Interview with Brian Bwesigye, Ugandan Writer

1. Congratulations on the recent publication of your book, Fables out of Nyanja. But let's start with the basics. Please tell us about yourself. When did you start writing and what inspired you?


Thanks very much. Well, about myself, there is not much to say. I am a postgraduate Human Rights student at Central European University, Budapest (soon finishing actually). What else? I am a human being, African, Ugandan Mukiga.

About writing, it is not easy to draw a line and say this is when I exactly started writing. My first sizeable manuscript, which I thought was of a novel but was told by my English composition teacher that it could be a novella at best, was written in 2003. In my Grade 4 in secondary school, my English compositions were regarded as models for my classmates; in fact the teacher used to read them aloud in class and would ask all my classmates to learn from them. Maybe that is when my writing career started, or took shape. But from a year before, I was staff writer and deputy editor for a weekly school newspaper, The School Mirror. This writing thing let us say dates back to my secondary school life.

Well, for the inspiration, I can’t find anything specific to point to as having inspired me. What I know is that much of my writing then was born of deeply personal teenage issues. Those types of issues whose expression society does not encourage, and some issues that I lacked the confidence to express. So much puppy love-poetry I wrote and kept in my suitcase, and so much fiction about beauty, about pretence, about favoritism, about sexism, even about eating habits, stuff that would have thrown me into hot soup if some people were to see them. Writing was more of healing myself, expunging some venom out of my system then. It was that personal. But later on, after my A’ levels actually, just before joining university, I took to searching for opportunities to develop the craft. Then, I saw nothing worth doing during the long vacation, before joining university so I took to seeking publishers with my manuscripts, of teenage poetry, and some three short novella manuscripts I had written over time. The steam for writing however disappeared when I enrolled at Makerere University for my law degree. For the four years I did Law, writing disappeared into the background. It was during the very last semester of law school, that on reading Nick Twinamatsiko’s Chwezi Code, the writing spark returned to my life. For all the books I had read at that stage, it was Chwezi Code that somewhat validated my own lived rural experience as material for fiction. It was Nick Twinamatsiko who has been described as the engineer who builds words that re-ignited the writing fire in me. I felt incomplete concentrating on the ‘lawyering’ only. Since then, I have taken my writing more seriously and now, I think it is safe to suggest that the lawyering is sinking into the background.

2. Explain the title of your book. What does the publication of the book mean to your writing career?

Well, “Fables out of Nyanja” as a title is one of those things whose explanation varies depending on the context. In fact, sometimes I see the work taking on a different title. The Nyanja in the title is the name of the area where I spent the first twelve years of my life. In fact, I went to Nyanja Primary School for primary education. That is the easy and direct part of the title. ‘Fables’ is the somewhat hard part. Because the narratives that comprise the book do not fit the classical definitional elements of fables as known, they are not the known folktales that rotate around good and evil, with a clear straight forward moral lesson, with leopards, rabbits, crocodiles, lizards and chameleons speaking. The use of ‘Fables’ in the title is thus more symbolic than definitional. The narratives in the collection are not the typical poems, neither are they the typical short stories as known. They are just narratives. In Rukiga, the primary language in which I think, these narratives are ‘ebitebyo’. Now, some of these words do not have direct English equivalents and that is how in the process of translation, ‘Fables’ was reached at, and then knowing the Fable tradition, the famous Aesop fables etc, the artistic part of myself and the publisher decided to inject some doze of symbolism in the title.

To the second part of the question, Fables out of Nyanja is the first work of fiction of mine published in book form. Of course as the first, albeit very small in size, the work is very important. It is that seed that has managed to sprout out of the soil before the others, those manuscripts I used to carry around in 2006, still undergoing improvement. The significance of Fables is however in the experiments that I am doing with it. Of course all said and done, Fables is evidence that writing is taking the better of my attention than lawyering.



3. It’s been said that your book celebrates life in your village in Uganda. What is the importance of place or setting in your writing? How does living away from this setting affect your writing?

