Sunday, September 2, 2012

Six hours with ‘people’s watchman’ worth studying


Six hours with ‘people’s watchman’ worth studying

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By Dr FIBIAN LUKALO (drflk12@gmail.com)
Posted  Saturday, September 1  2012 at  18:37
IN SUMMARY
  • During the six hours we spent together in the lounge room there was plenty of politics and history that Shikuku had to tell us.
  • As the day wore on he eased up to inform us about his passion for politics, the Lancaster meetings, his writing, his rhetorical eloquence, his heart bypass operation in South Africa.
  • Listening to him, it was not for nothing he had made this trip to Cambridge. The idea of social justice had never entirely faded away, possibly because he knew time was running out for him.
One warm afternoon in August 2009, the then Director of the African Studies Centre, Dr Derek Peterson, informed me that “Kenyan crusader for haki ya mwanachi is here in Cambridge to write his memoirs ... good if you could meet him”.
“Do you mean Martin Shikuku?” Soon afterwards I went to Wolfson College where Shikuku lived to book an appointment to meet him. I secured an appointment and invited him over to my college, Newnham, for lunch.
Not to let this opportunity pass by, a few Kenyan scholars made time to come over and eventually we had Dr Susan Kiragu (Researcher, University of Cambridge), Gina Oduro, Julius Jwan (Open University), Shikuku and I who sat down for a meal of rice, ugali and stew at Carmefield.
During the six hours we spent together in the lounge room there was plenty of politics and history that Shikuku had to tell us.
As the day wore on he eased up to inform us about his passion for politics, the Lancaster meetings, his writing, his rhetorical eloquence, his heart bypass operation in South Africa.
Listening to him, it was not for nothing he had made this trip to Cambridge. The idea of social justice had never entirely faded away, possibly because he knew time was running out for him.
“I need to get down this information about the history of my country and how this past has shaped us”.
That this matter was urgent was clear to the four of us who listened attentively to him. For us Shikuku was in academic terms “a one in a million opportunities for primary data”.
Time went fast that afternoon and yet what we listened to was not yet to be found in any of the many libraries spread in every corner of Cambridge.
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The wine we bought went untouched since Shikuku was a teetotaler but the moment was golden. I look forward to the work he came to write in Cambridge being published.
Dr Lukalo is a lecturer at Moi University’s School of Human Resource Development.

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