My memories of lovely Min Gem

Marjorie Oludhe Macgoye, née King, went to her rest on Tuesday, December 1. PHOTO| FILE| NATION MEDIA GROUP

What you need to know:

  • I still remember how she gave me directions to her flat in Ngara on a landline. I scribbled “Mama George, Cucu Wambui (granny) (and Wambui was a neighbour’s child she was looking after)…, mzungu” as she instructed me on whom to ask for near her

  • place if I got confused. But she insisted, I could not miss her gate as it was very near local semi-permanent vendors’ kiosks.

In many ways I remember Marjorie Oludhe Macgoye. Natural, and a brilliant intellectual whose first poem was published when she was seven years old in the London Mirror in 1935. She told me that during the war she was schooled at home and later went to a secondary school nearby. But Marjorie could learn from all.

She spoke to me about her paternal grandfather whom she admired. “My paternal grandfather was a great storyteller and I’m sure I’ve learnt a lot from him. My own father would reproduce some of those stories and I can still reproduce some of them…”

I knew Marjorie because of her participation in reading forums, including those at the British Council when I was a teacher. She went there as a writer but left with lots of friends and contacts.

She subtly crossed borders of work into friendship. When I thought I got to know her, I met and found Kenya in her. She drew one to her own friends… often with the words: “I would like you to meet so and so…”

That way I got to meet Kamau, who had nothing to eat and said he fought in Mau Mau, people living in shacks near her humble flat in Ngara, Nairobi, authors, and travellers who would come to sit a while with Marjorie.

I wondered when she wrote as her sitting room was also her office. The typewriter and piles of neat papers and books told one she was busy. She had time to laugh. Time to search deeply, question things. She wanted the poor to hit the headlines. She was hungry for justice.

Sometimes I found her deeply engrossed in Dholuo conversations with her extended family members who visited her often. I knew that sometimes people got off the bus at Machakos bus stop, ‘Airport,’ and headed ‘home’ to Marjorie’s rather than anywhere else.

I still remember how she gave me directions to her flat in Ngara on a landline. I scribbled “Mama George, Cucu Wambui (granny) (and Wambui was a neighbour’s child she was looking after)…, mzungu” as she instructed me on whom to ask for near her place if I got confused.

But she insisted, I could not miss her gate as it was very near local semi-permanent vendors’ kiosks.

Marjorie told me she would never drive and was not only happy to hop onto matatus when age was not an issue, but also so proud of the way she was normally treated. She walked her talk.

Marjorie was often downtown and doing her visits about town with a basket, in flat shoes. Dangerous parking boys of the time knew her and left her in peace.

Her laughter punctuated deep thought. It came and left fast. But her eyes could not hide the spring! She told me of her walks with her father… She felt that he helped her observation to develop.

“My father was a person of great discipline and great kindness..” And now, I hope that her father has just taken her for a walk again, to see her mother who died soon after she came to Kenya.

While she hardly talked of the pain of widowhood, she never missed to register Kenya’s sorrowful losses. She seeded hope.

She came to Nairobi in 1954. Few of us can imagine it then. Then Nairobi was all barbed wires between this and that place, to keep out this and that person. She needed a pass to live in Pumwani. It was not an area for people from Europe. Even some locals were not allowed there.

Let her, whose literature is a big trunk on a branched leafy tree in whose shade we can all find something, be read. There are her treasures in the nests up there.

Let her work help us root and bridge. Shun our tribalism, heal those gaps and love one another’s talents and freedom. I am so delighted that she has lived to see her grandchildren’s talents flourish and even seen great grandchildren. She deserved that!

Min Gem, yes, Nyarloka. Cucu Marjorie shatters stereotypes … and she is no longer from abroad. I cannot call her Nyarloka… for beyond Min Gem, she is Min Kenya, mother of Kenya in many ways. 

She was at the Uhuru Park celebrations of December 12 1963, to usher in freedom. I read that on this same date, her body will be laid to rest. 

Min Kenya yo! She has sang the ‘Freedom Song’ so long. Can we find a chorus? That is all we need. Kenya yo?