Signification of HIV/AIDS in Babu Omar’s Kala Tufaha

Abstract

Popular fiction takes literary ideas to the masses and ‘is meant to fulfill the spiritual enjoyment of all, it preaches values of equality and material wellbeing for all’ (Wanjala, 214).As a subgenre of popular fiction, Kenyan AIDS novels play a didactic role and are a useful literary intervention against a life threatening illness. Examples of AIDS themed novels in Kenya includeCarolyne Adalla’s Confessions of an AIDS Victim (1993), Meja Mwangi’s The Last Plague (2000), Wahome Mutahi’s The House of Doom (2004), Francis Imbuga’s Miracle of Remera (2004), Joseph Situma’s The Mysterious Killer (2001), and Moraa Gitaa’s Cruciblefor Silver and Furnacefor Gold (2008). Kenyan prose fiction written in Kiswahili has also made a significant contribution in representing AIDS. Babu Omar’s Kala Tufaha (2004) and William Mkufya’s Ua La Faraja(2005) are exemplary in their literary representation of the pandemic. While the novels written in English have received commensurate critical attention, for instance, (Muindu, 2014), there is a dearth of critical interpretation of the Kiswahili texts.The paper is an analysis of Babu Omar’s Kala Tufaha which takes as its central problem the significations AIDS in the novel. The examination of these significations through Judith Butler’s concept of linguistic performativity, where discourses bring into being what they name, offers fresh insight into novelistic interventions against AIDS. The paper appropriates Butler’s concepts to the discursive formation of illness identities and the construction of the diseased corporeality in discourse. It enriches the understanding of the function of the novel in fostering better conceptualization of the illness and it is a modest contribution to the existing scholarly interpretation of AIDS novels in Kenya.