Ugandan Brian Bwesigye studied Law  at Makerere University and was until recently an LLM (Human Rights) student at  Central European University- Budapest. He is co-founder of the Centre for  African Cultural Excellence (CACE), which seeks to harness the abilities of  African writers and artists in using culturally-grounded narratives to bring social change. Bwesigye’s non-fiction and  literary work have appeared in literary and academic journals, websites,  magazines, national newspapers and in other places, including the Uganda Modern  Literary Digest, New Black Magazine, Saraba, Readers Cafe Africa, Daily Monitor  and AFLA Quarterly, among others. In 2009, his performance of his script, ‘Confined in the Open’ was awarded Third Place in the All Africa Human Rights Through Theatre competition held at the University of Lagos by the Centre for Human Rights, University of Pretoria. In 2010, his script, “Saviour or Spoiler” was performed at the Uganda National Drama competitions for Primary and Secondary Schools, organised by Advocates for Public International Law, Uganda. 
His book, Fables out of Nyanja, a collection of short fictional  rhythmic narratives of childhood is published by Kushinda (2012). He blogs at  orwaari.blogspot.com."

1. Congratulations on the recent publication of your book, Fables  out of Nyanja. But let's start with the
basics. Please tell us about  yourself. When did you start writing and what  inspired  you?

Thanks very much. Well, about myself, there  is not much  to say. I am a postgraduate Human Rights student at Central
European University,  Budapest (soon finishing actually). What else? I am a  human being, African,  Ugandan Mukiga.

About writing, it is not easy to  draw a line and say  this is when I exactly started writing. My first sizeable  manuscript, which I  thought was of a novel but was told by my English  composition teacher that it  could be a novella at best, was written in 2003. In  my Grade 4 in secondary  school, my English compositions were regarded as models  for my classmates; in  fact the teacher used to read them aloud in class and  would ask all my  classmates to learn from them. Maybe that is when my writing
career started, or  took shape. But from a year before, I was staff writer and  deputy editor for a  weekly school newspaper, The School Mirror. This writing  thing let us say dates  back to my secondary school life.

Well, for the  inspiration, I can’t  find anything specific to point to as having inspired me.  What I know is that  much of my writing then was born of deeply personal teenage  issues. Those types  of issues whose expression society does not encourage, and  some issues that I  lacked the confidence to express. So much puppy love-poetry  I wrote and kept in  my suitcase, and so much fiction about beauty, about  pretence, about favoritism,  about sexism, even about eating habits, stuff that  would have thrown me into hot  soup if some people were to see them. Writing was  more of healing myself,  expunging some venom out of my system then. It was that  personal. But later on,  after my A’ levels actually, just before joining university, I took to searching  for opportunities to develop the craft. Then, I  saw nothing worth doing during  the long vacation, before joining university so  I took to seeking publishers  with my manuscripts, of teenage poetry, and some
three short novella manuscripts  I had written over time. The steam for writing  however disappeared when I  enrolled at Makerere University for my law degree.
For the four years I did Law,  writing disappeared into the background. It was  during the very last semester of  law school, that on reading Nick  Twinamatsiko’s Chwezi Code, the  writing spark returned to my life. For  all the books I had read at that stage,  it was Chwezi Code that somewhat  validated my own lived rural experience as  material for fiction. It was Nick
Twinamatsiko who has been described as the  engineer who builds words that  re-ignited the writing fire in me. I felt  incomplete concentrating on the  ‘lawyering’ only. Since then, I have taken my  writing more seriously and now, I
think it is safe to suggest that the lawyering  is sinking into the background. 