The place where a story is set, when I am writing of childhood is the campus that directs my imagination. As I have said above, I grew up in a village and went to a village primary school. Although, by village standards we were well-off, so could afford newspapers, at worst on a weekly basis and my mother being a teacher, I was raised on reading lady-bird books, the fact that we were living in a village meant that I am very much a village-bred person. As Gaius Plinius Secundus has said, home is where the heart is. Home for me is Nyanja, and when listening to Nneka’s Home song, my mind easily wanders off to Nyanja. “Fables” in so many ways as a work of fiction is thus driven by the setting of the stories.


Of course, the fact that since 2000, I have not lived for longer than a month non-stop in this home, creates an everlasting presence in my sub-conscious of this lived experience. ‘Fables’ was particularly born of tales about childhood and it would have required a lot of imagination to work with non-existent material about any other childhood except that set in a rural area. In any case, in 2011, when these narratives were written, I was very much home-sick and particularly nostalgic about the spots in my village that hold specific memories and now no longer exist. That is why the creative process was moved by the setting of the stories more than anything else.


Just last month, I was talking to my mother and she was telling me that now everyone in the village has tapped water. We have had electricity in the village for some years now. This changes the life and experiences that the rural children of today will get in Nyanja. Because I am withdrawn from this village physically and can’t physically experience these changes, when I return (and I hope to in the medium-term), it will be an exotic experience for me. In a way, I am afraid of the loss of my childhood setting, yet this in all senses remains the base material on which my worldview and experience is founded. So, setting my stories in this rural place has another importance – that of recording my experience, and hopefully of those with a similar background. Definitely, in a different setting, the characters you meet in ‘Fables’ would be artificial and incoherent. In my other work, some of which is not set in the village, I cannot say that the setting has been the fulcrum on which the stories have rotated. Characterization in some has formed the backbone for the stories whereas in some, it is the stylistic preference of the writing that has shaped the stories.


4. Talk about writing in Uganda? What is the literary scene in the country compared to other African countries?

Well, writing in Uganda is one of those things that we can’t talk about without referring to the past. In the 60s, the days of Uganda’s receiving independence, Makerere University was a centre of excellence in matters of African literature. The famous Transition magazine was published in Uganda, and the famous 1962 conference of African Writers of English expression was held at Makerere. Those were the student days of Kenya’s Ngugi Wa Thing’o, who was at Makerere. Ugandan writers of the time included Okot p Bitek of the classic Song of Lawino poem among others. Of course, as most things in Uganda, each year that has passed since independence has come with extra rot in institutions and pillars of society. Makerere has not been spared, and the literary scene too.


This does not mean that Uganda is a literary desert as Taban Lo Liyong once called the country. From Doreen Baingana of the Tropical Fish fame, Gorretti Kyomuhendo, Jackee Batanda, Monica Arac de Nyeko to Beatrice Lamwaka among others, there is vast contemporary writing coming out of Uganda. In fact looking at writing prizes won, Uganda is not doing that badly. Monica won the Caine Prize in 2007, Jackee was the Africa Regional Winner for the Commonwealth Short Story Competition 2003 and Doreen won the Commonwealth Writer Prize for Best First Book in 2007 among others. Probably you notice that I have mentioned only the females. Well, credit goes to the Uganda Women Writers' Association (FEMRITE), the NGO that has made it their business to publish and develop women writers in Uganda. FEMRITE has been essential in keeping the literary flame burning in the country and of recent even includes men. Beyond FEMRITE, there are other newly established initiatives that are expanding the diversity of the Ugandan literary scene. The online Uganda Modern Literary Digest is one of those. The poetry scene is even more active. From the Lantern Meet of Poets to Poetry in Session and many others, one can’t fail to locate a poetry-related event in Kampala.


When it comes to comparing with other countries, I am afraid what I have just said above will appear insignificant. I mean, South Africa’s literary scene is more vibrant than ours, so is Nigeria’s, or Kenya’s or even Zimbabwe’s. A Nigerian writer has an array of local publishers to choose from in sending their manuscript, from Farafina, Cassava Republic and others, same for the South African writer who even has a Penguin branch on the doorstep, besides Chimurenga and others. We, in Uganda do not have the choices that Kwani?, Storymoja and others offer to the Kenyan writers. Even when it comes to online publishing, we can’t like the Nigerians boast of Saraba Magazine, the Sentinel Nigeria magazine and others. Or the Zimbabwean StoryTime and Munyori Literary Journal. Despite our own wonders as Ugandans, I mean, the humor on UrbanLegendKampala.com remains unmatched, but still it is not enough for us to flex muscles on the African literary scene.


