They Are Us

First published in Swahili as Walenisi in 1995, They Are Us is an Africanfuturist take on Kenyan politics from real-life political prisoner Katama Mkangi. It begins with a death sentence for Dzombo—but not in the traditional sense. Instead of firing squad or hanging, Dzombo is shoved into a rocket and blasted into the sky for “talking too much.” While Dzombo assumes that he will explode like all the other political prisoners sentenced to the same fate, he instead pilots the vessel of death through an asteroid belt of allegorical maladies, such as the “Rock of Ignorance,” and crash-lands on the utopian planet Walenisi. Faced with remarkable technological advancement and egalitarian prosperity, Dzombo is convinced he has arrived in Heaven. His hosts, however, believe that Dzombo himself is an emissary from Heaven. What follows is a journey, farce, romance, cross-cultural encounter, and self-discovery.