One Day I Will Write About This Place by Binyavanga Wainaina

Wainaina in 2009

Binyavanga Wainaina was a Kenyan author and journalist. Sharply critical of the way western literary circles viewed Africa as a homogonous block of poverty and corruption, he also described himself as a Pan-Africanist. This may seem self-contradictory, but it seems he did not see disparate identities as mutually exclusive with solidarity: he was a Kenyan, but he was also an African, with both similarities and differences of experience to Ugandans, Nigerians, Ghanaians and 900 million other individuals.

Wainaina was an avid collector of African recipes, amassing some 13,000 in his lifetime. Disappointingly there does not seem to be an online archive of these, after reading One Day I would dearly love to try some Kenyan style goat.

One Day I Will Write About This Place has been published in over 40 editions across many  languages

Wainaina rose from relative obscurity, at least on the world stage, when he won the Caine Prize in 2002 for his autobiographical short story Discovering Home. During his career he wrote for The EastAfrican, National Geographic, The Sunday Times (South Africa), Granta, The New York Times, Chimurenga and The Guardian (UK). This memoir is his only full length work.

One Day I Will Write About This Place is a memoir, but very literary in style. Wainaina has made a conscious effort to move away from the stylistic mores of his occidental predecessors. The prose is fragmentary and conversational, tripping along with a staccato, syncopated rhythm. I do not know enough about Kenyan customs, but I suspect this follows an oral tradition.

The early sections of the book jump and jitter, making strange connections, reflecting the mind of a clever, but young, child learning about the world but without the depth of knowledge that will come with time.

The Kenyan flag features a Masai shield and crossed spears.

As Wainaina progresses through a not-altogether-happy adolescence, the prose sporadically increases and decreases in lucidity, mirroring the author's mental state at time. Some recollections are hazy, confused and impressionistic, where as other passages are crisp in detail.

It is interesting to view the spectre of colonialism and the notion of nationality through the eyes of a middle-class Kenyan. While Wainaina rails against the cultural amalgamation of Africa, he, like most Africans, has been given a national identify by Victorian mapmakers. In the latter parts of this memoir the author watches in dismay as the idea of 'Kenyan' splinters into a myriad of tribal allegiances, each fighting for supremacy and miring the country in a retrospective squabbling mess.

One Day I Will Write About This Place is a mesmerising memoir, and offers a loving, critical and above all personal take on modern Kenya.