Telling the lion's story

Mwihaki Muraguri
00:00:00

The human experience is universal, right? But language and media is really powerful in terms of allowing you to be seen, allowing your experience to be enjoyed, and just even connecting people, right? So I love the fact that there's a resurgence in our languages before, you know, in our languages before they're all, you know, forgotten and wiped away. And I love the fact that young people are just doing it for themselves.

Mo Dhaliwal

00:00:30

Welcome to High Agency, igniting conversations with inspiring people, leading transformative change. Stories are the foundation of how we see ourselves and how the world sees us. For generations, Africa's narrative has been written by outsiders, shaped by colonial perspectives and filtered through Western lenses. But now a renaissance is unfolding across the continent as African storytellers are reclaiming their voices and rewriting this narrative. From wildlife documentaries filmed by local conservationists in Durban to podcasters in Ghana who refuse to code-switch, a revolution in African storytelling is underway. Platforms like TikTok and the podcast networks are democratizing whose stories get heard, while movements like nature, environment, and wildlife filmmakers are creating spaces where African perspectives lead conservation narratives. Now, this shift isn't just about entertainment, it's about justice. As the African Union focuses on unity and reparations in 2025, storytelling has emerged as a powerful tool for preserving heritage and reconnecting diaspora communities across oceans and generations. And today, we're joined by Mohaki Moraguri, a visionary curator, storiesmith, and Afro-optimist who leads Paukwa House, a story house dedicated to authentic African narratives. With extensive experience in content creation, she crafts words and digital stories that challenge negative stereotypes while highlighting Africa's extraordinary cultural contributions. Mohake's leadership style combines output-defined professionalism with integrity and social equity, and through Paukwa's platforms, she amplifies positive perspectives from Kenya, and across the continent, embodying her passionate commitment to reshaping global perceptions of Africa. Welcome Mohaki.

Mwihaki Muraguri

00:02:27

Thank you Mo.

Mo Dhaliwal

00:02:29

I am so glad you're here, and in fact the reason we were able to be so fortunate as to get you onto High Agency is because this coincided with a trip to Vancouver, and we happened to be in touch, and I said, 'Okay, if you're coming anytime, we've got to sit down and talk.' And the reason for my excitement was because when we first met, it was in Amsterdam, eight years ago, almost nine. And at the time, we were both attending this creative leadership program at a school called Think, which is a fascinating program put together by like ex-McKinsey people and consultant types, but also like artists and social impact entrepreneurs, like a really, really interesting gathering. Um, and when we were there, um, you know we were all sort of going through the program and undertaking different exercises and learning things, and the entire program was really designed for people that were at a sort of an inflection point and trying to maybe learn some new tools but also do some inner work and discovery to kind of figure out what's next. And I was really impacted by your contributions during the program because you gave a number of presentations, but there was one in particular where you left us with this one-liner that stuck with me. And I've actually dropped it a number of times, but it was this idea that we're all Kenyan. I fully believe and accept that. I am fully Kenyan. But we'll get into that a little bit later. I think what I want to ask you first is, you know, what brought you to the THiNK program? And where were you at at that point in life and with storytelling?

Mwihaki Muraguri

00:04:10

Thank you, Mo. So, where I was, was the place of not knowing, right? I had just come out of spending almost 20 years delivering public health programs. I knew what I was doing. And then I just got to a point in my life where I was like, you know what? Not this. I don't want to do this anymore. I don't know what I want to do next, but I don't want to do this. A little seed of something uh suggested that I just want to do storytelling, I didn't even know what that was at that point but I was very um challenged and upset about the narratives that I was encountering on a daily basis um working not just in Kenya but across sub-Saharan Africa and working in a field which was all about development. I hate that word. I like to say I was in the business of social progress, advancing social progress, because and the reason why I don't like that term is because it suggests that there's nothing developed within an underdeveloped country, right? When actually what we're talking about is financial or economic underdevelopment. But when you look at the social, the cultural. All of that. There's a depth.

Mo Dhaliwal

00:05:23

There's so much. Exactly.

Mwihaki Muraguri

00:05:25

So why do we pin it in this little one box when it's only just one facet? So I knew that I had made my contributions to a certain point that I was comfortable with and I just needed to do something different. And I was lucky enough to step out into the void and find footing. But I knew that I didn't know what I didn't know. And that's because I was moving into a new sector. And so I thought, why not take the opportunity to learn and prepare myself to be a social entrepreneur, to find creative ways to addressing this question that was in front of me. And that's how I landed in Think. It was literally just sort of scrolling through websites and figuring out who can help me with this idea that I have. Because I'm just like, I want to tell stories, but I don't know how. And so that's how I ended up. You know, meeting you in Amsterdam almost eight years ago. Yeah.

Mo Dhaliwal

00:06:20

And you thought you didn't know how to tell stories coming into that program?

