When the McMillan Library, the oldest in Nairobi and the second oldest in Kenya, was opened in 1931, it was never intended to be used by Africans. Not until Kenya established its independence in the 1960s did that change. Named for the American-born millionaire Sir William Northrup McMillan, who came to Kenya in the early 20th century, the library’s building was protected by national law. Its two suburban branches have remained to this day.
The enormous task of decolonizing the library, which had fallen into shabby condition, eventually landed seven years ago in the hands of Wanjiru Koinange and Angela Wachuka. They founded Book Bunk Trust to remake the McMillan Library and its two suburban branches into institutions that reflect the needs, interests and literary culture of Kenyans.
Premiering at Sundance this year, the documentary How to Build A Library, directed by Maia Lekow and Christopher M. King, follows the efforts of Koinange and Wachuka. A rich, compelling, edifying film, it is a fascinating case study about what it really means to decolonize a major vestige of British colonialism. The film weaves together themes not only about what elements of colonial history should be preserved but also about independent representation in culture and literature, the reclaiming of identity and the confounding politics of bureaucracy and shadows of governmental corruption.
The film captures the astounding perseverance that Koinange and Wachuka have exhibited in a project of heroic scope, justifiably the proper descriptor for their efforts. The library’s shabby appearance sticks with the viewer, at the outset. Soon, the Book Bunk team uncover remarkable treasures in the basement and metal storage bins, including a huge archive of glass-plate negatives and photographs, including one documenting the first formal hanging, when Kenya was under British control.
Eventually, tens of thousands upon tens of thousands items, books and archival photographs and materials would be catalogued and digitized. Literally, the two women saved the critical evidence documenting Kenya’s historical campaign for independence on many fronts — assassinations, human rights movements, the Mau Mau revolution and exploitive laws regarding ownership of land and property.
Rescuing the essential artifacts of Kenyan identity, the two women have acknowledged an even broader challenge, which is captured throughout the film. One cannot forget the past and move on and so the library project also becomes one of recovering images, faces, personalities and voices so that they are not vulnerable to being lost forever.
However, Koinange and Wachuka find the civic challenges just as daunting, as they try to press local government officials to support a project that requires everyone to cultivate the will for a critical historical and cultural consciousness. Trying to maintain an utmost sense of tact and diplomacy, they realize the realities of “greasing the palms” of public officials, abiding the egos and reputations of local politicians and community leaders and contending with sudden changes in political leadership, proving that very little can be guaranteed.
Some voices in the community push for renaming the library as a start, a move that both women resist. This is tied to their greatest task and objective: how should a rejuvenated and enlightened McMillan Library account for raising awareness about racist colonialism, and scientific-driven racism while simultaneously becoming the home for narratives that reflect the representative creative voices of contemporary Kenyans. Essentially, one cannot and should not exist without the other.
Koinange and Wachuka have been earnest and upfront about engaging and crowdsourcing the desires and contributions of the public. In fact, the two could lead master classes on the dogged art of winning grants and public support, neither of which come easily. Some of the most captivating scenes in the film show the complicated relationship between the two women and library staff. One is an eye-opening discussion about whether or not to discard the Dewey Decimal Classification system, which some criticize as a remnant of imperialism and argue for a more progressive alternative system of categorizing the collection. That discussion is just one small but yet significant example of the pragmatic approach that has been vital in the progressive rebuilding project for the McMillan library.
The concerns about ‘forget and move on’ are always close by in How to Build A Library. As Syokau Mutonga and Angela Okune wrote in a published chapter for a book in 2021: “An approach of ‘forget and move on’ towards Kenyan national events has led to the normalisation of state incompetence and a distrust of its narratives and systems, fertile grounds for technology corporations to offer their ‘free’ services.” They later expanded on the point: “ A culture of ‘forget and move on’ has had debilitating effects not only on national memory but also on the actors seen as trustworthy and capable of managing and stewarding Kenya’s past, present and future.”
With tight and narrow access to funding and concerns about government support being flimsy enough to be disrupted when there are political changes in public office, more questions arise about the wisdom of support from tech corporations based elsewhere. The filmmakers present an acutely relevant case study that supporting locally-based digital tech infrastructures is absolutely essential to modernizing the services in the new generation of progressive libraries that the Book Bunk entrepreneurs have pursued with unwavering resolve the last seven years.
As expected, the film features snippets of music from Kenyan musicians but the directors also were hoping to land an African composer to score original music for the documentary. Coming in for the task just as editing of the film was nearing its deadline to be completed, Katya Mihailova, who has composed music for award-winning narrative features and documentaries for films that have premiered at Sundance, Toronto International Film Festival, initially hesitated when Lekow and King asked if she would be interested.
Born in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, Mihailova said, in an interview with The Utah Review, that an editor who had worked on several films for which she composed music and who knew Lekow had recommended her. “I had learned that they were desperate to find someone but more importantly for me, I wasn’t sure if I was the right person for this,” she explained. Lekow, also a musician who was well known among bands in Nairobi, apparently did not consider it an issue, Indeed, Mihailova’s film credits have included traveling to Brazilian Amazon to record indigenous instruments and environments of the rainforest, along with scores for films dealing with stories in Libya, Russia and Ukraine, as well as Joonam, a first-person Iranian-American documentary that premiered at Sundance two years ago.
”We had a very short time to create the collaboration,” Mihailova said, adding they communicated through Zoom conferences while she started writing music based on a rough cut of the film. She also took cues from songs by Nairobi musicians which already were being incorporated in the soundtrack.
Mihailova said that she immediately connected with the themes of hope, despair and friendship, which were embedded in work and the relationship of Koinange and Wachuka. “I quickly related to the types of corruption and bureaucracy they had experienced because similar things were familiar in my homeland [Kyrgyzstan].”
She explained that perhaps the toughest scene to get the right music occurred, when Koinange and Wachuka discovered the immense archive of photographs in the library basement, many of which showed the actual violence and horrors for Kenyans during the time of British colonial rule. “It struck me at first as needing to be very dark but then Maia [Lekow] said it should be lightened up and be hopeful.” Indeed, the effect emphasized why Koinange and Wachuka believed it important not to forget the past, erase it and simply move forward. For the scenes showing the library’s rundown interior, Mihailova sought to evoke ghostly sounds and images of the colonial past.
A graduate of the Manhattan School of Music, Mihailova, whose husband is a professional skier, lives in Salt Lake City and has been a film composer fellow at the Sundance Institute. Her next immediate project is scoring music for an environmental documentary by Darren Aronofsky, which will have its premiere at a film festival in Copenhagen.
Incidentally. Geralyn Dreyfous, cofounder of the Utah Film Center and Impact Partners Film, is one of the executive producers for How to Build A Library. For more festival information and tickets, see the Sundance website.