EDITORIAL

In 2003, my dear friend and brother the late Kenyan writer and satirist Kenneth Binyavanga Wainaina, to whom I owe a lot, made an audacious statement which I have found myself returning to. Writing the editorial in the inaugural edition of Kwani?, the literary journal he and a bunch of formidable dreamers founded (in that same editorial, he lists the names of as many of these indi- viduals as he seems to remember, specifically singling out Wanjiru Kinyanjui thus “whose idea this was”), Binyavanga posited, “To me this says we are finally becoming a country…”

It was a time of hope and exuberance, and Binyavanga, in the ways he always did, had traversed Nairobi and gotten entangled in all manner of endeavours which spoke to that moment. And so in seeking to frame his experiences with the various individuals with whom he interacted, Binya- vanga concluded that it was possible that it is the sorts of things these indi- viduals were engaged in which make a country; that it was these sorts of individuals who make a country.

I refer to Binyavanga’s statement as he and his associates launched Kwani? in my trying to understand what those of us in Eastern Africa could say today as we open Debunk Quarterly’s doors. Twenty years after Binyavanga wrote “we are finally becoming a country”, I doubt if anyone on the streets of Nairobi or Juba or Kampala or Kigali or Dar es Salaam or Bujumbura or Kinshasa would say “we are finally becoming a country”. Or maybe they would.

Writing from Nairobi in 2024, I will not dare say “finally we are not becoming a country”, but I look to two memes to speak for this moment. First, there’s tuuze hii nchi kila mtu apewe share yake – let’s chop this thing up and give everyone their share; then there’s the wamwisho kutoka azime stima – may the last one to leave switch off the lights, since we’re all heading out, we’re all leaving.

These two, to me, speak to today’s apathy and tiredness.

And so unlike Binyavanga at the launch of Kwani?, we have no big declaration to make, since ours is to hold onto the one thing that preceded Binyavanga’s “we are finally becoming a country”, something that powered Binyavanga’s “we are finally becoming a country”, something that outlived Binyavanga’s “we are finally becoming a country”. That thing is storytelling.

Whether we are becoming countries or the countries that were once becoming are coming apart, beyond the country, we have always been a people and peo- ples, and we have always had stories both in good and bad times; in good times when we imagined we are becoming a country, in bad times when we sighed and declared our once becoming countries unbecoming.

Just like they can break them, stories can mend countries.

It is on this storytelling plane that we seek to bring it all together, from memoir to reportage and everything in between, because it is in these stories of our lives and our times that our collective humanity resides.

So here is to storytelling, now and always.

Salute to Kiprop Kimutai, Paul Goldsmith, Paula Ihozo Akugizibwe, Dalle Abraham, Wanja Michuki, Asha Ahmed Mwilu, A. K. Kaiza, Clifton Gachagua, Hadassah Saya and Diana Chepkemoi for taking chances on us.

To our readers, we present to you these ten writers together, for you to be transported from the South of France to Lamu, to Cape Town to Marsabit, to Ridgeways to Greenfields, to Kampala to Umoja, to Hadassah’s world to Riyadh.

We hope you enjoy a story or two, or three or ten.