Mwihaki Muraguri

00:06:25

I didn’t know how I was going. I wanted to infect people with this, you know, excitement about storytelling. I just didn’t know how to do that.

Mo Dhaliwal

00:06:32

It seemed like you were natural at the time. Like we felt pretty infected.

Mwihaki Muraguri

00:06:36

OK, well, I’m glad. Yes. But I didn’t know how to run a business. I was an employee up until that point and I was a very good employee. But I had no idea about how to set up my own shop and the tools that I needed to, you know, to get it running, to get it, you know, to be a robust business while addressing the problem that I thought was in front of me. So at that time, Paukwa was about five months old in terms of practice, and maybe nine months old in terms of registration, because I registered it in February, I remember. I was like, woohoo, I have a business. I didn't have a business, I had a business certificate. And then I got my first employee, and literally, I think two, three months later, was in Amsterdam for that first session, yeah, of creative leadership.

Mo Dhaliwal

00:07:26

Wow, the timing. What does Pauko mean?

Mwihaki Muraguri

00:07:31

Paukwa is a Swahili word. It is the call of the storyteller. So, you know, like if you look at a lot of English children's stories, it always starts with once upon a time. Yeah. But in many, many dialects and languages, and and and and communities, you have this thing which signifies a story is beginning. So for us in East Africa, Pauqua is what you say, and then there's a response, people say Pakawa, and then you say Sahani, and then they say so. It's this sort of invitation to settle into the idea of a story, and I chose that name because I wanted the name of the organization to reflect its East African heritage, and also for people to get excited. So whenever I'm in a room of Swahili speakers and I say Paukwa, and then I get this response. But what comes along with that response is this smile because people are like, oh, a story is coming, and it takes them back to their childhood. So that's also some of the energy that I wanted people to feel when they hear Paukwa.

Mo Dhaliwal

00:08:32

That's incredible. I mean, as a branding person, I really appreciate when a story like that comes up, and it's got such an emotional resonance. From eight years till now, I'd like to say that you and I kept in touch and we've had this really intimate relationship in that time. We've not. We've been a part of a WhatsApp group.

Mwihaki Muraguri

00:08:51

Yes. Which is the new normal of connecting with people.

Mo Dhaliwal

00:08:55

It's the new normal, for sure. But, you know, even as WhatsApp groups go, especially ones out of programs like that, there's a period of, you know, intense activity.

Mwihaki Muraguri

00:09:04

Yeah.

Mo Dhaliwal

00:09:05

And then that drifts down into just, you know, birthday messages. Yes. And what's our word of the year?

Mwihaki Muraguri

00:09:11

Remember that?

Mo Dhaliwal

00:09:12

I don't think we've done that in a year or two either. Yeah, true, true. But in that time, how has Pauqua House developed? What have you been up to?

