From fairyland to lived life: narrative transitions in David Gian Maillu's children's fiction.

Introduction

This essay looks at narrative transitions in children's literature in Kenya as represented in David Maillu's The Government's Daughter (1996) and The Poor Child (1988). I argue that Maillu's children's and youth fiction provides a good example of Kenyan writers in the post-colonial period who privilege the intended audience of their fiction by making the child or the youth both a narrator and protagonist of their writing. This literary trend is in opposition to both oral literature from many ethnic communities in Kenya and fiction by other Kenyan writers that have tended to consign the child to the periphery of the narrative.

I have selected the two books from among Maillu's fiction for children and young people primarily because they deal with the experiences of the girl-child in contemporary Kenya. Because of the traditions and cultural practices of many ethnic groups in Kenya which value boys more than girls, the latter has generally tended to be marginalized in socio-economic advancement and even when it comes to decisions in matters such when and who she marries. I do a textual analysis in an attempt to show that the position given to the child in the narratives involves a direct engagement with and reference to problems of childhood in contemporary Kenya. By highlighting the child and her experiences, Maillu is able to voice the expectations, hopes, desires, wishes and aspirations of children in Kenya. Writing about children's literature in the present world Meena Khorana points out: "the role of youth as agents of change is seen as crucial, and children's books become the vehicles for the message". The literary transition in Maillu's fiction reflects the change in thinking about children and the youth--particularly the girl-child--and a realization that these young people are stakeholders in their own education and acculturation. For the young to possess these processes, which directly impact on their character formation, they have to be storytellers of their sense of the society around them and the world at large.

A Brief Background to Children's Literature in Kenya

Children and youth writing is a thriving literary phenomenon in Kenya. Since the attainment of independence from British colonial rule in 1963 and the initiation of policies to celebrate local cultures by the new government, Kenyan writers began to publish children's fiction with the stated intention to challenge the worldview that had been promoted in European children's fiction that was being read in schools then. Children's literature by black Kenyan writers in the post-colonial era sought to celebrate both the local cultures and highlight aspects of African life ranging from the landscape to the 'humanity' of the African race, which were deemed to have been grossly misrepresented by European writers. This act of 'writing back to the Empire' explains the preponderance of fiction that deals with the origins, cultures, traditions and histories of different Kenyan ethnic groups.

Asenath Bole Odaga is one such Kenyan writer who from the earliest time in her writing and publishing career immediately espoused the need to correct and challenge the European images of Africa both in her children's fiction and in her critical writing. Because she owned a publishing firm coupled with an academic interest in literature, Odaga was able to promote the writing and publication of children's fiction both in her language, Luo, and in English. Presently Odaga has over twenty children's titles written in English.l Writing on the character of children's fiction in postcolonial Africa/Kenya, Odaga argues,

The post-independence books written by Africans have sought to make the "African aware of what he has lost during colonialism." The books are an attempt to give the children clear scope and ideas about their world by depicting modes of behaviour familiar to their communities that form their society (sic). The writers are trying to achieve this through literature that treats simple everyday events involving activities in which the children and youth often engage. (58)

One of the implications of this assertion is that children's fiction should depict life in a manner that approximates the lived reality of those children, for whom it is intended. If this expectation, as suggested by Odaga, were to be one of the criterion by which children's fiction is produced in Kenya, it would be imperative that writers employ stylistic, linguistic, and thematic strategies that highlight the daily experiences of children using characters and images that the child can identify with. However, although Odaga and other black Kenyan writers were sensitive to the need to write about life in a recognisable manner, a majority of Kenyan children's fiction persisted in depicting the world of fantasy rather than the reality in the rapidly transforming society that was emerging both in the cities/towns of Kenya and in the countryside. Odaga's own dissertation from which I make the quotation above illustrates the discrepancy between social reality in Kenya and the literature that was being produced after independence. She relies extensively on recorded oral stories from various Kenyan communities to argue a case for the promotion of African art and culture in children's fiction. Although Odaga refers to some early fiction written by black Kenyans in the study, her analysis seems to imply that the relevance of children's literature in Kenya is enhanced by its reference to oral literature as she constantly invokes a number of oral stories collected from various Kenyan ethnic groups and some written by her. Helen Mwanzi (1982), a literary scholar, adopts a similar critical position in a study of "children's prose fiction" in Kenya. According to Mwanzi the rise of local prose fiction for children in the 1960s was a response to the misconceptions that European depiction of Africa had established. She argues that literature by writers such as Rider Haggard in King Solomon's Mines and other European fiction including Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs which was read in the colonial school system in Kenya promoted European (racist) ideologies and cultures at the expense of African ones.

