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Archive for November 23rd, 2012
Born Didimu Kayira, c. May 10, 1942, in Mpale, Nyasaland; son of Timothy Kayira and Ziya Nyakawonga; married Carol Lawson; one daughter
Education: Livingstonia Secondary School, Karonga, Nyasaland, junior leaving certificate, 1958; Skagit Valley College, Mt. Vernon, WA, AA, political science, 1963; University of Washington, Seattle, BA, political science, 1965; St. Catharine’s College, Cambridge University, 1965-66.
Religion: Presbyterian.
Legson Kayira was a large infant. When his young and inexperienced mother found him too heavy to carry, she threw him into the Didimu River and walked away. After a village woman rescued him and returned him to his mother, he was called Didimu. Later, while attending a Scottish missionary school, Kayira wanted an English-sounding name, so he coined the name Legson, becoming Legson Didimu Kayira. After finishing secondary school in his native Nyasaland, now Malawi, Kayira decided to attend college in America. So he set off walking across Africa. He later recounted the story of his traditional East African childhood and his incredible journey to the United States in his autobiography, I Will Try. He also is the author of five novels set in Africa.
In his autobiography Kayira said that he was born in the late 1930s or early 1940s, during the harvest in May or June. He eventually chose May 10, 1942, as his date of birth. His father, Timothy Mwenekanyonyo Mwamalopa Arinani Chikowoka Kayira, and mother, Ziya Nyakawonga, were members of the Tumbuka tribe in the small hill village of Mpale in the Karonga district of northern Nyasaland, which at the time was a British protectorate federated with Rhodesia. They were poor and illiterate. Kayira would later write that he came from “one of the poorest families that God ever created since the beginning of time.”
Kayira’s junior primary school, the Wenya mission school, was about eight miles away. It was a difficult walk, particularly in the rainy season. He later told Reader’s Digest that he was sent back home on the first day of school because “They said I was naked.”
Although he had no money for secondary school, the district school superintendent arranged for Kayira to enter the old, famous Livingstonia Secondary School in Karonga. About 200 miles from his village, it was one of only four secondary schools in the country. Kayira’s father had died and his mother and most of the other villagers thought that he was wrong to continue his education. But Kayira saw it as his way out of poverty. He did very well in school, reading every book he could find, especially those about America. The life of Abraham Lincoln and Booker T. Washington’s Up From Slavery were his favorites.
In all, Kayira attended school in Nyasaland for eleven years. After graduating with his junior leaving certificate, it was expected that he would enter Domasi Teachers Training School. But Kayira had other ideas. Kayira wrote in his autobiography: “I saw the land of Lincoln as the place where one literally went to get the freedom and independence that one thought and knew was due him. One day I would also go there, I would also go to school there, and I would also return home to do my share in the fight against colonialism.” Later Kayira told Time magazine, “We have 3,000,000 people in Nyasaland and only 22 university graduates. Nobody has ever earned a degree from an American college. I want to be the first.”
Kayira announced to his village that he was going to walk to America on the following Tuesday–October 14, 1958. Since no one in the village knew where America was, his mother sent him off with enough flour for a five-day journey. Dressed in his school uniform, barefoot, and penniless, he carried a small ax, a blanket, a map of Africa, a map of the world, and two books–an English Bible and a copy of John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress. The latter had been sent to him by a correspondent in England. Although most travelers carried spears, Kayira was afraid that a weapon would frighten or provoke strangers. His plan was to make his way north to Port Said or Alexandria in Egypt where he would find work on a ship headed for New York. “I was constantly reminding myself that north was on my right,” he said in his autobiography.
Sometimes discouraged and depressed, particularly when he was sick or injured, Kayira would consider turning back. When he reached a city and saw a newspaper, he learned that Banda had been arrested and that there were civil disturbances in northern Nyasaland. He worried about his family’s safety.
