A Tribute to Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o

Essay

by

Ochieng Owiti

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o was an Afrikan treasure, a renowned Kenyan writer who left us to rest with the ancestors on May 28th, 2025. He was born in Limuru, Kenya, on January 5th, 1938, amid the troubled times of the Mau Mau resistance to the British colonial intrusion into Kenya. This resistance precipitated one of the most brutal oppressive measures taken by the British against the natives in their colonies. Not only was the British repression brutal, but there was a concerted effort to diminish or even erase native cultural influence on the locals. Undoubtedly, this was the framework upon which many of Ngũgĩ’s thoughts and prolific writings were forged, as it became his stated goal to ensure that Afrikan tradition, particularly linguistic traditions, were not erased by the colonizer.