Wanjiru Koinange is a Kenyan writer, a restorer of libraries, a climate activist, and an indomitable visionary who has chosen to fight colonial legacies and social resignation with her greatest strength: telling compelling stories and the relentless restoration of public spaces.
Who is Wanjiru Koinange?
I’m a Kenyan woman, I’m in my late thirties. I like to describe myself as a writer and a restorer of libraries. I come from a large family, we grew up on a farm in the outskirts of Nairobi. We’re very close, I’m the last born and have many siblings. I’m a child of farmers, connected to the land. I grew up with a really strong sense of community – and that is at the center of most of what I care about. I enjoy my life, and I enjoy that my writing takes me to different places, figuratively as well as literally.
You are a writer, you are an activist, you are a restorer of libraries, you’re an entrepreneur. How do you balance all those activities?
I don’t think I do a very good job at balancing. All of these pieces of work, even if they have different labels, they’re all part of the same process for me. I don’t instinctively need balance, because they’re all parts of who I am. I find real beauty and strength in routine and in structure. Even when I’m here in Prague, writing. My days are very loose, but they’re also very structured. I wake up in the morning, I put my laptop in my bag, and I walk for 20 minutes. I find a bench, and I write for an hour. I get tired, and I walk again. And I think it’s about being able to find the routines that serve the project of the day. Whether it’s writing, or fundraising, or publishing, or trying to plant trees, I think a routine is my saving grace. At the core, I’m a writer, I’m a storyteller first. If I had to strip everything I do and only do one thing, it would be writing.
You travel a lot. Is it also to learn from other countries and their libraries?
Not primarily. My work at Book Bunk also means that I often get invited to speak about the project and then I do built-in library visits. Every country I’ve been to, I’ve gone to local libraries and jazz or live bars, both of those things are for me a good way to experience a new city.
You started your career in the music industry, right?
Yes, I was trained as a journalist, but I first worked in the music business. I worked for Eric Wainaina, at the time one of Kenya’s biggest musicians and activists. And I think that was the first way I discovered it’s possible to be creative, but also that that creativity could change something. A lot of my foundational experiences came from the music industry. And I still love it so much. You will find me at a live music show anywhere.
Is it the reason why you believe art can change society?
Absolutely, I’ve seen it. I saw it in my early career and everything I’ve done since then. One can print all the pamphlets and all the ads they want, or they can just tell a really beautiful story about whatever they are trying to change. . I believe in art as a main catalyst for social change in any community. When artists thrive , then a country thrives.
Do you think libraries you helped to restore are supporting this creativity and art perception in people?
Book Bunk redesigns libraries as centres of cultural creativity; but our own cultural creativity first. I’m not saying that there’s no room for Kafka in Kenyan libraries. I’m saying Kafka must sit alongside Kenyan writing and art. Once I understand who I am first, then I can see how I see myself based on Kafka’s views. The problem with the way that libraries have worked in Kenya before is that they were bringing the outside in before collecting what we have inside first.
Is there anything you’ve learnt from Czech libraries?
One thing Kenya and the Czech Republic have in common is that the Czech Republic has the biggest network of libraries in Europe and we have the biggest network of libraries on the African continent. That means people prioritize knowledge and prioritize creativity. When you begin to connect people to the information that they need to change their lives, you don’t need governments to do much. h. People already have what they need. I think libraries are such an easy way to connect people with knowledge, their culture, with their art, with their heritage, and then you can just watch them thrive. I love libraries. Honestly, it’s some of the most powerful cultural infrastructure that we have.
You mentioned Kafka, probably because we are meeting at his childhood home near Old Town Square in Prague. What do you know about him?
I read Metamorphosis as a teenager because it was part of my supplementary reading in school, and I’m reading it again. I’m also reading Letters for My Father. I feel a big sense of betrayal for him by his friend who published his manuscripts. Every time I read something, I wonder if he intended for us to read it. I have a sense that he was very intentional about what he had released into the world. I also know that he had a very difficult relationship with his father and was maybe a bit of a melancholic person. I just wonder what he would think about this country today. Because he feels very much like an anchor of the city and I wonder if he’d love it or if he’d want to shy away from it.
