Kingwa Kamencu

Overview

Kingwa Kamencu didn't plan to write My Soul Begins to Flower. It burst forth from scribblings she jotted down over many years while under the influence of both ecstasy and despair, amongst other things. 

She thought she had lost the poetic scribblings, didn't even remember they existed, only to discover them in a folder while spring cleaning her house. And then she found others tucked away in another digital folder on her laptop.

Kamencu wrote these poems during moments when she was happy (which was very rare), grateful (rarer still), miserable (very often), and sexually aroused (most of the time). 

She says:

"I write when seized by strong emotions and feelings and need an outlet. When I'm feeling lonely, sad, hurt, rejected....But also when I'm feeling elated, euphoric, ecstatic...Something I have noticed too is that poems emerge when I feel turned on; we need to investigate to find if sexual feelings are emotions too".

Kamencu didn't just write these poems. She birthed them mid-storm, mid-orgasm, mid-heartbreak. 

The collection of 106 poems spans twenty years. 

This collection has a rhythm, and it is divided into three acts. The first act is a full-body experience in which Kingwa comes out swinging—no warm-up, no hesitation. She blasts you with vivid, raw sexual imagery that reads less like poetry and more like invocation. 

Erotica so startling, you will not want to read this book alone or passively. Advisably, you should have a lover nearby. Or on speed dial. Or an implement. 

Or your own trembling hands.

She slows down somewhat in the second act, reflecting quite a bit on God, gratitude, and the ache of meaning. It’s as if the erotic storm inside her pauses to pray. Or perhaps catch its breath. The erotic becomes spiritual, and the spiritual turns into another form of longing.

Then, as if she realises that was a bad idea and not her style, as if she remembered who she is, as if she realised restraint is a costume she doesn’t wear well, she reignites the storm in the third act, closing with a bang with "What sex does for me". 

Of course, this is my reading of the book, and it might be somewhat of a simplification, but that's how I felt. I read the entire collection in a single day, you see, the same day Kamencu was kind enough to send it to me via 2NK sacco, so clearly, I came under its spell. 

The fact is, every act has its ebbs and flows, spectacular highs and spectacular lows, and very few middles. 

Kamencu doesn't do middles. 

You don't have to take my word for it. She says it herself:

 "The poems chronicle sojourns in the valley of the shadow of death, they capture time in the dark night of the soul. They however also bow to love, offering a perspective of the universe as a stage for love-making". 

This book is chock-full of erotica, sure, but don't let that get in the way of your literary experience. The erotica is just a device the author uses to confront the world inside of her, and by extension, inside of us. The stuff we don't realise is there, or pretend is not there.

Kamencu is an accomplished author. Her body of work includes several published books and scripts for popular television programmes. Her novella To Grasp at a Star (EAEP, Nairobi, 2005) won three major Kenyan awards and is currently on the recommended reading list of the Kenyan Secondary school curriculum. She's also a Rhodes scholar. 

My Soul Begins to Flower is pure Kamencu. Unfiltered, on fire, in heat. It's not structured, nor is it safe. 

It's not polite, and it won't be on any high school reading lists. 

But it's alive.

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To read My Soul Begins to Flower is to get inside of a woman (metaphorically) whose mind doesn’t organize thoughts but unleashes them. 

Kamencu doesn’t write. She detonates. 

Her brain doesn’t rest, it ricochets, and it takes no casualties if they get caught in the crossfire.

In the very first poem, the protagonist starts as a wrinkled and shrunken raisin, but that's only to prepare you for what's coming next. Suddenly, someone plugs a pump into her and pumps it. She swells. She balloons. And turns into a grape. 

In A time for orgasming, a respected headmistress is writhing on the ground as a car mechanic beside her shudders, while two pastors pass out on the grass.

Throughout the book, Kamencu seduces you with beauty and disorients you with absurdity. You never quite know where she’s taking you as an orgy of metaphors leads you astray, only to deliver you, breathless, to the truth like an unexpected orgasm.

In Jesus is the answer, one moment you’re in church, the next, climaxing on the priest's bed. But why? Because Jesus is the answer. 

