I interacted with Ngugi wa Thiong’o in many ways. The most memorable interaction was in the early 1970s. At the time, he taught at the University of Nairobi and I worked for the Voice of Kenya television. I had been writing Kikamba poetry and reading it over the vernacular channel from 1969 to 1974. The programme, called Ki’Kyambonie, was very popular in my community. Ngugi had heard something about it. This was after Ngugi had decided not to be called James Ngugi anymore; he dropped the baptismal name and established himself as Ngugi wa Thiong’o. It was fashionable then for the intellectual fraternity to drop their foreign names. I was confronted left and right by patriotic people to emulate Ngugi’s move and drop my name, David, if, indeed, I was an intellectual. I strongly defended my name by saying it was not imposed on me by anyone. It was a name I had chosen in 1951, as a boy, for baptism. Hence, I felt dropping the name would be an abuse of my childhood integrity. Furthermore, the name bears the history of my life.

So when Ngugi and I met at the Kenya National Theatre, he was curious about the response to my Kikamba poetry over the radio at a time when it was almost considered absurd to write poetry in mother tongue. I shared with Ngugi the reaction of my community to the poetry. I still remember one question I threw at him: “If you keep on writing in English, when will your mother, who does not know English, ever read your work?”

It appeared Ngugi took that very seriously. In another important meeting later, he excitedly told me, “You know what? I am now trying something in Kikuyu.” That was when he was writing the Kikuyu play, Ngaahika Ndenda (I Will Marry When I Want). By then I had already published a book in Kikamba poetry using the radio title, Ki’kyambonie. I had to live to discover the impact I had on Ngugi regarding writing in mother tongue, something that he picked up religiously and lectured on in Africa and Europe, during which he developed the thought that one should write only in mother tongue.

When I published my long novel, Broken Drum, Ngugi embarked on writing his long book, Wizard of the Crow. He wrote in Kikuyu and someone else translated it into English. That was already after he published his Kikuyu novel, Caitaani Mutharabaini (Devil on the Cross). While writing the big novel, Ngugi told me his second wife, Njeeri, was very helpful to his work. That was the woman who, towards the end of his life, served Ngugi with divorce papers in the US when he was in hospital.

One memorable meeting Ngugi and I had was at Kijabe Street, at the offices of his publisher, East African Educational Publishers. That was after he had been released from detention, having staged the Kikuyu play, Ngaahika Ndenda, with bad political consequences from the government. One of his greatest enemies in the government was Charles Njonjo, at one time Kenya’s Attorney General. Arguing over detention, I remember telling Ngugi, “Brother, you have got the right of defending yourself on behalf of your readers. Don’t pick fights with Njonjos. Go silent and, in the meantime, buy time by being creative and writing other less-confrontational things.” In response, Ngugi said, “I’ve got no option but to fight them hard until they return my teaching job to me.”

In 1986 we met in Sweden, Stockholm, for a conference of writers. By then, he was in self-imposed exile in Europe, and I was the only writer representing Kenya. Wole Soyinka was there. The story was that neither Chinua Achebe nor Wole Soyinka would share a common platform. There were other writers from the southern part of Africa. Before the white audience, Ngugi delivered a fierce paper attacking the Kenyan government titled, “Writing Against Neo-colonialism.” My paper was titled, “The Socio-Psychological Development of Africa.”

After the lecture, I confronted Ngugi bitterly regarding why he said such nasty things to whites about Africa when white people would expertly hide their evils from the ears of Black people.” I was angered by the fact that Nigerians, evil as they might be, talked to the whites as though Nigeria is the noblest country in Africa, yet here was a Kenyan displaying dirty linens to the world. (Kenyans excel in talking bad about their country in international forums). Although Ngugi was in exile, he repeated the same topic he had shared with me in the past at Kijabe Street. He fought against a government system that hated him.

The debate over what language you should write in has been wide. While Ngugi adamantly thought and said one should write in their mother tongue, Chinua Achebe, I and others think one should write in the language one feels best in — be that language mother tongue, Kiswahili or a foreign language. You should write only in the language that helps you say the right thing at the right time for the purpose.

Although the English language is an adopted child in Africa, that child has come of age to stop being seen as a foreigner or bastard. It is here to stay for full consumption until the end of life. English is our colonial heritage and language and the British people cannot take it away from us. They should keep their British English and we should keep our African English. We should, therefore, give it all it needs to serve to indigenous Africans.

Ngugi’s earlier books were something I resonated with until he published Petals of Blood, heavily influenced by Marxism. Promoting Marxism was the turning point of Ngugi in ruffling feathers with President Jomo Kenyatta, who was pro-capitalism. Kenyatta went after Ngugi and threw him into detention for interfering with the political kitchen. His successor, President Daniel arap Moi, followed in Kenyatta’s footsteps and detained Ngugi, hence creating the foundation for Ngugi’s self-exile to Europe and his final landing permanently in the heart of the capitalist world that he fought against.

The play in Kikuyu staged at Kamirithu village exacerbated the government attack on him. At the end of Petals of Blood, Ngugi gives credit to the Soviet Union by acknowledging his writing-the-book tenure in Yalta, Ukraine, in 1975. In Petals of Blood, Ngugi uses local characters and settings to promote Marxism. That was where Ngugi and I started parting ways. I was interested in home-grown political interest; hence, I was against foreign political ideologies. I eventually published my long-time research work, African Indigenous Political Ideology. That research became part of my doctorate in African Literature and Political Philosophy.

In those interactions, one thing came out brightly. Physically, Ngugi was timid, but intellectually he was a vicious man made of top-quality brass. Ngugi went to the grave without ever confronting me with any criticism, unlike me who criticized him directly and openly if and when I thought he should be criticized. If he had something to criticize me about, he used another person to deliver the criticism. He behaved in a manner to indicate I intimidated him. On the ground, we were good friends and professional associates.

Ngugi wa Thiong’o and his work should be measured by the fact that Africa being as big as it is, out of billions of Africans, he was one of the few who took the responsibility of giving Africa a voice of reason. He was a voice in the African wilderness. He was a grain of wheat in a bag of African wheat. He was a general in the battleground of reclamation of the maimed African integrity. His battleground was to liberate Africa from psychological damage. His archenemy was the white man’s choreographed savagery in Africa and the rest of the world, expressed in plundering natural resources and destroying African values to build the white man’s kingdom of cultural brutality. Ngugi fought with all his intellectual arsenals. He has gone but his spirit will live on to initiate new fighters in the reclamation of African values.

David Maillu is an author, painter and sculptor. The third edition of his book, After 4.30, will be launched on 28 June at the Sarakasi Dome in Ngara, Nairobi.