2. Explain the title of your  book. What does the publication of  the book mean to your writing career?

Well, “Fables out of  Nyanja” as a title is one of those things  whose explanation varies depending on  the context. In fact, sometimes I see the  work taking on a different title. The  Nyanja in the title is the name of the  area where I spent the first twelve  years of my life. In fact, I went to Nyanja  Primary School for primary  education. That is the easy and direct part of the  title. ‘Fables’ is the  somewhat hard part. Because the narratives that comprise  the book do not fit  the classical definitional elements of fables as known, they  are not the known  folktales that rotate around good and evil, with a clear  straight forward moral  lesson, with leopards, rabbits, crocodiles, lizards and  chameleons speaking.  The use of ‘Fables’ in the title is thus more symbolic than  definitional. The  narratives in the collection are not the typical poems,  neither are they the  typical short stories as known. They are just narratives.  In Rukiga, the  primary language in which I think, these narratives are ‘ebitebyo’. Now, some of  these words do not have direct English equivalents and  that is how in the  process of translation, ‘Fables’ was reached at, and then  knowing the Fable  tradition, the famous Aesop fables etc, the artistic part of  myself and the  publisher decided to inject some doze of symbolism in the title.

To the  second part of the question, Fables out of Nyanja is the first  work of fiction  of mine published in book form. Of course as the first, albeit  very small in  size, the work is very important. It is that seed that has managed  to sprout  out of the soil before the others, those manuscripts I used to carry  around in  2006, still undergoing improvement. The significance of Fables is  however in  the experiments that I am doing with it. Of course all said and done,  Fables is  evidence that writing is taking the better of my attention than  lawyering. 

3. It’s been said that your book celebrates  life in  your village in Uganda. What is the importance of place or setting in  your  writing? How does living away from this setting affect your writing?


The place where a story is set, when I am writing of childhood   is the campus that directs my imagination. As I have said above, I grew up in a   village and went to a village primary school. Although, by village standards we   were well-off, so could afford newspapers, at worst on a weekly basis and my   mother being a teacher, I was raised on reading lady-bird books, the fact that   we were living in a village meant that I am very much a village-bred person. As   Gaius Plinius Secundus has said, home is where the heart is. Home for me is   Nyanja, and when listening to Nneka’s Home song, my mind easily wanders off to   Nyanja. “Fables” in so many ways as a work of fiction is thus driven by the   setting of the stories.

Of course, the fact that since 2000, I have   not lived for longer than a month non-stop in this home, creates an everlasting
  presence in my sub-conscious of this lived experience. ‘Fables’ was  particularly  born of tales about childhood and it would have required a lot of  imagination to  work with non-existent material about any other childhood except  that set in a  rural area. In any case, in 2011, when these narratives were  written, I was very  much home-sick and particularly nostalgic about the spots  in my village that  hold specific memories and now no longer exist. That is why  the creative process  was moved by the setting of the stories more than anything  else.

Just last month, I was talking to my mother and she was  telling me  that now everyone in the village has tapped water. We have had  electricity in  the village for some years now. This changes the life and  experiences that the  rural children of today will get in Nyanja. Because I am  withdrawn from this  village physically and can’t physically experience these  changes, when I return  (and I hope to in the medium-term), it will be an exotic  experience for me. In a  way, I am afraid of the loss of my childhood setting,  yet this in all senses  remains the base material on which my worldview and  experience is founded. So,  setting my stories in this rural place has another  importance – that of  recording my experience, and hopefully of those with a
similar background.  Definitely, in a different setting, the characters you meet  in ‘Fables’ would be  artificial and incoherent. In my other work, some of which  is not set in the  village, I cannot say that the setting has been the fulcrum  on which the stories  have rotated. Characterization in some has formed the  backbone for the stories  whereas in some, it is the stylistic preference of the  writing that has shaped  the stories.