A time for orgies is a provocative poem, with red hot lines like "the sight of others makes my breasts perk, has my vulva swelling, gets my clitoris engorged, my vagina fills up with wetness....masturbation is out, it's now time for orgies".  

Don't be led astray by all that. 

What she is talking about is connecting with other people, coming out of her shell, and becoming a part of something - a movement - bigger than her. Or I could be dead wrong. Maybe she's actually talking about orgies and I am writing nonsense. 

In Erotic East Africa, she writes of an old woman who refuses to rest and allow the younger girls in town to have their turn: 

"There she prances, her large buttocks, on Tanzania's backside". 

Taken out of context, those lines could be misconstrued to be a critique of Mama Suluhu, Tanzania's president; these are interesting times in East Africa, the region is bursting at the seams with demands for more democracy, and Suluhu has recently jailed and tortured democracy activists from Kenya, Uganda, and her own Tanzania. 

But no. 

Erotic East Africa is an ode to Mama East Africa, the cradle of humanity: 

"This over 3.2 million year woman, who produced all mankind, refuses to grow old, refuses to retire.....her curves must still be seen, be felt, be touched...kama uko na shida, go hug a transformer". 

However, although Kamencu didn't plan it that way, there is a retrospective link to recent events in Tanzania in one of her poems. 

In I survived the storm, she writes: 

"The storm came at me....dragged me down to its dangerous depths...and had its way with me...it invited all its brothers, fathers, mothers, sisters, cousins, children, grandparents, to also take their turn...once completely satisfied...it pulled up its zip...and let me go".

In a cruel twist of reality imitating poetry, one of the activists in Suluhu's gulag, Ugandan activist Agather Atuhaire, suffered a similarly tragic fate. While in custody, Suluhu's men raped her. Smeared her body with shit. And then, satisfied with their work, they let her go. 

That kind of cruelty to a fellow human being, someone's child, is extraterrestrial.

In Not yet orgasm (a pun on Not Yet Uhuru by Oginga Odinga), Kamencu bemoans the fate of 100 prisoners who died inhumanely in a DRC prison. She laments:

 "Where is their orgasm? What must they, the smelly, wretched and unwashed, do, to also lay claim to their share of paradise?"

In Honouring my taste buds, she devolves into a Jekyll and Hyde character: On the one hand, she decides to honour her taste buds, which is a metaphor for elevating her own mental, emotional and physical health:

 "I am acknowledging my own taste buds now, where my whole life I lived as though they didn't exist....I'm putting some respect on my taste buds now, no longer just anything goes". 

A couple of pages later, her other body parts aren't too pleased by that decision. And they respond:

 "Motherfucking bitch....it's hungry groin, hungry stomach and hungry soul writing this...But what the fuck is that...putting taste buds in charge?....that ain't gonna happen...no fucking way....we stand by our actions, all our motherfucking actions, over the years...we're going to start a civil war...fuck you motherfucker, fuck you and all your motherfucking fuckingness, you'd better watch your back if you knew what was good for you....you deserve to die". 

Do I have favourite poems in the collection? Oh yes, galore. Their titles stand out: 

Jesus is the answer. Where does an epiphany come from? Prayer to God for a sense of humor. Sex in Uganda. You cannot force the day. Take my life. Choose what makes you smile. Anger and rage visit the therapist. 

However, balls to the wall, I would say my absolute favorite poem out of the collection of 106 is this one: Chosen you, dearly beloved, for suffering. 

It starts, "Congratulations, you are my new excuse for suffering", and then proceeds to list the litany of ways we abandon our agency and blame others for our lack of joy. 

I couldn't help but burst out laughing when I came to the section of the complaining politician:

 "...they act like I did nothing at all, my comrades died in prison, I only survived because I went into exile, and now these children see them here, urinating on our democracy, how horrible they are, what horrible citizens, for making me suffer". 

My Soul Begins to Flower is pure Kamencu. Unfiltered, on fire, in heat. 

It's not structured, nor is it safe. It's not polite, and it won't be on any high school reading lists. 

But it's alive. 

And it's definitely on my recommended reading list.

Patrick Kariuki is the Editor of The Kenyan Observer