Literary Scene: Nairobi
It's festival season in Nairobi.
This weekend Nairobi hosted the second annual Storymoja Hay Festival, a gathering of writers, filmmakers, storytellers, and other creative thinkers from Africa and beyond. The event, which is part of a global series of literary festivals organized by the Hay Festival UK , follows close on the heels of the Jukwaani Festival last week, which focused on performance art, from Swahili poetry to hip-hop to indigenous storytelling.
Kenya is best-known in the West for its animals and landscapes, but literary festivals don't register as part of the Kenyan global brand. This is true not only for Westerners but for many Kenyans as well. One goal of the festivals, according to organizers I interviewed in Nairobi, is for Kenyans to recognize their country's depth of literary talent.
But at a deeper level, these festivals are trying to rethink Nairobi. The city is changing at a breakneck pace: it's already the hub of East Africa, with major United Nations, NGO and local money flowing through, and it has positioned itself as a gateway between East Africa and the world. There's a generational shift, too, as a critical mass of Nairobi residents who are actually born in the city develops. So where, in this young global city, will be the place for literature? Which other cities should Nairobi use as models for literary development?
