghetto radio

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