Mwihaki Muraguri

00:09:22

Wow. So Pauqua has gone, you know, first and foremost, it grew. So what I went to find and think, I think I found at least a version of it because we were able now to put together, you know, I was able to put together an organization that found its legs and found its space and found its meaning. I remember one of the quotes that really has stayed with me because you know how it is when you're starting a business and you're like, 'I want to do this and I'm going to do this by this time and this time and this time.' And these are the goals and objectives. And then reality hits you. There was a quote that I heard from Rick Warren, who's this pastor; he's an American pastor. And he says, 'We often overestimate what we can accomplish in a year and underestimate what we can do in 10.' And whenever I was not hitting the mark, it's not happening, I was like, you know what, perspective-10 years, that's what we're looking at, 10 years. Just stop thinking about the now. And so eight years on, Paukwa has produced... so we used to be, you know, every single day. Every single weekday, setting out a new story. We have about 90 different collections because we do our storytelling under an umbrella, right? So it's not just random stories. It is theme stories for like a month or for like two weeks. And it's been everything from, you know, the first schools that were established in Kenya to health workers and, you know, who do we admire and women first in Kenya to all sorts of things. And we have over a thousand stories. Then we got challenged by ourselves and also by a wonderful partner, because as we would be doing the research about the stories we wanted to tell, we would always ask ourselves, 'How is it that we don't know this about our country?' How is it that we're finding this out as adults? This is what should have been in our school curriculums, right? But it just wasn't there. And there's whole reasons as to why it wasn't there. And we had a partner who came and said to us, 'We really love what you're doing in terms of telling stories to adults. Would you want to tell those to children?' And we said, 'Yes.' Eventually, um, and they gave us, you know, a sort of hand up a ladder, and we were able to start a children's project. Um, so we converted a lot of our stories into, you know, children's versions as animated cartoons, which is a series on YouTube and is on a cross-continental TV platform called DSTV. We were able to put the stories also into guidebooks. They're being used by children in schools. So we ran a values-based education project just using storytelling as a way to again infect people with this idea of positive Kenya and positive US, and we've come from somewhere um which I think is something that um culturally we struggle with a little in Kenya. We we hate embracing um success you know so yeah so if you ask a Kenyan so how are things going to say you know I'm surviving it's you know I'm trying to make it, we we don't we don't shout you know like Nigerians. A Nigerian will be like hey my friend I am way up I'm way up there. Kenyans are a little more reticent but I think that that's had a negative effect on us because we're not good at tooting our own horn. So sometimes we have generations of kids that don't even know that there's a horn. So it's been really exciting seeing children embrace these stories and be inspired by who I call the everyday nation builders. So, we stay away from two topics, politics and religion, because those tend to be divisive. Yeah, a little bit. Yeah. It doesn't matter where you are. But we and then we celebrate every day people. So not people who you would see in the newspaper or on the news. Right. But who are quietly in their communities or in their offices just by doing them. Yeah. Actually making making an impact and seeing these stories fed back to you from children. It's really been a blessing and it's so exciting. And also just seeing what people do with the stories that we have put out there. I share this one, what do you call it, example. I met somebody and we didn't know each other. We were just in a forum and I was introducing myself when I was asking a question. And I said, oh, my name is Mwihaki. I'm with a platform called Paukwa. And I heard someone in the audience go, and I was like, oh, what have I done? And she came up to me afterward and said, you know what? You made me buy a car. I was like, okay, sorry. I think I'm not, I'm not sure. And it turns out that her best friend had been following this series that we had called K. E. Safari, which was a journey around Kenya from the perspective of the stories that we have in different communities. So the way that you have provinces in Canada, we have counties in Kenya. So we went through all the 47 counties and told the stories of those counties. From the perspective of the people, the culture, you know, the myths, the legends. And apparently this, you know, a lady and her best friend were like, why have we been flying to Dubai for holidays? There's so many things that you can do in Kenya and we just never knew about it. So they bought this old, you know, beat up four by four, packed their children into it and went camping around Kenya looking for, okay, so this story talked about Kerio Valley and that there are these jumpers off and they would go find them.

Mo Dhaliwal

00:14:59

And I was like, wow, that's incredible.

Mwihaki Muraguri

SPEAKER_

00:15:00

You bought a car? Wow. Yeah. So Poco has been growing. Yeah.

Mo Dhaliwal

00:15:06

And what you're describing though, culturally, I mean, I find this in individuals sometimes and I will describe it as damaging levels of humility. And it's for those reasons, right? Because I think sometimes, you know, people, and I'm learning now, cultures that have a lot of humility are probably a little turned off of the idea of bravado and wanting to seem conceited. But then a lot is lost in that, right? Because being conceited and advertising yourself to that extent, like that's a pretty far away behavior. And so on the road to that, there's still a lot of richness to explore. There's still a lot that you can do. To inspire behaviors even. I mean, I struggled with that, I think, in people in the social impact space, especially like we've had past clients. I myself have worked in nonprofits. And it's also sometimes a function of people spending 90% of the time working so hard to create the change, create the impact that they're after. And they spend 10% of the time, if that, talking about it, right? And you won't ever want to fully reverse that ratio. But a little bit more balance is definitely required because it inspires action. And, you know, human beings, all modern civilization, you know, started in story, right? It started in walls and cave paintings and transfer of knowledge and collective knowledge. And I definitely think we don't necessarily maybe honor how sacred that is enough.

Mwihaki Muraguri

00:16:35

Absolutely. I agree 100%. One of the things that we do, because as I mentioned, we're a social enterprise, so we have to find our money somehow to fund our dream of public good storytelling. And one of the things that we do is that we train individuals who are working in terms of social progress and finding solutions. And we train them how to tell their stories and be comfortable in terms of owning the not just the the work, but owning the humanity in the work. Right. And through that, we've met some phenomenal individuals who, you know, give me who give me hope. Like one of our clients is a group of is is an organization called Award, and they are African women agricultural research in African research and development. Yeah. Pure scientists, like PhDs, you know, and they're storytelling is, you know, it has to be in a peer-reviewed journal. I can't talk about myself. It has to be about, you know, the science and everything. And working with some of these individuals, and you know, going back to the why, which is something that we discussed in Think, right? How did you end up being, you know, a plant biologist who wants to look at beans? I mean, who does that? And when we unravel and enable them to see their own role in science, I mean, it's like eyes lighting up and saying, you know what? It was because I was hungry as a child and beans saved my life, right? Or somebody saying that, you know, my father had, you know, was the one who actually pushed me and made sure that I went to school in a community where girls didn't go to school, right? So that is why I'm. all about empowering other women. So it's really exciting to see people take their own agency and realize that it's the people who matter in the work that we do and make it successful. Yeah. And that is and that's the beauty of our work. When people understand that their stories are powerful and their stories are needed and their story could be the answer to, you know, unlocking somebody else. Yeah.