4. Talk about writing  in Uganda? What is the  literary scene in the country compared to other African  countries?

Well, writing in Uganda is one of those things that  we can’t  talk about without referring to the past. In the 60s, the days of
Uganda’s  receiving independence, Makerere University was a centre of excellence  in  matters of African literature. The famous Transition magazine was published  in  Uganda, and the famous 1962 conference of African Writers of English
expression  was held at Makerere. Those were the student days of Kenya’s Ngugi  Wa Thing’o,  who was at Makerere. Ugandan writers of the time included Okot p  Bitek of the  classic Song of Lawino poem among others. Of course, as most
things in Uganda,  each year that has passed since independence has come with  extra rot in  institutions and pillars of society. Makerere has not been spared,  and the  literary scene too.

This does not mean that Uganda is a  literary  desert as Taban Lo Liyong once called the country. From Doreen
Baingana of the  Tropical Fish fame, Gorretti Kyomuhendo, Jackee Batanda, Monica  Arac de Nyeko to  Beatrice Lamwaka among others, there is vast contemporary  writing coming out of  Uganda. In fact looking at writing prizes won, Uganda is
not doing that badly.  Monica won the Caine Prize in 2007, Jackee was the Africa  Regional Winner for  the Commonwealth Short Story Competition 2003 and Doreen  won the Commonwealth  Writer Prize for Best First Book in 2007 among others.
Probably you notice that  I have mentioned only the females. Well, credit goes  to the Uganda Women  Writers' Association (FEMRITE), the NGO that has made it  their business to  publish and develop women writers in Uganda. FEMRITE has been
essential in  keeping the literary flame burning in the country and of recent  even includes  men. Beyond FEMRITE, there are other newly established  initiatives that are  expanding the diversity of the Ugandan literary scene. The  online Uganda Modern  Literary Digest is one of those. The poetry scene is even  more active. From the  Lantern Meet of Poets to Poetry in Session and many  others, one can’t fail to  locate a poetry-related event in Kampala. 

When it comes to comparing  with other countries, I am afraid what I  have just said above will appear  insignificant. I mean, South Africa’s literary  scene is more vibrant than ours,  so is Nigeria’s, or Kenya’s or even  Zimbabwe’s. A Nigerian writer has an array  of local publishers to choose from  in sending their manuscript, from Farafina,  Cassava Republic and others, same  for the South African writer who even has a  Penguin branch on the doorstep,  besides Chimurenga and others. We, in  Uganda do not have the choices  that Kwani?, Storymoja and others offer to the  Kenyan writers. Even when it  comes to online publishing, we can’t like the  Nigerians boast of Saraba  Magazine, the Sentinel Nigeria magazine and others. Or  the Zimbabwean StoryTime  and Munyori Literary   Journal. Despite our own wonders as Ugandans, I mean, the humor on  UrbanLegendKampala.com remains  unmatched, but still  it is not enough for us to flex muscles on the African  literary scene. 

Problems of readership, shortage of publishing  opportunities and  even the amount of work writers put in their craft still hold  us Ugandans back.  I mean, Uganda’s population is over thirty million but  newspapers sell 30.000  to 50.000 copies per day, not even a million, so what do  you think the literary  scene looks like in such an ‘unreading’ country? But  there is hope that taking  deliberate steps like those FEMRITE has taken by every  stakeholder regarding  the literary scene will improve the situation. There is  hope, a lot of hope  judging by the writing coming from Ugandans on the blogs and  in social media
that Ugandan can’t afford to keep their literary scene dim any  longer. 

5. What is do you think is the current state  African  literature? What seems to be influencing its development?

I  think, and I may be wrong that the internet and social media and the  array of  literary prizes on the continent have shaped the state of African  literature as  it stands today. There is no doubt, today’s African literature has  moved beyond
the more politically-charged and ideology-oriented content of the  immediate  post-colonial era and is now more diverse. It also is true that except  on the  internet, much of the African Literature being published today is  consumed by
more non-Africans and Africans in the Diaspora than the Africans on  the  continent. I can bet my hair that Moses Isegawa’s Abyssinian Chronicles has  for  example been read more outside Africa than in Africa. More than half of  today’s
notable African writers, especially those that have emerged after 2000  will  have some Caine Prize or Commonwealth Prize in their bag. The role of  further  education and exposure to “opportunities” in the United States  specifically  also shows in the African literature of today. It is not uncommon  to find an  MFA qualification attained from Iowa, Cornell, or any other American  university  on a CV of a notable contemporary African writer.