Both Odaga and Mwanzi sought the replacement of these 'European' texts with ones written by other races in Kenya but with an emphasis on work by black Kenyans. They assumed that would promote an African sensibility. In Odaga's case in particular, the convictions expressed in her critical work are reflected in the fiction 'she writes for children although she at times transcends the world of the forests, strange animals, and mysterious beings to address issues that pose challenges to the youth in contemporary Kenya in some of her children's fiction.

The World of Animals and Forests

The prevalence of the world of supernatural beings, impenetrable forests and animals in children's fiction is a universal phenomenon. For example, the ogre, that many-eyed, many-toothed, half-animal, half-human and devilish creature is a common character in oral tales from amongst many Kenyan ethnic groups. This creature primarily serves as a symbol of the influence of forces of evil in the lives of human beings. In some cases it swallows up a whole village population of human beings and animals. In other cases it seduces both men and women who are too 'selective' when seeking marriage partners or it preys on defenseless women and children to satisfy its insatiable need for food. (2) Apart from the ogre, other figures that prominently feature in oral tales in Kenya--including those that are specifically meant for children--include the hare, the hyena, the lion, the tortoise, and the elephant. Generally these animals represent human beings and conflicts and contests between them capture the community's attempts at understanding and resolving its internal social, cultural, economic, political and spiritual dynamics. Also addressed in these stories are questions to do with the significance of conserving the environment and harmonious coexistence with the world-life, among other issues.

The animal stories found in the oral tales that we refer to above inevitably became the pillars supporting written children's fiction in independent Kenya. One can only imagine that the appropriation of the oral stories and their conversion into the written form was both a natural process partly enforced by technology and changed social and educational structures. This process was also possibly rationalized as transference of traditions and culture from one generation to another through a substitution of the medium of transmission, a process that Michael Ambatchew (2002: 6-13) describes as "reinventing [Ethiopian] folktales" in reference to a similar case elsewhere. Some Kenyan writers have continued to rely on animal imagery and animal characters when writing children fiction. Indeed there are educational reasons for this use of imagery derived from the world of forests and animals in children's literature. For instance, in another context, Elwyn Jenkins (1993:70-75) points out that contemporary South African fiction on the flora and fauna is seen by educators as part of the education and creation of awareness in children about environmental issues. Although it is important to teach children about the natural environment, it is also necessary that writers highlight contemporary social and cultural issues. In a transitional society such as Kenya where school-going children are daily faced with new social and cultural experiences different from those that in the past generated stories with the imagery that we refer to above, it may require that stories for children shift away from being overly concerned with the symbolism of an unreconstituted past and instead enact experiences that are immediately related to the children's real life.

These literary transitions can be read as a response to demands for new formulas and strategies of socialization and acculturation through literature. The language, the style, the imagery, and even the storytellers would naturally also change with time. It is in this sense that we see the transition in Maillu's fiction from being concerned with 'telling stories to children and youth' to letting the children 'tell their stories'. Maillu allows the girl-child literary space in which her world and experiences are foregrounded.