Mo Dhaliwal

00:18:48

I mean, I actually, I think we encounter that or witness that at least a lot. I think especially because so often, you know, the most accomplished of us will actually just kind of move from impulse to impulse, right? It's like there's some motivation and you follow it and you're just, you have this drive. So you're just following the drive. But when do we actually take the opportunity to even examine ourselves and say this motivation I have, this drive that I have, you know, where is it actually coming from? So through that, I want to actually turn that around a little bit on you. And, you know, because it's one thing to have the impulse and say, I got to tell these stories. But why you? Where did your impulse come from?

Mwihaki Muraguri

00:19:33

I've had time to reflect on that a little. And I think it's a combination of many things. I would say that first and foremost, I grew up in a reading household. So my entire family, my mother, my father, were very much about storybooks and, you know, pushed that for us, for which I'm very, very grateful. The second thing wasn't so positive, was painful. In primary school, I was known as a bookworm. So I was not one of the popular kids at all. People used to say to me, oh, you always have a book. That's where we get along. You always have a book. But I loved books. I traveled the world through books, right? I realized that, you know, Enid Blyton's Famous Five and Secret Seven were going through the same drama that I was. And, you know, then there was the Sweet Valley Highs of my Secret Dreams sort of teen romances. And I think that that taught me that it doesn't matter where you are on the planet what you look like the human yearnings and feelings that we have are all the same. But I was the first born. Child in my house, in my family, and so I had to go do a serious degree, so my parents were like, 'No, that's not the example, no, yeah, exactly right.' So I wanted to do something. I think video editing and at the time Kenya just had one TV station, and my father told me, 'Somebody already has that job. Can you go and do something So I went and I did a degree in economics for my parents and geography for myself because I just, I just love maps. I think it was again, that travel thing, right? Just I want to know all the places in the world one can go. And then I did the right thing, so to speak, for 20 years. Like I said, I had a wonderful career in public health. But the interesting thing was that I. So I worked in a field where there was a lot of proposal writing. People would raise money for grants and everything. And wherever I went, people would always give me their proposals just to have like one last look at it. And without invitation, apparently, I learned this at many a leaving. You know, sort of party that whether I was asked to or not, I'd have this red pen that I'd edit, you know, and I think that it's because I love language and it really irritates me when people make, you know, basic mistakes in language typos, their grammar is incorrect. So over time, and it came from the reading. So over time, I think all of that started coming together and being in this field where, you know. Being an African woman in the development sector, you know, it's either you're considered an anomaly, like, oh my goodness, you're so successful. You speak English well, you're articulate. And, you know, you seem to have gone, like, actually all the women that I know are exactly like me. I'm not an anomaly in my community, right? But this continuous idea of, Africa doesn't do well. Africans don’t do well. Africans need help. Africans don’t have agency. You are not the norm. You are an outlier. It just got to the point where it really would bug me. And then also whenever I'd offer ideas and solutions, sometimes you would see that, yes, yes, yes, but we need someone else to counter it. And someone else would always be either someone of a paler distinction or someone from a northern country. And I think I just got frustrated and I'm like, 'You know what? I think part of the problem is because people don't know what kick-ass things Africans do on a daily basis because we don't talk about it. We're not good at talking about it. And there's this stereotypical attitude that exists that we need help. And whenever I, you know. And I kind of understand where it comes from, because whenever I'm off the continent, the news that I see about the continent is always, you know, death, destruction, poverty and disease. And that happens everywhere. Absolutely. Right. But we only get that version of our stories told. They don't tell you know, the stories about, you know, the phenomenal things that people are doing. And yet when people come to Kenya, they're like, oh, my gosh, wow, this is fantastic. And I'm like, yeah, it's been here, but there definitely is a, what can I call it? Part of it is individuals not challenging the narratives that they see. And part of it is systems making sure that they remain relevant by dampening the ideas that don't fit what they want told. Yeah.

Mo Dhaliwal

00:24:40

That latter part has probably been the most frustrating thing that I've witnessed. The simplification of that message over time. Because some of that sensationalism, to some extent, that's always existed. When I first moved to California years ago, this is during a time when this region of Vancouver, as beautiful as it is, believe it or not, was kind of going through a bit of a wave of gang violence, like street level. There were shootings and things like that. And by and large, everybody that lives here, you're still living your life. And that's not even like 1% of your concern, but you kind of hear about it once in a while. Well, when I got to San Jose, I remember mentioning to some people there that, and this is in a software company, that I was from Vancouver. And just the level of concern on their faces, they're like, wow, are you okay? And to talk to one of them, they would have just assumed that there's just bullets flying past my ears constantly. But it is sensational. And then the story gets flattened, right? Unfortunately, the African continent, and we all know this, like for decades, the story has been minimized and flattened. Oversimplifications even refer to it as kind of comical because a wildly diverse place. Right. And there's a bit of a parallel to it when somebody calls me or something around me as Indian. I'm like, how? It's a universe. What part?