Problems of readership, shortage of publishing opportunities and even the amount of work writers put in their craft still hold us Ugandans back. I mean, Uganda’s population is over thirty million but newspapers sell 30.000 to 50.000 copies per day, not even a million, so what do you think the literary scene looks like in such an ‘unreading’ country? But there is hope that taking deliberate steps like those FEMRITE has taken by every stakeholder regarding the literary scene will improve the situation. There is hope, a lot of hope judging by the writing coming from Ugandans on the blogs and in social media that Ugandan can’t afford to keep their literary scene dim any longer.



5. What is do you think is the current state African literature? What seems to be influencing its development?

I think, and I may be wrong that the internet and social media and the array of literary prizes on the continent have shaped the state of African literature as it stands today. There is no doubt, today’s African literature has moved beyond the more politically-charged and ideology-oriented content of the immediate post-colonial era and is now more diverse. It also is true that except on the internet, much of the African Literature being published today is consumed by more non-Africans and Africans in the Diaspora than the Africans on the continent. I can bet my hair that Moses Isegawa’s Abyssinian Chronicles has for example been read more outside Africa than in Africa. More than half of today’s notable African writers, especially those that have emerged after 2000 will have some Caine Prize or Commonwealth Prize in their bag. The role of further education and exposure to “opportunities” in the United States specifically also shows in the African literature of today. It is not uncommon to find an MFA qualification attained from Iowa, Cornell, or any other American university on a CV of a notable contemporary African writer.

Add all these influences to that of the internet, with many exclusively online publishers springing up all over the place and we have African literature being made more available to readers, coming in diverse forms, on diverse themes, becoming bolder, prize-oriented in some cases and more consumed by the outside than the inside. All these are not necessarily bad things. In fact, all these point to a brighter future ahead, in my humble view. We just need to think about readership on the continent. I do not have a panacea for that, I do not think there is a one-fix-all solution for it, but seeing what the internet can do I think that time is coming when Africa will read her writers’ work more than she is doing today.

6. What is the importance of language in your writing? What language/s do you prefer to write in?

I think language is central to anyone’s writing, because it shapes how ideas are conceived, it carries with it values that we never see but influence how and what we write. The bulk of my work, both published and unpublished, is written in English. But I would not call it British English or American English. Neither would I call it Pidgin English. It is some kind of English with heavy Rukiga influences, an English that carries a heavy burden of work that has been conceived in Rukiga, the language in which I think. But this depends on what story it is that I am writing. There are stories I can’t create in any single language without distorting the flow of my imagination. Just as there are stories I can only create when thinking in strictly one language. I think this is because of the material with which I work in creating stories. The language of my lived experience is what shapes the imagination. I have been experimenting with translation, writing in Rukiga, and then translating into English, and vice versa. There are some awesome results of these experiments that I hope will find space on some publishers’ desk one day. Work that I have read which was conceived in another language and translated into English later has a special type of appealing beauty. Think Okot p Bitek’s Song of Lawino as opposed to Song of Ocol, the latter written in English directly, the former written in Acholi originally and translated later.

Without doubt, there is more to language than being a tool or vessel of our experience. Language is itself a value. In a multi-lingual world as ours, we love the many and diverse values we pick up from all languages we use. Those that come with Rukiga my mother tongue, those that come with English, and those that come with Luganda, the most spoken language in Uganda. In case a conflict of language values occurs in the future, because it has not yet occurred to me, I hope I will be loyal enough to my identity to allow the Rukiga values to prevail.