Telling Their Own Stories

Maillu privileges both the girl-child as a narrator and subject of the story. The transition from the omniscient--adult--narrator to the girl-child storyteller introduces new narrative elements in Maillu's children fiction. First, he endows the girl-child with the power to narrate, to tell the story of her life. Secondly, the girl-child occupies the centre-stage in the narrative as the protagonist of the story, which naturally positions her as an agent in the development of the plot of the story. Thirdly, the narrative shifts away from mere moralizing to an engagement with the lived experiences of girl-children in modem Kenya. I discuss these three features by analysing his two books The Government's Daughter and The Poor Child. These books are selected from among fifteen children's books written by Maillu for different age groups at the primary and junior secondary school levels of education in Kenya. Maillu's books are written in either Swahili or English with most titles appearing in the latter. Most of these books fall in the 'long time ago' category and attempt to invoke oral story-telling settings. However, Maillu also has a number of books that engage with social and cultural issues of interest to children and the youth in contemporary Kenya. Books such as My Dear Mariana, Without Kiinua Mgongo and For Mbatha and Rabeka, in one way or another seek to invoke the reader directly by referring to the subject matter as important for a particular audience. Either Maillu suggests the readership on the blurb of the novels or he indicates that the issues dealt with in the texts are important for a particular age-group category. For instance My Dear Mariana and For Mbatha and Rabeka address generational conflicts pitting parents against their children and romantic love, respectively. Without Kiinua Mgongo dramatizes love between a poor boy and a rich girl, a topic that children and young people would find easy to relate to.

Stylistically and thematically Maillu's fiction evinces shifts in reference to texts intended for different age groups. For instance, the 'junior readers' written for the lower primary school is made up mainly of what we have described as the 'long time ago' category. On the other hand, most of the texts intended for upper and junior secondary school have themes that are directly related to the process of growing up and the attendant experiences and difficulties such as juvenile delinquency, child labour, sexual exploitation of girls, and unemployment among others.

I pick on the theme of the girl-child and her experiences to illustrate the literary transition in Maillu's fiction. This theme is articulated within a cultural and social background that is experiencing rapid social, demographic and cultural transitions and formations such as urbanization, emergence of nuclear families, single-parenthood or street families and is also being sucked into the web of modernization and globalisation, which are determined and influenced by both local and external dynamics. For instance, the ideal of an educated and professionally qualified girl/woman in a society that is still dominated by patriarchal ideologies can only be realized in some instances when influence to change is initiated and enforced by the government. The government has the responsibility to provide role models, who as Maillu suggests in the case of The Government's Daughter, would preferably have to be individual women that other marginalized women--the girl-child in particular--can relate to.

The Troubled Girl-Child in Contemporary Kenya

The figure of the girl-child is common in both the oral and written fiction in Kenya. However, it is her characterization that concerns us in Maillu's fiction. The author addresses the question of the girl-child in his children's and young readers' stories. For instance The Ayah (1986), which is also meant for youth, addresses social and economic issues affecting the girl-child similar to those dealt with in The Poor Child. Child labour is the main theme in this novel. The protagonist in The Ayah--a young girl--is exploited at two levels: for her labour and sexually. She is overworked, underpaid and sexually assaulted by the employer's husband. When the employer discovers the relationship between the husband and the 'ayah', she sacks the young girl who then has to shoulder the responsibility of rearing the baby that she is expecting on her own, yet she has no means of earning an income. The situation in which the 'ayah' finds herself derives from her lack of an education and any professional skills that would make her employable in another occupation. Maillu pursues the theme of the exploitation of the girl-child in the two books, The Government's Daughter and The Poor Child. Some of the issues that he addresses in these two books include forced early marriages for girls, lack of educational opportunities for girls, the power of patriarchy over women, child labour that mostly affects girls, sexual exploitation of girls and government intervention to ensure that girls access education.

The condition of women and girls in many communities in Africa has been directly and indirectly influenced by the power and domination of the institution of patriarchy. It is patriarchy that Maillu seems to be critiquing in the story of Tamia in The Government's Daughter. Tamia is an orphan. She lives with foster parents in a big family of nomadic pastoralists. The foster father, Mapelele, has three wives and several children. Tamia is surprised one day when she receives news that she has been betrothed to one of Mapelele's friends, Oloita, a man who is old enough to be her grandparent. She is agitated by the news and is completely confused when it is confirmed. She finally runs off after Oloita tries to speak to her. She gets lost in the bush and is rescued by tourists on sightseeing. However, she is finally 'rescued' from the intended forced marriage by the local government (district) officer who orders the arrest of Mapelele and the registration of Tamia and other children at the local school. Although Tamia does not directly tell the story, it is her point of view that predominates in the narrative. It is what she wishes for in her life that eventually triumphs over the impositions of her family and community.