Mwihaki Muraguri

00:25:59

Yes, exactly. Be specific.

Mo Dhaliwal

00:26:01

And so there's definitely, I think, a bit of a human tendency to simplify. But then there's these pre-existing structures that are set up. Media systems set up a certain way. They've got their own inbuilt biases. They've got their own structural violence. And that's just on the passive side. There's also a very active side of media and, frankly, storytelling where it's almost weaponized to fit a narrative. And, you know, I see your work and your project as being, I don't want to say altruistic, but quite, I guess, like authentic to revealing what's there and allowing people to, you know, not even outside the community, but even within the community to maybe just hold up a mirror to them and kind of show them how beautiful they are. Right.

Mwihaki Muraguri

00:26:49

Um, but have you actually encountered anything that has been more like specific like are there any like anti-Kenyan narratives specifically that are politically driven that you've seen or wanted to counter um I don't know about uh and so this is a difficult question to to answer because you've asked me about anti-Kenyan narratives and I think that we also tend to get if you look at a global stage we get to be lumped as you know Africa, which is people never talk about the 54 countries or 55 countries of Africa. It's one monolith. And so I think that from a structural point of view, it's more anti-African as opposed to anti-Kenyan. Right. But I will say this within my own country, like any other country on the planet, there's also a lot of divisiveness and anti within this group and the other and and and all of that. But what gives me hope is what is happening in terms of young people saying, by the way, we're not interested in your narrative and we're not interested if you've not taken the time to. Educate yourself about us, and understand we're not also interested in educating you. Right? We will do things for ourselves, and there's what this one group of photographers for instance who um, a few years ago did this project called 'Unscrambling Africa' and they did a road trip across different parts of the continent, just showing the view of Africa from African eyes. Right so, whenever Africa tends to fall in two domains when you see photos or whatever it's either the savannah and the wildlife with Kilimanjaro and all its majesty behind the acacia tree, or it is you know shanty towns right and they went across you know documenting you know High-rise buildings and you know party joints and you know young people living their best life and the beaches which no one not known, but very few people know are some of the best beaches in the world. And they said, and we're not doing it for outside audiences. What we're doing it for is internal Africans and also for posterity, because I don't know if you know this, but less than 3% of the content on the internet is generated from the continent. Less than 3%. So when you have a bigger amount of African stories coming from outside Africa, what AI is learning is that version, right? And so if you search, you know, Kenyan city, it'll show you the shanty towns of. You know, Kibera and Makuruwa and Jenga. It will not show you, you know, the leafy suburbs of Karen and Runda and all of these other places. And so they said, no, we're going to make sure that we are not left behind again in the new version of neocolonialism, which is now coming from the fact that only one version of Africa is. is shown, and it dominates because what AI pulls from is mainly news.

SPEAKER_2

00:30:04

Right.

Mwihaki Muraguri

00:30:06

And so I love the fact that people are one unabashed about saying, you know what, I'm doing this for me; the fact that, you know, people are actively making sure that they're out there. And the third thing is that at least in Kenya, because we've had a think about our colonial history that's different from many other countries because we were meant to be a settled nation. Right. So we had during our colonial period. Kenya was meant to be an outpost of Britain, right? So we had a huge British population, you know, which is not similar to countries like Togo or, you know, Nigeria, which just had an administrative population. And so because of that, our languages also got decimated. Yeah. And now there's been this resurgence to make sure that, you know, we have 44 different languages in Kenya. So, on average, every Kenyan speaks at least two, but usually three languages. So, English, because that's the medium of instruction in school. Swahili, because that's the national language. And then whatever their home mother tongue is, right? But over time, because of that colonial legacy, the mother tongue, you know, has been sort of wiped away and forgotten. And we focus on if you speak good English, then you have an opportunity to excel and to make something of yourself. But now we're rolling that back and saying, you know what, we're going to have cultural festivals in our home languages. We're going to do one of the funniest things I love is so my home language is called Kikuyu. And we're now importing telenovelas. I call them telenovelas because I don't know what else to call them from India, and dubbing them over in Kikuyu. So you see these women in saris talking Kikuyu and my mother is hooked, right? And I think about how, again, when you have the human experience is universal, right? But language and media are really powerful in terms of allowing you to be seen, allowing your experience to be enjoyed, and just even connecting people, right? So I love the fact that there's a resurgence in our language, before you know, in our languages before they're all, you know, forgotten and wiped away. And I love the fact that young people are just doing it for themselves. And, you know, especially on a continent where I look at Kenya, I think the median age in Kenya is about 24, 25? It's a young place. It's a young place. Uganda is even younger. It's 19, right? So we have now these new generations of young Africans who are like, we're doing it for ourselves. And, you know, platforms like TikTok, you know, the number of different languages that are on there. I saw recently there was a Kikuyu challenge, dance challenge, which went viral. I love it, right? Because this is how we learn about other communities, other places, and we're doing it through the eyes of the people who live there. And that's the best way to learn about something.

