Barbara Kimenye
By JONATHAN HUNT
Barbara Kimenye, who has died aged 82, was one of East
Africa's most popular and bestselling children's authors. Her books sold more
than a million copies, not just in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, but throughout English-speaking Africa. Many of her
more than 50 titles are still available. She was also The Nation’s first
Women’s Editor.
Best remembered is her Moses
series, about a mischievous student at
a boarding school for troublesome boys. Though not always well-behaved, Moses
was never malicious, possessing all the good, bad, questioning and imaginative
qualities of a teenager.
His classmates at Mukibi's Educational Institute for the
Sons of African Gentlemen included his closest friend, the big-for-his-age King
Kong, a dedicated fan of the singer Miriam Makeba, to whom "he believed he was virtually
engaged" since a secretary sent him a signed photo. Rukia, with his love
of law and order, could never keep out of anyone else's business, while
Matagubya had a source of banana beer.
Perhaps the most colourful of the characters in Dorm
Three was Itchy Fingers, "always very good about giving back people's
belongings – even if, as occasionally happened, he absentmindedly picked them
up again later in the day". To the whole crew, Barbara brought her highly
readable, but never patronising, style, and storylines that gripped but never
disconcerted her readers.
Barbara Clarke Holdsworth was born in Halifax, West
Yorkshire, the daughter of a Jewish-born Catholic convert mother and a West
Indian doctor father. She attended Keighley girls' grammar school before moving
to London to train as a nurse. There she met many students from East Africa, and married Bill Kimenye, son of a chief from Bukoba in
what was then Tanganyika. They moved to his hometown on Lake Victoria in the
mid-1950s.
After the marriage broke up, she moved with a toddler and
another baby on the way across the lake to Uganda, where she had friends. In
Kampala, the capital, she was reacquainted with many friends who had been some
of the first Ugandan students in Britain. By now they were becoming the first
leaders and professionals of what would soon be independent Uganda.
The then kubaka (king) of Buganda, Edward Muteesa II,
invited her to work as a private secretary in his government. She lived near to
the palace compound, and her two sons, Christopher (Topha) and David (Daudi)
became close to his family and other members of the royal household.
Barbara always had a gift with words (she wrote her own
newspaper as a child of 11) and became a journalist on the Uganda Nation newspaper, possibly the first
black woman in East Africa to perform such a role. She also developed a talent
for storytelling, writing down the tales she told to children.
Moving to Nairobi, Kenya, in 1965 to work on the Daily Nation, and later the East African Standard,
Barbara was wooed by publishers who, post-independence, sought talented authors
who wrote for and about African children. However, her first book, Kalasanda,
for OUP, was a tale of Ugandan village life, followed by Kalasanda Revisited.
It was after this that she turned her hand to stories for children and schools.
Barbara lived in Nairobi until 1975 when, with both sons
in England, she moved to London. There she worked for Brent council as a race
relations adviser, while continuing to write. She assiduously followed
political developments in a disrupted Uganda and played an active role
supporting exile groups opposed to the rule of Idi Amin, and later the
second Milton Obote regime.
In 1986, with the overthrow of Obote, she returned to
Uganda to help rebuild the country. She was to spend a further three years in
Kampala before deciding to relocate to Kenya where she spent the next 10 years in semi-retirement
– though still writing at least one book a year.
In 1998 Barbara finally settled back in London where she
lived happily and was much involved in community affairs in Camden.
Shortly before her death she received the news that the
Moses series was about to be relaunched by OUP and also to be translated into
Kiswahili.
Christopher died in 2005. She is survived by David, and a
granddaughter, Celeste.
• Barbara Clarke Kimenye, journalist,
author, born 19 December 1929; died 12 August 2012
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