The invocation of the government's name in the story is meant to highlight the role it is expected to play in the initiation of development and change in the country. The writer, however, uses the image of the government to outline several problems faced by the girl-child in contemporary Kenya. First, it is clear that patriarchy wields and exercises immense power and control over women's lives in this community. Tamia is betrothed to Oloita without consultation. Whereas we expect her to be attending school, she is instead being prepared to start a home whilst still a child. Ignorance and what is presented as backward cultural practices of betrothing and forced marriages of young girls in a society dominated by men is juxtaposed with the introduction of the government's presence in this community in the form of a woman administrative officer. This officer becomes the role model for Tamia who desires to become a government officer in the future.

Some of the ways of overcoming the limitations that women face in such a society that are suggested by the author is to educate girls, to have direct government intervention through the provision of physical infrastructure in the form of schools and enforced registration of children in those schools and the provision of role models. In other words, the government plays a mediation role of injecting modernity in a community that clings to retrogressive cultural practices. Literacy, state intervention in matters such as the early marriage of girls and the presence of pioneering women figures are prominently depicted as some of the means of injecting change in a society that resistant to progress. However, stylistically, it is significant that Maillu uses the girl-child as the primary subject of the story to dramatise childhood experiences in a particular Kenyan community and to suggest solutions to childhood difficulties. Education of women is projected an important tool in the improvement of the socio-economic and cultural condition of marginalized girls and women in Kenya. Indeed education is presented as offering the best route to female liberation from inhibitory cultural practices and emancipation from male domination and control. Although Vivian Yenika-Agbaw (2003) is skeptical about the potential for socio-economic emancipation that education offers in post-colonial societies--she in fact emphasises that all over the world education is translating into big numbers of unemployed youths with 'deferred dreams' of success in life--in a reading of Meja Mwangi's Kill Me Quick, which is also set in Kenya, my reading of The Government's Daughter shows that schooling is still projected as offering the means of overcoming cultural practices that limit opportunities available to women to make social progress. At the end of Tamia's story, the writer predicts that she "will end up at the University" (Maillu, 1996: 47). Compared to Meja Mwangi's characters who cannot get jobs despite having good high school leaving certificates, Tamia's university degree is a dream worth pursuing. It will afford her the opportunity to avoid early forced marriage and sexual exploitation--as she is literally commodified and exchanged for cows without her consent. The high education should also allow her the time to mature and potentially be an active agent in determining her future life.

Commodification of women is dramatized in The Government's Daughter through the arranged marriage of Tamia. However, this characterization of women as property is told from a different perspective in The Poor Child. Whereas Tamia's story is partly told through an omniscient narrator who surveys her life, Mwende tells her own story. She is living with her stepmother when we meet her. Her natural mother is dead. Her father is a loving man as she says,

My father loved me very much and still does today. There is nothing of his which he cannot give me. As long as I can remember, there was never a time when my father picked up a stick to beat me. That is not to say I have never been beaten up. I have been beaten and thrashed day and night. I think I have really gone through a lot of trouble. All that trouble was inflicted upon me by Mukulu, my stepmother. That was the woman my father married after my mother's death. (2)

Mwende's story is about her life with a brutal and uncaring stepmother. However, it also highlights the plight of the girl-child in Kenya. In this case, it is Mwende's labour that is exploited. The stepmother beats her up without much reason. Mukulu seems to naturally hate Mwende and saddles her with the household chores, which denies her the opportunity to concentrate on her schoolwork. When Mwende tires of her step-mother's harassment, just like Tamia, she makes a conscious decision to leave home and go to search for the father who works in Nairobi. This act of defiance only leads her into the hands of another woman all too eager to exploit her innocence. Mwende gets lost at a bus station in Nairobi because she cannot trace her father. A woman that she meets at the bus stop lies to Mwende that she would help her trace her father. Instead she travels with Mwende to Western Kenya where she uses her as a housemaid. Therefore, the cycle of childhood exploitation continues and it only comes to an end when Mwende is rejoined with her father and she resumes her education. Like Tamia, we can only hope that she will have a trouble-free future after successfully completing her education. Therefore Mwende's story captures the complexity of the (adult) world for the girl-child. For instance whereas she is willing to invest her trust in an adult, significantly a woman in this case, the same person cheats her and ends up exploiting her labour. The author seems to suggest that the girl-child either initiates processes that will better her life, in a manner similar to both Tamia and Mwende running away from a hostile domestic environment or they speak up for themselves. In either case, the two novels engage with practical questions and issues in the lives of the girl-child in present Kenya. Forced marriage, forced girl-child labour, lack of educational opportunities for the girl-child and her marginal status in the home are all current experiences in Kenya. These issues demand that the girl-child be cast in an active role in which she can influence her destiny.