Add all  these  influences to that of the internet, with many exclusively online  publishers  springing up all over the place and we have African literature being  made more  available to readers, coming in diverse forms, on diverse themes,  becoming
bolder, prize-oriented in some cases and more consumed by the outside  than the  inside. All these are not necessarily bad things. In fact, all these  point to a  brighter future ahead, in my humble view. We just need to think about   readership on the continent. I do not have a panacea for that, I do not think   there is a one-fix-all solution for it, but seeing what the internet can do I   think that time is coming when Africa will read her writers’ work more than she   is doing today.

6. What is the importance of language in your   writing? What language/s do you prefer to write in?

I think   language is central to anyone’s writing, because it shapes how ideas are   conceived, it carries with it values that we never see but influence how and   what we write. The bulk of my work, both published and unpublished, is written   in English. But I would not call it British English or American English.  Neither  would I call it Pidgin English. It is some kind of English with heavy  Rukiga  influences, an English that carries a heavy burden of work that has been   conceived in Rukiga, the language in which I think. But this depends on what   story it is that I am writing. There are stories I can’t create in any single   language without distorting the flow of my imagination. Just as there are   stories I can only create when thinking in strictly one language. I think this   is because of the material with which I work in creating stories. The language   of my lived experience is what shapes the imagination. I have been  experimenting  with translation, writing in Rukiga, and then translating into
English, and vice  versa. There are some awesome results of these experiments  that I hope will find  space on some publishers’ desk one day. Work that I have  read which was  conceived in another language and translated into English later
has a special  type of appealing beauty. Think Okot p Bitek’s Song of
Lawino as  opposed to Song of Ocol, the latter written in English directly,
the former  written in Acholi originally and translated later.

Without  doubt, there  is more to language than being a tool or vessel of our experience.  Language is  itself a value. In a multi-lingual world as ours, we love the many  and diverse  values we pick up from all languages we use. Those that come with
Rukiga my  mother tongue, those that come with English, and those that come with  Luganda,  the most spoken language in Uganda. In case a conflict of language  values occurs  in the future, because it has not yet occurred to me, I hope I  will be loyal  enough to my identity to allow the Rukiga values to prevail. 

7.  What is the importance of social media to your writing? To  Ugandan writing? To  African writing?

The Nick Twinamastiko’s  Chwezi Code  book and the man himself that I talked about earlier as
having inspired me, I  met through Facebook. There are several writers’ Facebook  groups I am a member  of. To a very big extent, my writing survives on social  media. I am sure a  number of publishing opportunities have been harnessed on
and through the social  media. Social media in many ways has made the writing  industry accessible to all  and sundry, the publisher, the writer and the reader  at the centre of this  conversation. It is now easy for a writer in Uganda to be
in touch and share  synergies with a writer in Zimbabwe, in Nigeria or in Egypt  and I find this very  crucial as there is a lot to learn from each other. I for  example know of a  closed group on Facebook where aspiring Ugandan writers  critique each others’ work, a process that I think is central to this craft of  writing. With social  media, the diversity of our writing becomes bolder and  more pronounced.  Blogging, which has been with us for a longer while has  acquired new  significance with the easy access to blogs that social media  provides. We do not  have to blog to ourselves anymore, just sharing a link to
your blog on your page  and others doing the same attracts huge traffic and I am  sure every writer  appreciates having an audience. In a way, it has now become  hard to imagine the  literary scene without social media. I mean, in 2006, when
I was oblivious of  social media, I was walking on Kampala streets with my  manuscripts written in  pen, hoping to convince someone in a textbook publishing  company to give me  access to a computer so I can type the manuscript and then
submit it. But see  now, even on a phone, I type away and share and a publisher  can read and like  and then a publishing contract comes to life. No wonder, I  was not yet into the  writing industry before I discovered social media.  Separating the two will be an  experience for me.


