American scholar recalls last moment with Prof Ngugi

Renowned Kenyan author Prof Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o. [File, Standard]

Even in the last hours of his life, Prof Ngugi wa Thiong'o kept on emphasizing the importance of mother tongue and advised members of his community not to forget writing in Gikuyu.

According to Prof Peter Ndiang'ui of Florida Gulf Coast University, Ngugi still had great love for his language despite having settled in America many years ago.

Ndiang’ui, who had spent several hours with Prof Ngugi in the USA before he succumbed, says the iconic professor had challenged him and others from his community to know how to write in Gikuyu.

“For a long time, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o invited me, nudged me, dared me to write in Gikuyu, the language of my mother. Not once, not twice, but with the persistence of someone who knows what is at stake: the soul of a people, the rhythm of memory, the dignity of naming the world in one’s own tongue,” said Ndiang’ui.

Ndiang’ui recollects that each time, Prof Ngugi was around with him, he used to challenge him to write in Gikuyu with a tact sharpened by years of colonial schooling.

“It is difficult. There is something I cannot explain, something that holds me back,” he complained.

But he noted that Prof Ngugi kept quiet for a moment, as if seeing straight through Ndiang'ui's words to the wound beneath.

“That is fear. I know it well. I met it face to face in the 1970s, and I still carry its scars,” Prof Ngugi had told him.

Speaking from the US, Ndiang'ui said that although he is still unwilling to confront his fear, he shifted the goalposts. “I am busy now, but I will write in my language when the time is right,” recalls Prof Ndiangui.

Ndiang'ui noted that Prof Ngugi smiled with the kind of patience reserved for elders and tricksters, noting, “That time will never come unless you create it.”

Prof Ndiang’ui said until last week, when he met Prof Ngugi for the last time, he insisted that he should write in his mother tongue and even started writing the poem for him and urged him to write on. Ndiangui had to write.

Instead, he reached into the hidden chamber of every man’s vulnerability, love.

"You are lucky,” Prof Ngugi had begun, with the casual mien of a man who is about to dismantle his life’s defense mechanisms.