A visit to the Kenya National Archives
My attendance of the Scientific Symposium for Emerging Scholars in Health in Nairobi, Kenya, in July, gave me an opportunity to visit the enchanting East African country's premier custodian of history and culture, the Kenya National Archives (KNA). Located a stone's throw away from the towering, but aging, Hilton Hotel (the venue of the symposium) and nestled in between Moi and Tom Mboya Avenues - two prominent names in Kenyan national history - the KNA is arguably the people's institution. (Never mind the unique architectural design of the building, which marks it out from surrounding constructions with a much more recent design aesthetic.)
Even without the knowledge of the latest litigation case involving the Mau Mau conflict survivors and their erstwhile colonial masters, the United Kingdom government - a case which has brought archives to the centre of postcolonial politics - the many young and very old Kenyans who troop in and out of the KNA indicates the centrality and accessibility of the institution to the general citizenry. At least during the day of my visit, it was a hive of activity.
Karibu!The quintessential East African 'welcome' note greeted me at the reception of the KNA. After introducing myself to the receptionist, I was very glad to be told that I could do two things: tour the archive and also do some research. Both my touristic and scholarly ambitions would be easily fulfilled. Naturally, touring came first. Therefore, after paying my K200 fee for touring the institution, which also doubles as a gallery, I readied myself to be taken around by someone knowledgeable, who could explain things as I did the round.
Alas, the only available tour guide was busy taking droves of primary school children around the archives, explaining to them the country's different cultural and political artefacts and icons. 'What a wonderful way of teaching the nation's kids,' I thought to myself. I resolved to do my own solo tour that would also include keeping my ears attuned to what the guide was telling the school children. At that moment I met a young Kenyan lady, Evelyn Wanjiru, who was also taking a casual tour of her own - clearly not for the first time. An apprentice ethnographer and freelance research assistant, she kindly offered to be my guide.
We first went through the ground floor, which features snippet exhibitions of cultural artefacts, which were clearly curated to carefully represent the country's legion ethnic groupings. Here, the visitor is treated to the country's colourful textile heritage, which speaks volumes about both the utilitarian and prestigious benefits this material brought to both the weaver and wearer. There are also different functional art forms, including calabash art, Wakamba beadwork; tortoise shell food bowls from northern Kenya and Turkana fertility dolls, also known as ikidet.
Like all former colonial societies, one also encounters collections named after this-or-that collector. The one featured in the archive gallery is the John Boyes Art Collection. The brief description accompanying the Boyes exhibition makes for some intriguing reading: 'Known as "King of the Wakikuyu", Boyes was a famous early game hunter. He traded some goods with a Kikuyu Chief in exchange for Mount Kenya, which he "owned" for several years'!
Located in the historical and conceptual Indian Ocean World, Kenya has not escaped coming under the powerful cultural influence of other distant places. Unique porcelain objects and kika kasi are some of the surviving vestiges of this influence. Kika kasi are special containers for small treasures and incense, originally imported to East Africa by sailing dhows (boats). They also came to be carved by Swahili craftsmen. In addition to this Indian Ocean cultural presence, there is also a pan-African appeal, introduced through artefacts from Uganda and as far as West Africa (mainly objects related to authority and related rituals).
Perhaps the only thing that was awkwardly placed on this floor was the Tom Mboya Memorial Exhibition. A tragic figure of Kenya's early postcolonial period, Mboya, arguably a strong contender to the throne, was assassinated in 1969 at the age of 39 years. Despite its subject matter being different to everything else on the same floor, there was also reason to believe that, placed as it was at the foot of the stairs that take visitors to and from the first floor gallery and research rooms, this might have been the best position for mounting the mainly press-based memorial exhibition.
In the upper gallery I encountered the who's who of Kenya's political leadership as the space is dedicated to showcasing traditional icons (mainly Kikuyu), colonial governors and their postcolonial successors. My very kind guide was also Kikuyu and she demonstrated a great deal of knowledge, clearly imbibed from schooling and also by virtue of being part of one of the dominant ethnic groups in the country. Of the four presidents who have ruled independent Kenya since the early 1960s, three were Kikuyu.
As the founding postcolonial patriarch, Jomo Kenyatta's paraphernalia (including his chair and copious amounts of photographs) is dominant in the gallery. Because of the tribally-charged nature of Kenya's recent plebiscites, I refrained from asking anything that could easily bring up the issue of ethnic domination and animosities.
Having quenched my touristic thirst with the cultural and the political materials displayed specifically for that purpose, I proceeded to the research section for some brief explorations. As a medical historian, my interest was to go through their catalogues to explore the nature of their holdings. With long lists of archival files focusing on topics ranging from hospitals to 'native epidemics', one quickly discovers that Kenya has not been different from other southern African countries in terms of the main healthcare concerns and approaches.
However, two things stood out. Firstly, the country continued to grapple with plague until the 1960s - at least as far as I could tell from the catalogues. For South Africa, and Cape Town in particular, the main distinction about plague is that it put into full gear what Maynard Swanson has memorably called the 'sanitation syndrome' which, in the early twentieth century, justified the initial forced removals and the creation of segregated Black urban settlements, such as Ndabeni. The other curious distinction was reference in the KNA medical catalogues to a disease called kala-azar. Scientifically known as visceral leishmaniasis, this disease emanates from bites by female sand flies and is still a major public health concern in Kenya.
Back to the conference venue, one of my fellow delegates, Peter Ngure, an inspiring Kenyan medical parasitologist from Daystar University, had prepared a poster presentation focusing on a pilot study to establish the efficacy of a certain fungal plant-based intervention on sand fly (the kala-azar vectors) populations in their natural habitats. Suddenly, I saw how, as one of the two historians and a tiny portion of other Humanities people attending this symposium of nearly 100 public health and medical scientists, I could begin to broker some future trans-disciplinary conversations and perhaps even research collaboration on some of these enduring health concerns. Asante sana - thank you very much!