8. What projects  are you working on currently?

I am part of a joint-project to  commemorate the life of one of Uganda’s  major literary figures, the late Okot p  Bitek. We are compiling interviews,  essays, short stories, poems and other  literary works into an anthology to  celebrate his life. I also have a  manuscript that I have been working on since  2010, I am hoping that by July  2012, I should be putting a final stop to it and  send it to a yet-to-be  –decided publisher, but my writing has no respect for  such deadlines, there is  an arbitrariness to the process of creation, so will  see how much longer it  will take me. I also have a collection of teenage poems  from my past that I  have been improving since 2011 so that I can also see them  published. That is  basically it from the fiction writing. The other projects are  typical  non-fiction work about Kiga heritage and culture, the history of Kigezi  and  related studies. 

9. What made you with go  with Kushinda for the publication Fables.

The  way ‘Fables’ became a book was really an idea of Kushinda, than mine. Originally, the ten  narratives  that comprise “Fables” were lone pieces of work, each on their own.  At least  four of them has appeared on a Facebook page of mine called Tales from   Kagugube. I used to write the pieces as a way of taking myself back into time,   and sharing for the sake of it. That is how Ceris Dien, the owner of Kushinda   saw them and talked about compiling them and potentially publishing them into a   small book. That is how the process started. I had no objection to the   suggestion, so I added more pieces to the four and the manuscript for ‘Fables’  took shape. After all, I saw that my own views on Literature and Art were in
  sync with Kushinda’s approach and love for the true value of art, the   idiosyncratic, the indigenous and the culturally aware. Of course, the fact  that ‘Fables’ was going to be the second book on Kushinda’s portfolio besides ‘I   speak Elphanish’ which is more of a picture-book gave me, if you may allow me   some vanity, more importance and recognition as a writer. The Kushinda team  with  time proved very friendly and supportive in the process and looking back,  there  are some things that I think other publishers would not have tolerated  but  Kushinda did. But of course now that they are taking on more and more work,  the  special feeling of being so important and special is coming to an end.

10. Tell us about your reading, favorite authors, etc. What are you   reading currently?

I have been reading lots of contemporary African   short-fiction. To steal some words off Chimamanda’s lips, I think it is because   I write the literature that I would love to read and much of this has been   short-fiction published online. Novuyo Rosa Tshuma is one of those writers  whose  short stories I have grown an addiction to. Her upcoming novella Shadows
which I  can’t wait to re-read over and over again once it comes out in print  this June  will prove to me whether my fascination with her work is only limited  to  short-fiction. The same for Nigerian Emmanuel Iduma. Interestingly, both of  them  are having their first books coming out this summer.

Speaking of  books,  it is generally hard to name specific favorite book authors, because  sometimes I  love some works of theirs and not others, or some, more than  others. Tsitsi  Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions (that I read in March this
year) has stayed  with me like a rosary stays with a faithful Roman Catholic; I  am not sure how I  will like The Book of Not, the sequel to Nervous Conditions  though. The other  books I like are Elechi Amadi’s The Concubine, Chimamanda  Adichie’s Half of a  Yellow Sun, Chinua Achebe’s No Longer At Ease, and Arrow of  God, Timothy  Wangusa’s Upon This Mountain, Henrik Ibsen’s An Enemy of the  People and Okot p  Bitek’s Song of Lawino, to mention a few.

About what  I am reading,  because of the Remembering Okot p Bitek project, I am reading all  his works  again. I have just finished re-reading White Teeth, his only novel,  and now  reading his collection of essays, Artist, the Ruler, Essays on Art,
Culture and  Values. After finishing with this, I will embark on his other  works, Song of  Malaya and Song of Prisoner among others.