7. What is the importance of social media to your writing? To Ugandan writing? To African writing?

The Nick Twinamastiko’s Chwezi Code book and the man himself that I talked about earlier as having inspired me, I met through Facebook. There are several writers’ Facebook groups I am a member of. To a very big extent, my writing survives on social media. I am sure a number of publishing opportunities have been harnessed on and through the social media. Social media in many ways has made the writing industry accessible to all and sundry, the publisher, the writer and the reader at the centre of this conversation. It is now easy for a writer in Uganda to be in touch and share synergies with a writer in Zimbabwe, in Nigeria or in Egypt and I find this very crucial as there is a lot to learn from each other. I for example know of a closed group on Facebook where aspiring Ugandan writers critique each others’ work, a process that I think is central to this craft of writing. With social media, the diversity of our writing becomes bolder and more pronounced. Blogging, which has been with us for a longer while has acquired new significance with the easy access to blogs that social media provides. We do not have to blog to ourselves anymore, just sharing a link to your blog on your page and others doing the same attracts huge traffic and I am sure every writer appreciates having an audience. In a way, it has now become hard to imagine the literary scene without social media. I mean, in 2006, when I was oblivious of social media, I was walking on Kampala streets with my manuscripts written in pen, hoping to convince someone in a textbook publishing company to give me access to a computer so I can type the manuscript and then submit it. But see now, even on a phone, I type away and share and a publisher can read and like and then a publishing contract comes to life. No wonder, I was not yet into the writing industry before I discovered social media. Separating the two will be an experience for me.


8. What projects are you working on currently?

I am part of a joint-project to commemorate the life of one of Uganda’s major literary figures, the late Okot p Bitek. We are compiling interviews, essays, short stories, poems and other literary works into an anthology to celebrate his life. I also have a manuscript that I have been working on since 2010, I am hoping that by July 2012, I should be putting a final stop to it and send it to a yet-to-be –decided publisher, but my writing has no respect for such deadlines, there is an arbitrariness to the process of creation, so will see how much longer it will take me. I also have a collection of teenage poems from my past that I have been improving since 2011 so that I can also see them published. That is basically it from the fiction writing. The other projects are typical non-fiction work about Kiga heritage and culture, the history of Kigezi and related studies.

9. What made you with go with Kushinda for the publication Fables.


The way ‘Fables’ became a book was really an idea of Kushinda, than mine. Originally, the ten narratives that comprise “Fables” were lone pieces of work, each on their own. At least four of them has appeared on a Facebook page of mine called Tales from Kagugube. I used to write the pieces as a way of taking myself back into time, and sharing for the sake of it. That is how Ceris Dien, the owner of Kushinda saw them and talked about compiling them and potentially publishing them into a small book. That is how the process started. I had no objection to the suggestion, so I added more pieces to the four and the manuscript for ‘Fables’ took shape. After all, I saw that my own views on Literature and Art were in sync with Kushinda’s approach and love for the true value of art, the idiosyncratic, the indigenous and the culturally aware. Of course, the fact that ‘Fables’ was going to be the second book on Kushinda’s portfolio besides ‘I speak Elphanish’ which is more of a picture-book gave me, if you may allow me some vanity, more importance and recognition as a writer. The Kushinda team with time proved very friendly and supportive in the process and looking back, there are some things that I think other publishers would not have tolerated but Kushinda did. But of course now that they are taking on more and more work, the special feeling of being so important and special is coming to an end – lol.

10. Tell us about your reading, favorite authors, etc. What are you reading currently?

I have been reading lots of contemporary African short-fiction. To steal some words off Chimamanda’s lips, I think it is because I write the literature that I would love to read and much of this has been short-fiction published online. Novuyo Rosa Tshuma is one of those writers whose short stories I have grown an addiction to. Her upcoming novella Shadows which I can’t wait to re-read over and over again once it comes out in print this June will prove to me whether my fascination with her work is only limited to short-fiction. The same for Nigerian Emmanuel Iduma. Interestingly, both of them are having their first books coming out this summer.

Speaking of books, it is generally hard to name specific favorite book authors, because sometimes I love some works of theirs and not others, or some, more than others. Tsitsi Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions (that I read in March this year) has stayed with me like a rosary stays with a faithful Roman Catholic; I am not sure how I will like The Book of Not, the sequel to Nervous Conditions though. The other books I like are Elechi Amadi’s The Concubine, Chimamanda Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun, Chinua Achebe’s No Longer At Ease, and Arrow of God, Timothy Wangusa’s Upon This Mountain, Henrik Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People and Okot p Bitek’s Song of Lawino, to mention a few.

About what I am reading, because of the Remembering Okot p Bitek project, I am reading all his works again. I have just finished re-reading White Teeth, his only novel, and now reading his collection of essays, Artist, the Ruler, Essays on Art, Culture and Values. After finishing with this, I will embark on his other works, Song of Malaya and Song of Prisoner among others.