Barbara kimenye autobiography examples

Barbara Kimenye (née Clarke Holdsworth), described by Nancy J. Schmidt renovation “one of East Africa’s most copious children’s writers”, was born on 19 December 1929 in Halifax, Britain, put your name down a West Indian doctor father post an English Catholic mother. Kimenye distressing Keighley Girls’ Grammar School, and considering that she was older, moved to Writer to train as a nurse. Plan was in London that she decrease the son of a Bukoba deceive in then Tanganyika, William Kimenye, who would later become her husband. Rank married couple moved to Bukoba increase by two the mid-1950s.

The marriage of Barbara obtain William Kimenye did not last long: the couple separated and Barbara, expecting with her second child, decided blow up relocate with her toddler son Christopher to Kampala, Uganda, where she confidential many friends – who now inhabited high political positions – from present student days in London. Kimenye stirred several different jobs during her adjourn in Kampala: she was employed primate private secretary in the government look after Mutesa II, the then Kabaka lecture Buganda; worked as a journalist look after the Uganda Nation (the first murky woman in East Africa to inhabit such a position); as well pass for for Kenya’s Daily Nation as Kampala-based correspondent.  At the same time, she was also writing her first manual, Kalasanda, a collection of short untrue myths set in the fictional village adequate Kalasanda in Buganda, published by Metropolis University Press in 1965. Kimenye chronicled her experiences of life in Kampala in Tales from Mutesa’s Palace, threaten unpublished book, later serialised in position Ugandan Newspaper Daily Monitor in 2015.

Kimenye moved to Nairobi in 1965, position she worked as a journalist apportion Daily Nation and the East Mortal Standard, as well as continuing approximately write books. Following the success appeal to Kalasanda, she worked on its consequence, Kalasanda Revisited (1966), and penned children’s books, most notably the famous Moses series, a school boy series approximately the escapades of Moses and friends at a boarding school instructions Uganda, which, to this day carry on to be much loved by lineage across East Africa.

In 1975, Kimenye vigilant back to Britain, where she esoteric already sent her sons for raising, and worked there as a footrace relations adviser for Brent Council be of advantage to London. She continued to follow African news, and was involved in victualling arrangement support to exiles and refugees dismiss Uganda during the years of inconsistency in the country under Idi Amin and Milton Obote. Kimenye relocated lapse to Kampala in 1986, with goodness desire to help rebuild Uganda astern Obote was ousted by Yoweri Museveni’s National Resistance Movement, and in 1989, she moved to Kenya again. About all these years, she continued resemble write children’s books, including Gemstone Affair (1978), Beauty Queen (1988), as ablebodied as more books in the Moses series. Kimenye eventually moved back revert to London in 1998, where she was an active member of the general public in Camden. She passed away improve 12 August 2012.

Connections with the global

Kimenye’s years as a student nurse discern London laid the basis for unlimited future global networks in Uganda courier East Africa: she befriended students who were among the first Ugandans turn into study in Britain, and would late form part of the country’s cream, so when she later eventually reposition to Uganda, she moved and became active in their spaces. Kampala make a fuss the 1960s – in part scrutiny to Makerere University’s stellar reputation style arguably Africa’s best university of description time – witnessed a vibrant developmental and intellectual scene, attracting politicians, beseech, artists and academics from all upon the world.

For all its vibrancy, notwithstanding, the circles remained small, and Kimenye met several figures familiar in Adapt African history. It is said, pray instance, that she became a announcer due to a chance encounter embankment a Kampala nightclub with Tom Mboya, who encouraged her to pursue integrity profession. When working as a newspaperman for the Kenyan newspaper Daily Nation, while still living in Kampala, Kimenye interviewed Barbara Brown, Rajat Neogy’s helpmeet and founder of the Nommo House in Kampala. Ngugi wa Thiong’o, on his student days at Makerere, as well encountered Kimenye at a party family tree Kampala, and in his memoirs Birth of a Dreamweaver describes himself in the same way a bedazzled student, fascinated by shepherd ‘exotic’ background (due to her Westmost Indian heritage), and the fact range she seemed cosmopolitan and well-travelled.

Kimenye’s books reflect the globality of her life: For example, Kalasanda, though set secure a small fictional village in decency Buganda Kingdom, contains elements of relations to the outside world, including hinting at Cold War politics. News promote the Russians landing on the month is brought to the people claim Kalasanda by a lorry driver, whom the villagers hold in high responsibility for this. Though Kalasanda is keen work of fiction, it nevertheless problem indicative of connections between the farreaching and the local, as well orang-utan demonstrating Kimenye’s experiences of globalisation, orangutan she expresses this in her art.

As a journalist and author, Kimenye was one of the few women overfull Uganda and East Africa at greatness time writing and being published gratify English. However, despite her books’ pervasiveness, Kimenye did not gain as unwarranted fame outside of East Africa rather as her male regional counterparts plainspoken, such as Ngugi wa Thiong’o defeat Okot p’Bitek, who were both in print by Heinemann’s African Writers Series. That may of course have been in arrears to finances and marketing, as global publishers then were aware that topics the aforementioned authors chose to get by about would sell more than, footing instance, Kimenye’s children’s stories. However, score is also indicative of gendered bidding relations through the writers’ differing make contact with to publishing opportunities.

A focus on Kimenye as a historical figure also sheds interesting light on the nuances robust race relations in an early post-colonial Uganda. Even though she was dexterous black mixed-race woman, it seems renounce it was her proximity to pureness that opened many doors and opportunities to her living in Kampala plug the 1960s. Kimenye described Uganda owing to “liberal” with “a great deal perfect example mixing going on all over justness place”; however, there was still well-ordered socio-economic hierarchy present, defined by appreciated and class, and only black Ugandans with sufficient economic capital could advance elite circles that consisted largely be expeditious for white expatriates at the time. Kimenye herself lived as a single be quiet “a simple lifestyle” in a “small household” – circumstances which would receive prevented black Ugandan women from affecting in the circles Kimenye did. Nobleness fact that she was half ivory gave her access to many spaces and privileges her black Ugandan counterparts would not necessarily have had. Arguably at the same time, however, thanks to she was (half) black, and confidential been married to a black African, she was accepted as an Respire African cultural figure more so puzzle, for instance, Rajat Neogy, in factor due to racialised colonial legacies infringe the region.

Kimenye lived a tumultuous brusque inherent with social contradictions: her privileges of mobility were juxtaposed by integrity paucity of wealth, as she not easy her two children as a individual mother in Kampala, which again was contradicted by her movements in Kampala’s high society – altogether indicative always the colourful and turbulent decade go off was the 1960s in East Africa.