Conclusion

The transition from the animal and 'once upon a time' fiction for children to that which deals with real life issues such as teenage pregnancy, orphanage, the difficulties of growing up, destitution, violence at home and within the larger society in Kenya is a direct response to the changing social, cultural, economic and political conditions in Kenya. This literature is an example of a situation where fiction responds to rapid transformation in a creative and (in)direct way, seeking to not only highlight these issues, but also alert the society--children and the youth--about how to confront and (re)solve them. The kind of literature that we have discussed here falls within a broad literary trend in which children and youth literature that is being produced in Kenya today has shifted from preoccupation with the purely imagined to the real and lived experiences of Kenyan children.

Maillu articulates modernization, family values and the role of education in introducing change in different forms in the two novels. In a sense, as Peter Hunt, paraphrasing Gillian Klein notes, "the printed word inevitably plays a part ... in shaping as well as reflecting society" (1994: 164). Maillu seeks to privilege the government, through fiction, as a source of change in communities where development and progress may be held back by particular traditional practices. The government is projected as the source of education and literacy. Maillu is therefore acknowledging the government's contribution to literacy and the important role children and the youth could play in changing the society. He achieves this through his recognition of the children's agency in a postcolonial world.

Works Cited

Akivaga, S. Kichamu and A. Bole Odaga. 1982 [1993]. Oral Literature: A School Certificate Course. Nairobi: East African Educational Publishers.

Ambatchew, Michael Daniel. 2002. "From Oral Artifact to Written Literature: Reinventing Ethiopian Folktales". In Sankofa_Vol. 1:6-13.

Hunt, Peter. 1994. An Introduction to Children's Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Jenkins, Elwyn. 1993. Children of the Sun: Selected Writers and Themes in South African Children's Literature. Johannesburg: Ravan Press.

Khorana, Meena, (3. 2003. "A Force for Change: Giving Agency to Children". In Sankofa Vol.2:2-4.

Mwanzi, Helen Oronga Aswani. 1982. "Children's Literature in Kenya: An Analysis of Children's Prose Fiction". Unpublished Master of Arts Dissertation. University of Nairobi.

Maillu, David G. 1980. For Mbatha and Rabeka. Nairobi: Macmillan Publishers Limited.

--. 1986. The Ayah. Nairobi: East African Educational Publishers.

--. 1988. The Poor Child. Nairobi: East African Educational Publishers.

--. 1989. Without Kiinua Mgongo. Nairobi: Maillu Publishing House.

--. 1989. My Dear Mariana. Nairobi: Maillu Publishing House.

--. 1996. The Government's Daughter. Nairobi: Jomo Kenyatta Foundation.

Meja Mwangi. 1973. Kill Me Quick. Nairobi: Heinemann Educational Books.

Odaga, Asenath Bole. 1974. "Literature for Children and Young People in Kenya". Unpublished Bachelor of Arts Dissertation. Nairobi: University of Nairobi.

Yenika-Agbaw, Vivian. 2003. "'Half Education is Madness!': Mwangi's Teenage Characters Battle Poverty in a Postcolonial City". In Sankofa Vol.2: 13-19.

Tom Odhiambo

University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa

(1) See httv://web.uflib.ufl.edu/cm/africana/odaga.htm for a list of some of Odaga's published children fiction.

(2) See Asenath B. Odaga and S. Kichamu Akivaga (1982) for stories of the ogre that manifest the characteristics that we describe above. These stories were collected primarily for the secondary school course in oral literature in Kenya.

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Author:	Odhiambo, Tom
Publication:	Journal of African Children's and Youth Literature
Article Type:	Critical essay
Geographic Code:	6KENY
Date:	Jan 1, 2004
Words:	4239
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