What else do you know about Czechia? How have you happened to get here?
That is tied mostly to my work with libraries, with the conference Libraries of Today. I was invited to go last year. I couldn’t go, but some of my colleagues came. It was a wonderful experience. This year, I am a guest of the Ministry of Culture here to support more exchange between our creatives. I think both our countries have realised we have a special place in our hearts for libraries. We both want to do a lot more together. I’m going to spend the next week visiting libraries learning how you’ve been able to figure out things like digitisation of archival materials, or even heritage restoration of buildings. The building we’re working on just now is 97 years old. We have to figure out how to proceed.
But there are also differences. What is usually difficult to understand for those who are not from Africa?
I’ll give you a very good example in the library world. We use the dewey duodecimal system. It is the most widely used classification system for libraries across the world, because it’s the most flexible. But I don’t use it in our libraries. The DDS has the code for all of the world’s languages, a specific number for every single language. But when it comes to African languages, it’s just one. Yet we have more than 2,600 African languages. That doesn’t sit right with me. That’s where I think these differences are more important.
When we say Africa we really speak about the continent which consists of many diverse countries. Also your country as such is very diverse. How would you describe Kenya?
There are more than 50 countries and more than 2000 languages in Africa and they’re all similar but also very very different. Kenya is often described as a kind of soft landing for foreigners because it’s designed for tourism. I think we’re very welcoming. Sometimes we’re more welcoming to foreigners than we are to ourselves. I live there because I like to earn my stripes and wages there. There’s always so many opportunities but also so many challenges. It’s a consistent dance, there’s a buzz, there’s a lot of creativity. But also a lot of corruption. I would tell you to be careful at night, I would tell you don’t walk around flashing your phone, it’s going to get grabbed. But we’re also one of the most generous countries in the world. It’s my home, I love it. It keeps me sharp.
How is it to be a woman in Kenya now?
This is my favourite question. I think that Kenya is one of the places where the patriarchy is alive. We’re reminded of it every day but it doesn’t really stop women from doing what they need to do. Everything meaningful that happens in Kenya is run by women. Somebody recently asked me why we don’t talk about feminism in the film How to build a library that I am featured in. My answer was that It’s such a way of life that we don’t need to talk about it. We live it. The fight for feminism is important but the work of actually living as feminists is even more important. I’m not saying that there’s no issue; we have some of the worst femicides reported in Kenya – . Men are just killing women because they’re women. It’s this kind of double edged sword where we have a large crop of very empowered women changing Kenya in many ways but we also have very many men who are threatened by this and would therefore harm them. That’s reality. We often have to decide when to sit up and be powerful and when to pander to the patriarchy. As I get older I’m just realizing more and more that it’s not something that I may ever have to stop doing. Everything in Kenya is run by women, we just don’t shout about it.
In your first novel, Havoc of Choice, you addressed the event of 2007 in Kenya. Why did you choose such a difficult topic?
I chose to write about it because I lived through 2007. There are 40+ tribes in Kenya. This often unifying factor was used as a weapon during this election. You only remember what tribe people are because of voting, the other five years you’re fine. We are all one country, but during elections we’re reminded that we’re separate too. And it was at its worst in 2007. It was one of my first elections. I was in my mid early or mid 20s. I had done some work on that election around trying to get young people to come out and vote. When the violence happened it was so shocking to me. Not that it happened, but how quickly we moved on from it. I wasn’t affected directly by the violence. I lived in a part that was quite removed from the centre. But my country just felt unrecognizable. It was about two weeks of just consistent violence and it was not that we were being attacked by another country or by other people, it was people internally killing each other. And after the government told us: it’s over, go back to work, accept what has happened, move on. For me, that was unacceptable. People had died. We lost our humanity. That’s why I wrote the book. Because I didn’t understand how we could move past a moment that has changed us so critically. I think that when we have elections now, many Kenyans get scared. For any country that calls itself a democracy, whatever that means, it should be a moment when you’re joyful to go, as it is a chance to use your voice. But we get scared. Because we haven’t dealt with what happened in 2007. It’s not a book I wanted to write, but the book I had to write. I love my country deeply. We are some of the most politically engaged people that I know. I want people to remember that if we don’t address the pain, the loss and the suffering from 2007 is going to keep re-emerging. And we’re going to keep getting surprised like we didn’t see it coming the first time. It’s a deeply personal novel for me. Because I think we’re really in pain as a country and we don’t want to touch our pain. I forced people to do so with this book.