Mo Dhaliwal

00:33:23

Absolutely. I mean, So I've got so many parallels actually to share with you there. So on the Indian telenovelas, which is an awesome phrase, I think in the subcontinent they're called like cereals. So my first time in Morocco, we land and we're, you know, part of this tour. We're going to be going out to the desert for a couple of days. We stop off at this little gas station and it's a little rest stop and they've got like a. TV in the corner, you know, playing some shows and stuff. And, you know, in the distance, I kind of hear something. I'm like, that's familiar. When I looked over, it was a Punjabi language serial, not dubbed. It had Arabic subtitles. And I just felt so foolish for spending thousands on a plane ticket to land on a gas station to just hear Punjabi off in the distance. But, you know, that. homogenization of language and the pressure to flatten identities for like kind of an economic mobility. It's really unfortunate. Like India and Pakistan are in the news a lot right now for really stupid reasons. You know, I'm very happy to say that they're wildly foolish nations that are more alike than they're dissimilar.

Mwihaki Muraguri

00:34:38

You know?

Mo Dhaliwal

00:34:39

Because they're both wildly toxic. The Punjabi community, culture, language was partitioned, right? And our homeland was split in two and more than half went to Pakistan and a portion was left in India. But what I witnessed from traveling both these places is that On the Indian side, there's a pressure to homogenize around English and Hindi. There's a real imposition of the language, Hindi, as if this kind of new imagined monolith of India, which is the saddest thing in the world because that's a subcontinent with, I think, something like 1,400 languages, 17 national languages. It's incredible. But there's a definite intent and want to flatten that into something singular. So one language, one religion. It's this whole agenda. But then on the Pakistan side, the imposition is English and Urdu. And so the thing that I actually get really upset about isn't so much even the governments, because governments and state powers are going to do what they do. It's more so the sort of elite in both of these communities that culturally and linguistically have almost kind of turned their backs on the people. And so it's actually the elite in both places. That will encourage their kids to not speak Punjabi, right? That will be like, no, no, you know, Hindi or and almost even wear it like a badge, like, oh, you know, my child speaks Hindi or my child speaks or they don't even know Punjabi anymore. And then Punjabi is kind of relegated to these rural areas. And when you go and you visit them and you meet the people either in Pakistan or in India, there's a I don't even know how to actually fully articulate this, but there's kind of like a an indigeneity to them just being themselves in their culture and in their language, and it's it's kind of complete in a way, yeah. And that wholeness and completeness isn't as available to the people that might be economically more mobile right, but there is a bit of a some sort of inferiority complex going on inside of that, right? So it's just so encouraging because the young people are in a place where they're a couple generations removed from that trauma. And we might carry a lot of angst and I think very justified kind of resentment towards British colonialism, and kind of hold on to it, and we get angry at the right times, but they kind of don't even care about even that, which I think is kind of good. Moving on. There's a freedom to it, right? There's a freedom to not having the anger or needing to resist, and a freedom to not carrying that inferiority complex. I'm just so encouraged to hear that it's more of a universal experience, right? Because I've spent a lot of time just really just shitting on the Punjabi elite in Pakistan and in India for ruining it for subsequent generations. But it's sounding like there's hope that is largely driven by kind of like a self-confidence in your story. Yeah.