In Kampala Kayira carried bricks for houses, earning two-fifths of a cent for every 80 bricks. He studied a physics book and learned Luganda, the language of Uganda. After he found that the United States Information Service (USIS) in Kampala had a free library, he began going there often. One day Kayira happened upon a directory of American junior colleges. The first entry he saw was for Skagit Valley College, a two-year school in Mount Vernon, Washington, 60 miles north of Seattle. He wrote to them and within two weeks he received a reply, offering him a full scholarship and help finding a job. But Kayira had to wait in Kampala until the following August, when he finally obtained a Nyasaland passport and a visa to enter Sudan.
After buying his first pair of shoes, Kayira set out again on foot. Sometimes he hitched rides in cars or on bicycles. Reaching Juba, Sudan, he took a White Nile steamer downriver to Khartoum, sharing space in the hold with convicts. An American tourist on the boat gave him food. In Khartoum the U.S. vice-consul, Emmett M. Coxson, informed Kayira that in order to get a foreign student visa, he had to have either money or a sponsor and return passage. However, Coxson was so impressed with Kayira that he contacted Skagit Valley College himself. While Kayira studied algebra at the USIS library in Khartoum, Skagit Valley College students and the community of Mount Vernon raised the money to bring Kayira to Washington State. A Mount Vernon family offered him a home.
On December 16, 1960, in a suit of clothes provided by embassy personnel, Kayira boarded a flight for New York, politely asking the flight attendant for a parachute. In Khartoum Kayira had told his story to a Time magazine reporter: “When I go back to Nyasaland, I will be a teacher. Then I enter politics. When I get defeated, I go back to teaching. You can always trust education.” Because of the story in Time, Kayira found himself surrounded by reporters at the New York, Washington, D.C., and Seattle airports. A reporter even accompanied him on the drive to Mount Vernon. The entire college came out to greet him and that night Kayira saw himself on local television. The following morning, the newspaper headlines read: “LONG TREK TO GLORY OR DEATH ENDS.”
Kayira became a minor celebrity. He appeared on national television and an article in Reader’s Digest brought him as many as 85 letters a day from all over the world, sometimes with money enclosed. Kayira was much in demand as a speaker although, as a full-time student, he had to turn down about half of the requests. His first summer in the United States, he went on a speaking tour to various cities and the resulting honoraria helped pay for his education. He was invited to attend a beauty contest in Cleveland, Ohio, where he was presented with a $1000 scholarship. Soon Kayira was helping other African students come to the United States to study.
Initially Kayira majored in physics, but he switched to political science, earning his A.A. degree from Skagit Valley in 1963. His autobiography grew out of papers he wrote for his English classes at the University of Washington in Seattle, where Kayira graduated with a B.A. in political science in 1965.
Six years after leaving his village, Kayira returned home in the company of a Seattle Times reporter, just in time to witness Nyasaland’s independence as the nation of Malawi. As he finished the last chapters of his autobiography, the villagers told him that he should stay home, start working, and get married. Instead he went to England on a two-year scholarship, for graduate studies at St. Catharine’s College of Cambridge University.
Kayira went on to write and publish five novels, dealing with the social, cultural, and political issues facing post-colonial Africa. Much of his first novel, The Looming Shadow, was written while he sat on his mother’s verandah in Malawi, observing village life. The story centers on a feud between two villagers that escalates into accusations of witchcraft and attempted murder, which bring fear and violence to the village. Jingala is the story of conflict between a father, who wants to keep his 18-year-old son in their remote village, and the son who wants to become a Catholic priest. The intergenerational conflict reflects the larger conflicts between the millennia-old African way-of-life and the social and political turmoil of the twentieth century. The Civil Servant is a story of adultery and Kayira’s fifth novel, The Detainee, deals with dictatorship and tyranny. The latter was published as part of the African Writers Series. Kayira’s writings have been translated into various languages.
Ironically, Kayira’s writings were banned in Malawi after Banda became president-for-life. However, teachers who were members of the Malawi Writers Group clandestinely introduced his work to students, as part of their attempt to revive Malawian culture. Kayira settled in London where he continued to write while working as a probation officer.