On the other hand people don’t like to be reminded about their dark moments. Don’t people tend to forget bad things to protect themselves?
I think it’s okay to forget if that’s a choice you’re making. I don’t think we had a choice to even process it. About 1800 families lost someone and they have no where to go if they want to just cry together. There’s no memorial, there’s no building, there’s nothing. I’m not saying we have to reconcile for years, I’m just saying there has to be an acknowledgement. Someone has to say sorry, someone has to say we were wrong. That hasn’t happened in Kenya. Let me forget because remembering is too painful. But let me make that choice. Don’t make it for me. It’s the reason why the book I think meant a lot to me and has meant so much for Kenyans. That’s why I’m having to print more copies because Kenyans just can’t stop reading it.
Did you face some challenges when preparing the book and doing the research?
For the first few versions, I thought about writing a non-fiction book. Which meant I had to really do my research. There were a lot of reportages, a lot of fast passers-by. YouTube had just become a thing, so the news from five years ago was available and I could re-watch the news. It took about a year to remind myself what happened. And the reason why I then made the choice to make it fiction is because I couldn’t play with it as non-fiction. I had to stick to facts, so I couldn’t poke fingers and poke blame, and I couldn’t say the things I needed to say. Fiction allowed me to play with a very painful story.
Is that how a writer was born from a journalist?
I think so, yes. I’ve always known I’m a writer. But I couldn’t see a way for me to make money writing books, so I originally became a journalist. But my journalism skills are the ones I use the most still, even outside of my writing, even with my grant funding. But I’ve always known that I want to tell stories. I also love films. I wish I could write a film at some point, but right now I have the most fun writing long form, so that’s what I want to write.
So you said you plant a tree for each sold book. How many trees is that now?
The total print run is about 16000, but I’ve been planting as we go, so I have about 8000 to go. Hopefully we’ll do them before the year closes, otherwise I’ll never be able to catch up. I don’t do them physically myself, it’s impossible, so I’ll partner with organisations who have tree planting programmes. Some of them I’ll plant myself.
Which leads us to your care about the environment. Is it usual in your country that people care about the environment?
I love that question. I think the reason why I choose to be an activist in climate is because I’m a child of farmers. I have learned to respect and honour the land in everything that I do, and to give back to it. And I try to build that into all of my work. We convert our libraries to run programmes that try and address as many issues as possible, and climate is a real issue for everyone, everywhere. All of our programmes succeed, our arts programmes do well, our adult programmes around civic education do well, but our climate programmes always fail. But when I look around, I see everybody is reusing things full-time. Everyday, everybody is reusing as much as they can. I think that climate action is not popular in Kenya because it’s called climate action. But the practice of recycling and of waste reduction are a way of life. I know this now, and I’m so happy I can put language to it.
Is that how your Climate Change Library started?
My next book is about climate action. When I can’t figure something out in this realm, I write about it. It will force me to do the research I need to do to understand this problem. And in researching climate action in Kenya, I realised there’s so much happening. The reason why I created the Climate Change Library is because I wanted to put all of the climate action happening in one place. It took me about six months to really just come up with a spreadsheet of every single thing that is related to recycling, or information, or policy around the environment, and put it in one place.
Your main project, Book Bunk, is quite impressive. Are there similar activities, or were you first doing anything like this in Kenya?
Our partnership with the government was the first of its kind at the time. Even when we signed with the government, no one had ever done this before. People will do partnerships with the government for large projects, for hospitals, for roads, for schools, all of these things, never for the cultural projects. When people hear about Book Bunk, we have a lot of respect, because it’s not easy as a cultural organisation working with the government. It just never happens. But we’re doing it!
