Wahome Mutahi
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Wahome Mutahi (October 24, 1954 – July 22, 2003) was one of the most beloved humourists of Kenya. He was popularly known as Whispers after the name of the column he wrote for The Daily Nation from 1982 to 2003, offering a satirical view of the trials and tribulations of Kenyan life.
Mutahi was equally well-known in theatre where he wrote and acted in English- and Kikuyu-language plays that caricatured Kenya's society and politics using his company Igiza Productions.[1] A memorial burst of the late Wahome has been erected at the Kenya National Theatre. Outside of Kenya, he wrote humour columns for Ugandan publications The Monitor and Lugambo.
Among his books are Three days on the Cross which won the prestigious Jomo Kenyatta Prize for Literature (1992), Jail bugs, Doomsday, and the immensely popular How to be a Kenyan based on his newspaper columns. Others include The Miracle Merchants, Mr Canta, HAssan the Genie, The Ghost of Garba Tula and Just wait and see.
In 1986 Mutahi was arrested with his brother Njuguna Mutahi and detained in the infamous Nyayo House torture chambers in Nairobi. He was charged with sedition and alleged association with the underground Mwakenya Movement and later transferred to Kamiti Maximum Security Prison. They were both released after fifteen months without ever being brought to trial. His imprisonment inspired him to write Three Days on the Cross and Jailbug.
In early 2003 Mutahi underwent what was supposed to be a routine, minor and painless operation at the Thika District Hospital to remove a lipoma from his back. He had been assured by a surgeon friend, who had offered to do the operation, that the procedure would take less than 15 minutes. Possibly because of a blunder by the anaesthesiologist He went into a coma from which he never woke up. His family was waiting for his condition to improve before they could fly him to London for corrective neurosurgery.
Mutahi died on July 22, 2003 at the Kenyatta National Hospital after 137 days in a coma. All his life he expressed his solidarity with the average Kenyan through his refrain: "I am neither too foolish nor too clever."
By the time Whispers died, he had grown into a formidable art form. In the mainstream press, both The Standard and The Nation have attempted to 'reincarnate' Whispers through surrogates. Benson Riungu, reintroduced 'Benson's World', written along the lines of Whispers in the Sunday Standard after Mutahi's death. The Sunday Nation tried the ‘Whispers’ column with a new writer but it never worked. However, the style of expression developed over the years by Mutahi in Whispers is still best expressed in politics through humour, satire and the use of certain widely diffused iconographic imagery.
His family has started the Wahome Mutahi memorial trust to further his work especially humour and theatre. In addition, the Kenya Publishers Association started the bi annual Wahome Mutahi award for literature,' in his honour in 2005.
A book analysing Wahome Mutahi's works titled Wahome Mutahi's World was published and edited by Herve Maupeu and Patrick Mutahi[2]
WAHOME MUTAHI: IN MEMORIAM
I am not celebrating death
Which deprives itself of the honour
By taking away the very breath
With which it should be celebrated
I am celebrating a life, lived and fulfilled.
For death is hollow
Like its living room – the grave
It dreads the brave
And those who stare it in the face.
I am celebrating my brother’s life
A life lived and fulfilled
But even as I do so I can’t stop wondering
How a single, simple artist
Touched the souls of so many people.
Death dreads the brave –
We’ll still hear your whispers from the grave.
Sam Mbure
[edit] References
- ^ Art Matters.info :: flaunting arts and culture in Africa
- ^ IFRA ::. Institut Francais de Recherche en Afrique
[edit] External links
[1] The idiom of age in a popular Kenyan newspaper serial [2]