Mwihaki Muraguri

00:37:44

So it's funny how, again, to the universality of the human experience. So I am Gen X. Yeah, so I'm Gen X. And the majority of Kenyans are really Gen Z and Alpha, right? In terms of numbers. And recently in Kenya, about a year, it's almost a year ago, because it was the last reading of the finance bill. There was huge protests. which happened and they were called the Gen Z protests because these kids just took to the streets and they said, we're tribalists, we're leaderless, which really flustered anybody older than them and especially the political elite, because the political elite use tribe as the weapon to get votes. And they're like, or to other. Right. And here's a classic British trick. Yes, exactly. Right. And all of a sudden there's this swath of individuals who are like, We don't know no tribe. We just know that we have problems as young people and we want to sort them out. And it was so, it was amazing to see because literally the Gen Z were like, guys, hold my beer, right? Don't worry, we've got this. You Gen X and all our parents who are living off generational trauma of colonialism and then dictatorships. We don't have those problems. So watch this. Yeah. And literally, you know, you would see, you know, all these older people, older people like myself be like, OK, how do you want us to support you? Do you guys need money? Because they were doing things that we would have never had the guts to do. Right. And I think that that's, I mean, it's powerful. Right. I just my prayers that it will continue to be challenged. And so it will continue to be channeled in ways that actually serve the desires of these young people. Right. And I hope that they won't throw us out with the bathwater. That's also because there's something to the possibility, yes, it is a possibility. But there's something also to be said for wisdom and experience. Earlier on, I talked about not knowing what I don't know. And I think that that's what happened and what, you know, made this these protests sort of fizzle out because they didn't know that. OK, so once all the energy and, you know, is sort of dissipated, what do we do next to meet our demands? So but there's definitely a shift. Yeah. And like I say, my hope is that the shift will be positive. It'll continue to be energized. And what's exciting is that, like I say, these are like you say. these young guys they just they just don't really care yeah yeah they're like we will we will take the we will roll with the punches as they as they come yeah has that affected any of what you're doing now or what you want to do next like did you take some inspiration from that and be like okay here's here's the next narrative here's the next storytelling project um i don't know if if it does what was very interesting like in in my company was small company um i was obvious not obviously but i was the oldest person and by you know decades so we would have this thing of every every so our team meeting was on tuesday morning and we'd start off by like so what did guys do over the weekend or you know what are you reading this week because you know, we're a bunch of storytellers. So those are sort of two primary questions. And the things that people would be doing over the weekend, I'd be like, oh, my gosh, you guys have such interesting and different and diverse lives. And what happened over time, I think by the time I was like year two or three into the into Pauqua, I no longer was setting the agenda for the stories that needed to be told. It was all these young people. And also because they had gone to school at a different time than I had. They had different versions of history, social sciences that they had learned and so they were countering those narratives that were front and center for them as opposed to the ones that I thought were you know... I had gone to school way too long ago, apparently. Um, but for me that was exciting because they were they were they were closer to our audience. And so I was like, OK, you guys just, you know, do you tell me what you need? And they're like, payroll, payroll shall be met. Yeah. So that was for me was was was exciting. Yeah. And to see that sort of ownership was also very, you know, as a as an employer of young people, you know, who are very prone to dropping mics when they are not feeling it. Seeing that level of ownership of the agenda, of the stories, of the work was really, really encouraging for me. Yeah.

Mo Dhaliwal

00:42:40

Well, I think that's also one of the artifacts of great leadership, right? Is that you actually leave a bunch of people that are leaders behind you. So I think that covers it from the Paukwa lens in terms of where the inspiration came and what's happening next. Where are you up to now? I mean, if the young people are writing all the stories, what are you doing?

Mwihaki Muraguri

00:43:04

So my hockey is at an inflection point. Again. Again. You were mentioning these eight-year cycles. Yes. I've come to understand that I live my life in these seven-year cycles, which I think is also, it's nothing new. I think a lot of people do that. Even businesses, you know, you have to morph, you have to change. We've been challenged as Paukwa to also change because we have relied on social media to get our message out. Social media does not operate the same way that it did eight, seven, even three years ago. Right. So we've taken a pause on that. But what that means for me is that I'm trying to figure out what's next and how I stay within this path of storytelling and take what I have learned from it so far. And so I am at a point where I'm not sure what is next, but I do know that there's things that I don't know. So again, I'm exactly where I was eight years ago. And so I'm back in school. Incredible. And this is the thing, you know, at least Think was like an executive course, right? This is like pure academic learning. And so, I'm doing a master's in contemporary creative writing because one of the things that has inspired me from all these stories that have been written is the sort of gap in terms of our history and the things which are not told. And one of our sort of mantras was this proverb that until the lion learns how to tell his story, the tale of the hunt will always glorify the hunter. And so what I want to do right now is spend some time actually writing stories that I have heard across the last seven years, across my lifetime from people who have really, really inspired me. So I'm doing this degree. Yes, I have homework and readings. School's hard. School is so hard. Which my daughters who are both in university, they really laugh at me. They're like, okay, so you understand when I tell you I'm busy and I can't respond to your calls. Like, yeah, even me, I have readings now. But I'm working on a short story collection which tells the history of Kenya through its most turbulent times. Well, not most turbulence, through a turbulent season, which was from about 1920 after the First World War to just before independence in 1960, between 60 and 63. And the reason that I'm looking at that period is because I realize that a lot of our older generations are we're losing them, right? And they're the ones really who have shared some of these stories. So I've talked with a lot of people in their 80s, 90s, even people around me. And the normalcy of their lives 50, 60, 80 years ago is something that we can't even fathom now.

Mo Dhaliwal

00:46:16

I've had the same feeling. There's people from that generation that they're almost like cultural artifacts. Absolutely. Because there's a way of looking at the world. There's an experience that they have that is. Utterly different to who and what we are.