Its based on taking over and restoring libraries. How did you convince the government to participate?
I honestly believe that the Nairobi County government just had no idea what to do with these spaces when we asked for them. And they saw these two women who had a vision, who were passionate and kept coming. Our plan was simple: give us the building, let us show you what we can do with it. We didn’t ask for money. Just to continue to do whatever they were doing – basically keeping the lights on. Everything that we added, we fundraised forIt was such a good deal for them. It still took them two years to negotiate because there was no template for this kind of engagement. So we created one and now I think we’ve shown them now what our libraries can do.
And how is your project now?
Now we are at a really critical part where we’ve restored two libraries, we’re fundraising for the third, but also realizing that we have to think about scaling. Book Bunk is going to be eight years old next month. So eight years, two libraries, many staff members, lots of success, lots of visibility. And we’ve proven to people in Kenya and even beyond, and it’s also why I’m here in Prague, that there’s a case for the renaissance of libraries globally. There’s not a country on this planet that doesn’t need a library that is engaging with the community, that is sustainably funded, that is thriving, and that doesn’t have the kind of risks that libraries are facing everywhere now. And that’s what we think we can contribute to in a way that’s authentically African, and that roots communities everywhere, even outside of Africa.
We are trying to raise money for the McMillan Memorial Library which is a building very similar to the house we’re in today, but that needs the kind of care that the interiors of this house have had. It’s a challenging season, because it also means we have to start being honest about the things we have to continue doing and stop doing. I can’t wait to see what we continue to do. And for me, the most beautiful part about Book Bunk now, more than any other work, is that I can see a future for the organisation that doesn’t include me. I can see future leaders. I can see a phase where I’m writing full-time, but libraries everywhere continue to just grow with the Book Bunk experience.
What were the biggest challenges and lessons?
Money, money, money. Funding. Grants allow us to do such amazing work, but I wish there had been a lot more commercial leaning in the beginning of Book Bunk, because then you don’t ever have to have a point where you don’t have any grant funding. A second thing I’m learning is that visibility is only useful if you use it very, very soon and very, very effectively. We’re very visible at Bookbank. One of my biggest lessons and the thing that I’m proudest of is how we’ve around people. Because if you have money to pay people, everything else is possible. Even as we raise money to restore the Macmillan building, I know the seven million I need for the building is important, but the money I need to pay the people that are going to keep that building going is critical. If I don’t raise the seven million, but I have money for people, then that building is always going to be open. We’ve done a lot with very little, and the thing that is a constant, is the passion that drives all of us. It just inspires me every day.
Isn’t there a risk of losing its public function when you need to commercialize?
I think that risk is already there. We can’t keep coming to ask for grants. We have to compromise. We have to test out other models, we can’t rely on government funding. The libraries are busy. The question is not about the value from the user perspective. If the government matched the interest, then Book Bunk wouldn’t exist. We only exist because the government wasn’t funding the spaces, but people were using them, and people were even building them. A lot of the libraries in Kenya are built by individuals or corporations. They build them, but can’t run them, because they realize it takes money and resources. I still remain hopeful. Maybe one way is forcing the government, as you have here, to put it in the law. Then it’s less grant funding, more government funding. Because if you rely on someone being willing to give you some money, there is a possibility that it can be political.
Is it one of your values you’re supporting in your libraries that they should be completely independent of politics?
We are not partisan in our programs. We don’t have any kind of religious programs, for instance, because we don’t want anything that’s exclusive. We have programs that celebrate the idea of what Kenya is, but not what this or that political party is. If the president wants to come and have an event in the library, it belongs to him as a citizen of the city. We can’t bar him. But if Book Bank is funding that program, he has to follow our rules. So it’s a dance, and it’s one that we’ve done very well. We don’t allow any kind of political or religious rallies to happen during Book Bunk’s time. However, again, it’s the government’s building. So when people see the governor coming to make a speech, they know very well he’s just coming to use the benefit of this space. But as an organization, in our values, we are independent. We are completely inclusive. People can see where the Book Bunk ends and where the government begins and because of that we have the community’s trust.
