One man’s personal journey

By Waithaka Waihenya

Memoirs are usually regarded as an individuals’ attempt at self-cleansing. The ultimate effect is to attain some level of catharsis for the writer while allowing the outside world to have a glimpse into their life. Thus, questions have been asked as to what extent someone can lay bare his life, warts and all, for the whole world. To what extent can the writer be expected to remain honest, to eschew the temptation to gloss over some unpleasant aspects of his life or the compulsion to sanitise it?

These are the questions that go through the mind as one reads Ben Kipkorir’s memoir, Descent from Cherang’any Hills, Memoirs of a Reluctant Academic. The book is a voyage through the author’s life, the ups and downs, his achievements and his regrets.

Kipkorir’s memoirs, at some point, leave the reader asking: "Who needs to know this, anyway?"

But they also provide an illumination into the life of a man who was probably larger than life in the former President Moi’s regime and who bungee-jumped through life from humble beginnings, to the heights of academic excellence, to the hot and top seats of the country’s corporate and political seats and survived to write down his story.

Historical details

From the undulating hills of Cherangany, the story of a man who describes himself as a reluctant academic unfolds in a kaleidoscope as varied as the geographical features of his homeland. It is heavily juxtaposed with the culture of the Marakwet people and a family background that was less than friendly for an ambitious young man.

One thing about these memoirs is that they give history its rightful place. The former Kenya Commercial Bank executive chairman recounts in details the history of his own people, the Marakwet, during the pre-independence years and their eventual place in the years immediately following the country’s independence. This would interest any history student.

But what really stands out is the author’s honesty in recounting some details about his family. One, for instance, realises that the author was not very well enamoured of his mother who kept running away from her family –– often for long periods –– abandoning her infants. One would have expected that the author would hide some of the details from the readers. But Kipkorir is honest to a fault, even to the extent of revealing that during one of what he calls "her disappearing act’ her mother had run off with a local policeman. He builds up a case about what his father had to go through in the face of an unsupportive wife and insensitive sons.

Father’s woes

He also tells a personal story of what he had to endure from jealous siblings and the effect of the problems on the family.

This is told with unusual cadence and in the end, his father emerges as a pitiable, victim of a coalition of forces weaved out by his wife and some of his children. His mother comes out as the despicable villain of the piece.

In spite of the apparent waywardness of his mother, his father, like prophet Hosea in the Bible, would always accept her when she came back.

But if this account of Kipkorir’s parents’ lives is heart-rending, his narration of his own marriage and the eventual death of his wife Leah are haunting.

He tells in excruciating details of the final days of his wife’s life, taking the reader through the agonising journey that Leah had to travel to the eventual day that she was buried.

Many readers are likely to be taken in by this account. In deed, one wonders at the pain the author must have gone through while narrating it. But Kipkorir does it so dispassionately that one would think he is talking about a character in another book. It is an account that can test one’s supply of tears.

The book might be a slow read in the initial chapters but in the end, it is a richly rewarding read. It is a testament to the fact that every person has a story and that, once that story is told, it can touch people’s lives in different ways. I was touched by these memoirs.

—The writer is the author of The Mediator and co-author of A Voice Unstilled.