Mwihaki Muraguri

00:46:29

Yeah. I have a friend's father who his desire in life when he was a child was to be a train conductor because he thought that that guy in his uniform and his cap standing at the back of the train as it passed through his village was the most exciting person. That man went on to be like one of the first architects that we ever had in Kenya. Right. So the difference between his dream as a child because of what he had been exposed to by and then, you know, by the time he got to his 30s, 40s, phenomenal leaps. Right. And we just, you know, we can't we can't lose that. Like I remember asking my father once, who's now 80, when you were when you used to walk to school, did you ever I mean, you know, were there like wild animals? And he's like. Like what? Like a leopard? I was like, yeah. He was like, no. I was like, okay, but what about like zebras? He's like, but those were all over the place. I was like, on the walk to school. So again, just trying to even visualize some of these things which were normal 70, 80 years ago is a stretch for me even. So how much more will it be for my children or generations to come? And if we don't capture that before it's gone, we're going to lose it completely. And because we come from an oral culture as opposed to a written one, we're losing it even faster. So right now, that's my new yearning to capture some of these stories and put them down in ways that people will enjoy.

Mo Dhaliwal

00:48:09

And it's so necessary because you hit on it right there. It's like the structures we live in. The design of this world rewards like high codification, but low context sort of cultures and societies. Right. So if you're a write-it-down culture, then you're winning. But similarly, you know, Punjabi culture has been a very oral tradition for a long time, but a very high context. shared knowledge. It was a shared value system. It was the large family unit, the extended village units. And even within that, the tribes and clans. But there was that really, really high context, but low codification. And now everything has to be codified, right? You know, unless you use the words 'I love you', no one knows how you feel, right? So everything has to be written.

Mwihaki Muraguri

00:49:00

Yeah. And one of the conversations that we've had with a writer's group that I'm in is this challenge of, you know, a plethora of different, normal, everyday, unexciting, well, not unexciting, but just everyday stories, right? And how if you want to get published off the continent, right? They'll say that, oh okay, the story of you know two girls facing um a challenge from their father has already been done, because we have Purple Hibiscus right by Jim, Amanda or the story of this has already been done. So write another story and I'm like, do you know how many novels there are about Henry VIII and the Tudors? I mean they're still being produced every year and rebooted exactly right. So how is it that we get one chance to tell this version of a story? So what is also really exciting for me is all these publishing houses that are now you know on the continent, right? And from that, you know we have a lot to learn from, from the Indian subcontinent which for me is one of my favorite um places to read stories from because there's so many because they're in English and because there's a lot of familiarity because like I say, the British kind. Of had like one you know sort of stamp and they'd go and do this so there's a lot of familiarity. But now you see there's story prizes that are from Africa. There are publishing houses in Nigeria and South Africa and Kenya and all over which are trying to get content to publish in terms of books. And then there's also other avenues, right, like self-publishing. And then also we can start now to translate across Africa, you know, because that's also been one of the biggest challenges that we faced. If it was, there's Francophone Africa, there's Lusophone, and then there's Anglophone. And it's easier to find commonality with other Anglophone or Commonwealth countries than a Francophone African country. But with stories coming out and all of these publishing houses who are now looking at doing translations locally, it's the world is opening up and that's really exciting. And again, another thing of we're not doing it for you. We're doing it for us. Yeah.

Mo Dhaliwal

00:51:14

So one of the short stories coming out.

Mwihaki Muraguri

00:51:17

Did you just ask the writer when it's going to get written? Oh, well, okay. Half of them are done. And I was really excited because one of them was shortlisted for a prize last year, the Afritondo Short Story Prize. And that gave me such impetus for, OK, it helped deal with my imposter syndrome because saying I'm a writer and I don't have anything, you know. Published in the format that I want because like publishing online isn't quite I want a book right and they put me in an anthology so that was really exciting; so let us say I'm in school now I'm doing a two-year master's program and by the end of my master's program I must have the collection done, right? Draft one finished manuscript, so hopefully 2027. Who knows? I might be talking on my book tour.

Mo Dhaliwal

00:52:17

Amazing. Where can people go to learn more about you, your work, and the forthcoming short story collection?

Mwihaki Muraguri

00:52:28

So all of our stories about Kenya in all its glory and all its positivity and all its history and contemporary life is on Paukwa. So online, you know, we have a website, which is www. paukwa. org. ke. And then we're on Instagram. We're on Facebook still. And it's at Paukwa or at Paukwa Stories. Yes. And on Twitter. Yes. Amazing. I still call it that part of my own revolution.

Mo Dhaliwal

00:53:04

Well, thanks Milwaukee. I am so glad you took the time during and in the middle of a family vacation to have this conversation with me, but it's much appreciated. Yes.

Mwihaki Muraguri

00:53:12

Thank you so much, Mo. This has, this has been fun on the green couch. Yes. Asante sana as we say, thank you.

Mo Dhaliwal

00:53:18

Thank you. Well, hopefully we've given you a lot to think about. That was High Agency. Like and subscribe, and we will see you next time.

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