NGŨGĨ WA THIONG’O was my friend.
Two weeks ago, we recorded a video—his reflections on co-authoring The Trial of Dedan Kimathi with Micere Githae Mugo nearly fifty years ago, in 1976. He was radiant. Full of laughter. Still in awe of the fire and fellowship that forged that revolutionary text.
Nearly forty years ago, my mother handed me my first Ngũgĩ. It was Weep Not, Child. The year was 1986. That same year, Ngugi’s effigies were being burned across Kenya. Moi’s regime had branded him an enemy of the state. I was a child in primary school, bewildered: I was afraid because in the novel, Mr Howlands almost neutered Njoroge with a pincer, a ubiquitous act of violence in Kenya’s political dungeons that was destroying both our nation and its families. Still, why would my mother give me a book written by a man whose image was being incinerated in public squares by adults with flaming torches and fury in their eyes?
Ngugi never answered that question directly—not even when we finally met in California in 2010. But he gave me something better: his time, his stories, his laughter, his friendship.
We talked for hours. He shared many stories. He told me about his Makerere days, when Mwai Kibaki was one of his lecturers. By the time Ngũgĩ began writing for the Daily Nation, Kibaki had already been recalled, joining Kenyatta’s government. One evening, after filing his article, Ngũgĩ went for a drink near the Jeevanjee Gardens. Kibaki was there. Kibaki offered him a lift back to the YMCA hostel where Ngugi stayed. They sat in Kibaki’s car for hours that night, talking—about the press, about politics. Kibaki was curious about the role of the press in our young nation. Ngũgĩ never saw Kibaki again.
Ngugi crossed paths with both Mzee Kenyatta and Jaramogi Odinga in his Nation days—encounters he etched in his memoirs like mileposts on a long road of vision and struggle. When Ngũgĩ later joined the University of Nairobi, the political alliance between Kenyatta and Jaramogi had already fractured. When the university denied Jaramogi a platform to speak, Ngũgĩ resigned in protest. Nearly a decade later, Kenyatta’s government detained him. By the time Ngũgĩ emerged from detention, Kenyatta was dead, and Moi had risen to power—a power he quickly turned against Ngũgĩ, forcing him into exile.
Detained and rejected at home, the world welcomed him when he emerged from prison. In India, a man with a disability once came to a bookstore reading and told Ngũgĩ that his books had empowered him—so much so that he had named his son Ngũgĩ. In Boston, a couple told him that their wedding vows were drawn from Ngugi’s novel, Wizard of the Crow. In New Zealand, the Māori say Decolonising the Mind was written with them in mind. In Grenada, Ngũgĩ once found himself seated beside the revolutionary leader Maurice Bishop. He wondered why no one else chose to sit near him, unaware that Maurice Bishop lived under the constant shadow of assassination. Just a few months after Ngũgĩ’s visit, that fear became reality. In Kenya, we were burning his effigies and banning his books. Our security officers were absurdly hunting for a fictional Matigari.
Ngũgĩ’s voice was always calm. He rarely raised it. His theories sounded simple. His smile was frequent. His language was accessible even by the least among us. He knew that silence is never neutral. He taught us that the most radical act is to begin—where we are, with what we have, and in who we are. “From here to there,” he would say. That was his theory. Quite simple, isn’t it?
But if understanding ourselves has been so difficult—because the tools we’ve been given are designed to tell us we are not who we are—then you can see why Ngũgĩ was a danger to dictators and to imperial powers.
During COVID, we spoke every day. He used to call me “mũrigania”— my neighbour. He reminded me to respond to adversity by doing something positive.That’s exactly what he did. In detention, he wrote a novel on toilet paper. During the pandemic, he began translating his early novels into Gikuyu. The River Between is now Rũũĩ Rwa Muoyo. I began translating his epic Kenda Muiyuru—the story of Gikuyu and Mumbi—into Swahili. Tisa Timilifu is now in press. These were our COVID projects. We also began work on a short film based on a poem he wrote for his longtime friend and civil rights activist, Sister Sonia Sanchez.
Sonia called me last night. She was inconsolable. She is 90.
Sonia once hosted Nelson Mandela in Philadelphia after his release from prison. She had opened her home to South African poets during the worst days of apartheid. She was close to Es’kia Mphahlele and Keorapetse Kgositsile. She and Ngũgĩ visited South Africa together in honour of Steve Biko. When they visited Madiba, he placed a hand on Ngũgĩ’s shoulder as they walked up the stairs. Ngũgĩ was thrilled—only for Mandela to laugh and say, “I need help walking up.” They all laughed.
In 2019, Ngũgĩ underwent triple bypass heart surgery. Around that time, I told him I was preparing for an interview with Wole Soyinka. Ngũgĩ, half-joking, asked me to find out how Soyinka had stayed so young—since Ngũgĩ was his junior.
I posed the question to Soyinka. He laughed.
“I figured this out long time ago,” Soyinka said, his eyes twinkling. “I stopped drinking water. Wine is better than water.” This morning, Soyinka wrote to me:
“I raise a brimful to Ngug’s spirit, and to you all into whose hands his baton is entrusted.”
The laughter of resistance from these warriors remains contagious. We hear it in the stories they have shared with us. It is stamped on their biographies. They have carried a continent that does not always love them back the way it should. And yet—they have given us nothing but courage, imagination, and a path to follow.
Ngũgĩ knew that words can free us. That there is music in our languages. No one has advocated and defended indigenous languages more forcefully than Ngugi. He was ridiculed for it. But his project was a prophylactic one: to protect an environment that he so deeply cared about because the failure to do so would cause irreparable damage and suffering.
Ngũgĩ knew that silence, in a colonised world, is never neutral. His resolve to live is captured in Martin Carter, the Guyanese poet, who sang that “death must not find us thinking that we die.”
From here to there.
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o: Your words, and the love and laughter behind them, will carry us forward.
Travel well, Mwalimu Ngũgĩ, rest well, my friend.
