It is humorous, haunting, full of sorrow and spruced up with intimacy; Dinaw Mengestu, the head of judges in 2018 Caine Prize for African Writing awards on Monday praised the Kenyan street children’s life story dubbed ‘Blackcurrant Fanta’.
Kenyan writer Makena Onjerika brings home £10,000 (Sh1.3 million) from the awards outshining four other finalists who she thought were way better in their literary work.
Makena, a graduate of the MFA Creative Writing programme at New York University was announced the winner on July 2, 2018. The story was published in the 2017 Spring edition of Wasafiri, a UK literary magazine.
[caption caption="Makena Onjerika reads her story at the awards dinner on July 2, 2018"]
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“I am super excited, also still surprised. I didn't expect it. I had my person who I was betting for among the shortlisted writers, then I heard my name and I was like; Are you sure!?” Makena revealed in an interview with BBC Africa.
Her story focuses on a character, Meri, who lives in a slum. Meri is a young girl whose life in the streets of Nairobi is depicted in the story that has won Makena the prestigious award.
“Part of the reason for me writing the story is that I realised that at some point, I never recognised these street urchins as children. They were ‘other’ and I wanted to examine that,” states Makena.
Having spent most of her life in a boarding school, Makena ropes in more aspects of the conflicts that surround the life of a girl not just for the homeless, but also their interaction with an unmoved society.
“The story has the aspect of the intense conflict in relationships between girls growing up together. It is also well explored in the story,” she notes.
The use of fanta blackcurrant in her story depicts the street kids’ most sought after basic need, food. She paints the reality of how ‘other’ children are tickled around as ‘toto’ leave for Meri and the like.
An excerpt from her story reads: “..and one day Meri was put in the TV...a boy called Wanugu was killed by a police...we went and shouted, ‘KILLERS, KILLERS!, Even Chokoraas are people.’ until the TV people came to look our faces with their cameras.”
The story was published in the Wasafiri journal in February 2017.
