Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o – A Tribute through the Wasafiri Archive
In tribute to Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o (1938-2025), Wasafiri has lifted the paywall on a range of articles, stories, and interviews from our 41-year-old archive, introduced by Florian Stadtler, Deputy Chair and Trustee of Wasafiri.
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o has been a long-standing supporter of Wasafiri, generously describing the magazine on the occasion of its 25th anniversary as follows:
'Wasafiri, which means pilgrims or travellers in Kiswahili, also suggests seekers of knowledge. In the area of postcolonial and contemporary writing, Wasafiri has been like the persona in the morality plays of old who tells Everyman, ‘I will go with thee, and be thy guide. In thy most need to go by thy side.’ In short, whether in articles, interviews or in the range of its contributors and contributions, Wasafiri has been the indispensable companion in the exploration and evaluation of the new and the relevant from Africa, Asia and the Caribbean' (Wasafiri 59, 8).
For his generous championing of the magazine’s work, we say thank you with much gratitude.
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o has engaged over the decades with the magazine in a variety of ways, and the range of content he published with us showcases the breadth and depth of his work, as an academic and social campaigner, anti-colonial activist and decolonial critical thinker, educator, essayist, intellectual, novelist, playwright, storyteller, and translator.
Indeed, the last story he published with the magazine in 2022 formed part of the general issue that was themed around ‘Translating Lives’ (Wasafiri 111). This issue sought to consider ‘the challenges and exigencies posed by translation as a practice that is both intimate and impossible’ (2). This intimacy is brought movingly into focus in ‘Nayambura and the Multi-Coloured Bird’, a story he first wrote for his grandchildren. It lives in and through performance, to be told and sung as is practice in oral story-telling traditions. Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o translated the story himself from Gĩkũyũ and it was printed in the magazine in Gĩkũyũ and English.
Read (or download) the story: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02690055.2022.2067269
In 2003, almost twenty years earlier, Wasafiri commissioned a special issue on Translation (Wasafiri 40), guest co-edited by Harish Trivedi and Theo Hermans. Harish Trivedi, in a wide ranging conversation, discusses with Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o his career as a novelist, being in exile and his relationship with Kenya, the question of language and status of English in formerly colonised countries, writing in Gĩkũyũ, translation, and cultural identity, expressing a hope that ‘translation can be seen as a language through which other languages can – and should – talk’ (7).
Read (or download) the interview: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02690050308589858
‘Buono Sera: How Many Eggs Have You Got Today’, published as part of the 25th anniversary special issue, ‘Everything to Declare’, is an extract from Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s Dreams in a Time of War (2010). Written at a time when he was engaged in life writing and memoirs, he reflects in this piece on the impact of the Second World War, and how this world historical event affected his father’s household in Limuru, Kenya.
Read (or download) the essay: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02690055.2022.2067269
Wasafiri published Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s lecture ‘Language in Everything to Declare’ in 2010. He delivered this speech as part of the magazine’s 25th anniversary events at the Southbank Centre, London in October 2009. He reflects here on the global literary marketplace, the power-relationships between languages and its impact on transnational circuits, translation as a way of bridging cross-cultural divides and ways of conceiving of a ‘world literature’ fostering global dialogue –– ‘cultural contact as the oxygen of civilization’ (3), as he so aptly puts it.
Read (or download) the lecture: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02690050903069561#d1e120
Access Wasafiri's Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o print bundle here including Wasafiri 59: Everything to Declare, our 25th anniversary issue, Wasafiri 63, Wasafiri 75, and Wasafiri 111: Translating Lives.
Cover image: Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o at the launch of Wasafiri in 1984. By A. WYN Hobson