One of your goals is strengthening the self-awareness of Kenyan people. McMillan, whose library you are restoring, was a colonist. How do you balance the past with the present?
We were a colony, as you know. This building was not intended for Kenyans. It was a British piece of infrastructure. Even if it’s been 64 years since we’ve been independent, there’s so many ways in which we’re reminded that we’re still a colony. My mom still remembers it. It’s called the McMillan Memorial Library in the middle of Nairobi. The collection of books is still what it was in the 1930s. They didn’t imagine that there’d ever be a day when Kenyans can access these books. They were very much putting the best gems in there and there’re some racist books in there too. The only way to understand history and the pain is to try and balance it out with some perspectives that are ours. We began a crowdsourcing program called The Missing Bits and began to create a more balanced version of what our history is. And I’m not saying that that means forgetting the legacy of colonization. We cannot. I can’t. I’m a product of the fact that Kenya was colonized. We can’t erase that. But there’s so many small, small subtle ways we can begin to remind people who they are, using libraries and narrating to connect people to their heritage. We’ve been almost groomed to believe that we deserve scraps, that is a very painful reality. So the biggest part of my work is convincing people that they do deserve great libraries, that it’s their right. They can spend time there and it’s a safe place. The best way to convince someone that they deserve better is to show them better and to give them better. And that’s what we’re doing.
Do people still like reading books?
I don’t think they’ve ever stopped. When we asked people what they wanted, many of them said the book collection. But the top answer was Wi-fi. The second was toilets, because at the time there were no public toilets. The third thing was extended opening hours, as many people use the library as co-working space. The fourth thing was the book collection. There were already books in the library, but they were old and outdated. Once we put in the new books, they can’t stay on the shelf. If you look at our data, it looks like Kenyans don’t read much. But has anybody ever asked them what books they want to read? If you go to our bookstores, first of all, books are really expensive. We have 16 % VAT on books in Kenya, highest in the world. Books are out of reach for most Kenyans. It means that if you want to access a book, you’re either buying a pirated copy or you’re going to a library. But the library doesn’t have books by African authors because we haven’t prioritized those in the past. But we do now, and people do read them.
Also, historically, we tell stories in oral format in Kenya. Our culture is historically oral, based on shared stories. It calls for recording them, offering them to the readers. I would love to see a scenario where our budgets look like we’re spending as much on audio books as we are on paper-based collections. I’m a writer. I want to spend my life writing books. But I also know that the group of people who are going to read is always going to be small. And I don’t think the right way is to try and make that piece bigger. It’s trying to make sure that I reach more people with the same content. I can no longer only write books. I have to now think about writing books, but also producing audio books and producing stage plays and producing films about the same content. I need digital impact too. I think that’s a more accurate representation of how people are consuming information.
There is an emerging issue of digital addictions. Are you also thinking about programmes to reduce screen time?
Absolutely. But it’s not just about reducing screen time, it’s about activities that get you away from the screen. There’s so many other things you could do. You could play chess, you could learn how to breathe, you could read a book. We’re trying to get people away from their screens, reading is just one of those activities. Library is a derivative of the word book, libra. But if you think about the knowledge then it opens up a lot of other dimensions.
If somebody asks you, are you a librarian now, what would you say?
I wish I was a librarian. I didn’t go to library school and I respect it massively. I think I’m a library worker. I love librarians. I think they’re the most resourceful people in the world. I’m not a librarian – yet. One day I hope to call myself one. For now, I really love restoring old buildings. We don’t build new libraries at Book Bunks, we restore existing ones, mostly because there are so many in Kenya. But the library of my dreams would be space for everybody, a space of total freedom. To pray if you want to, to write, to argue, to dance. A space that truly feels like freedom for as many people as possible. That has to be built. I’d like to build a space that celebrates freedom and allows people to test the boundaries of their creativity and imagination.
MICHAELA DOMBROVSKÁ