{"id":18127,"date":"2022-05-02T08:50:06","date_gmt":"2022-05-02T08:50:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/barazalab.com\/?p=18127"},"modified":"2023-09-04T05:44:53","modified_gmt":"2023-09-04T05:44:53","slug":"mcmillans-missing-bits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tuwele.com\/baraza_update\/mcmillans-missing-bits\/","title":{"rendered":"McMillan’s Missing Bits"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

When I was 17 years old and just out of high school, I had this fabulous idea that I would spend my \u201cgap year\u201d (a very fanciful and generous way of describing that enforced idleness) whiling away my days at McMillan Memorial Library in Nairobi\u2019s Central Business District. I dreamed of meandering through the book stacks, picking up some obscure tome by an unknown author, and getting lost in some make-believe world or in a niche topic that no one cares about (I\u2019d always been that kind of child).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But that was not to be. The first time I climbed up those majestic steps, past the two lion statues, I was immediately struck at how lacklustre the actual library was. It was dark, dreary and musty; the librarians were scowling the whole time, and I left the place with my dust allergies aggravated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I didn\u2019t go back to McMillan until last Saturday, when Book Bunk hosted a panel discussion and day of film screenings in partnership with Baraza Media Lab. It\u2019s part of the \u201cMissing Bits\u201d project, whose genesis goes back to Book Bunk\u2019s digitisation of the archives at McMillan, starting in November 2020.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the course of digitising, the good folks at Book Bunk began realizing some glaring gaps in the archive. There was plenty of material from \u201cofficialdom\u201d \u2013 gazette notices, city documents \u2013 but very little material that illuminated actual Kenyan life. Even the newspapers and periodicals recorded a version of history that was heavy on official voices and institutions talking to each other. It seems the Kenyan people, Kenyan life, didn\u2019t exist in the archive at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Missing Bits project strives to crowdsource some of those missing narratives, but what struck me the most at McMillan itself is how thoughtful the digitizing interns were as they gave commentary on the pieces they were working on.  Alongside exhibits of pages from The East African Standard<\/em> (did you know it used to be a broadsheet?) and The Weekly Review<\/em>, the interns’ own reflections on how those 30 or 40-year-old articles made them feel about being Kenyan, or what reading old colonial ordinances triggered in them, is a small but crucial reminder that first, humans do the work of storytelling, and second, that the past is never really past.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our lives are a living testament of it \u2013 you would be surprised how much continuity there is with the colonial structures, how much remains intact even as we\u2019ve ostensibly had decades of \u201cprogress\u201d and \u201cdevelopment\u201d. That these interns had the room to situate themselves in the work they were doing, and in those dusty \u201cofficial\u201d narratives, is far more than I experienced those many years ago when I first visited McMillan. Back then, it was obvious that that place wasn\u2019t for me, this Saturday it clearly was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Book Bunk is working on a third and final panel on May 21 at the newly-refurbished Eastlands Library (I can\u2019t emphasize how wonderful this place is), and later in the year, McMillan will close for a full renovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the meantime, here\u2019s:<\/p>\n\n\n\n