Why We Feel We Know Chimamanda Personally

Last year in November, I made my to Taifa Hall, at the university of Nairobi. It was my first time there. I was a whole one and half hours early. Considering the significance of the occasion, I had thought the place would fill up way before the starting time. I was wrong.

I only found the organizers and the sound guys setting up. The DJ was playing a set I took to be African, apparently in line with the occasion. There were a few other guys there. The first row seats were reserved. So I took a seat on the second row, and placed my bag on the one next to me, a move that would have interesting implications later on.

I took out my laptop and started reading one of the the several long form articles I had downloaded. I had a lot of time to kill, and I had to be creative with my murders. However, a friend of mine, who is a student at UoN and a member of the University’s Free Travelling Theatre, kept interrupting. They were to entertain us, and she kept telling me stories about the group. She was happy to see me, I was happy to see her, but I was not exactly eager to listen to her stories. Hell, I wasn’t even listening. I was too excited. I was too excited about one girl at that moment, there was no room for another.

I, like everybody else in that room that day, had come to listen to, and meet, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. And most of us, I could learn later on, felt like we knew her at a personal level.

Chimamanda

“You never gave me the book to read.” My friend from UoN again.

I had just pulled out my copy of Americanah from my bag so that I couldn’t damage it when putting the laptop back. I had realized I was going nowhere with my veiled attempt at keeping myself busy. The hall had started filling up really fast, and a number of people who knew me kept saying hi seeing that I was at the very front, and anybody who walked in through the the right side door was bound to see me, and say hi to me if she/she knew me.

“Ah, someone had it.” I lied.
“So will you give it to me today?”
“Most likely not.”

You see, I hoped, no, I was sure Chimamanda was going to sign that book. And there was no way I was going to give it away. At least not on the very same day. That day I had to take it home and put it on top of my other books. I had to look at it, at her handwriting, then look at the typed words in the book text and tell myself that the hands that typed those words that I enjoyed reading are the same hands that scribbled something readable on the second page of the book that. And I hoped never to give it out again. For I didn’t know I was to have my book signed by her so soon. I had always told myself that if I was ever going to have my book signed by Adichie or any other renowned African author, it was to be in some European capital, where I would line up with jungus waiting for my turn at the table. When I would get there, I would attempt to play one thing we shared in common, our Africanness. I would try to take more time at the table, of course covertly implying to her I was doing it intentionally because being African, I felt I owned her more than the non-Africans in the room.

As you already know, it was not to be. Luckily, Kwani? was celebrating ten years. And Binyavanga being chums with this girl who was writing serious books from Nigeria had asked her, you know, to drop by. And she couldn’t say no. As a result, she stood there that day at Taifa Hall, telling us how she had this image of the University of Nairobi as a place of serious intellectuals when she was growing up. The audience was enraptured. We were hooked, hanging at her every word. Already adding to the new facts she gave us about Nairobi to the cords that connected us to her. With those few words, they had moved from being made of fibre to being made of leather. You see, she thought of UoN as a kid the same way we did.
When she was done, we questioned her? What did you do to Kainene? Why did the producers of the film adaptation of Half of a Yellow Sun cast non-Africans? Did Thandie Newton, really resemble Olanna? Really? We questioned her, like we knew her, like she owed us an explanation? And she answered us. You could see her honest, you could feel her genuineness, her authenticity. If a question was a bit “lame”, she brushed it aside the way your neighbour could do to you when you are being petty. If she didn’t understand a question, she said so. She jokingly told the young girl who questioned the choice of Thandie Newton to play Olanna that next time, she would consult her. And of course, everybody who had a chance to speak “first and foremost” declared that they were her biggest fan. But there is a girl who took the day. She told simple story. She had read her first book and gotten hooked. She watched her, talked about her to her mum. One day, while in town , she had come across one of her books, Purple Hibiscus, being sold in the streets. The only money left on her was her fare back home. She spent her bus fare on it. She, then, called her mum and told her what had happened. Her mum knew Adichie very well. So, the day before the UoN talk , her mother had banged on her bedroom door.
“What is it, mum?, she had asked.
“Wake up. Your lady is on TV,” she had shouted.

She had been so excited to see her in Kenya. And she became emotional, and Adichie got emotional too.
“People like you are the reason I write.” Adichie told her.
People like us. Our stories may be slightly different from that girl’s, but the feeling and the journey are very much a like. And that is why everyone feels like we know Adichie personally. Because we identify with her and her work. Because we liked what she was doing, and how she was doing it. We owned her works. And we wanted her to sign the books we owned.