There are books an author chooses to write, and there are books that insist on being written.
Echoes of Valor belongs firmly to the latter category.
A Student of History, And of Its Absences
My relationship with Kenyan history began early.
I was an avid history student and earned a strong grade in the subject during my O-Levels, but more importantly, I was unsettled by what was absent from the curriculum.
As a son of the Coast, I could not reconcile how Kenya’s freedom fighters—figures such as Mekatilili wa Menza, Dedan Kimathi, or the grim reality of the Kikuyu “Emergency Villages” and concentration camps—were treated as peripheral footnotes rather than central, living struggles.
Mekatilili troubled me the most.
Her resistance predated the Mau Mau uprising by decades, yet she remained curiously underrepresented.
Perhaps because she was a woman.
Perhaps because she was elderly.
Perhaps because her rebellion did not fit the colonial script of history that preferred tidy timelines and convenient heroes.
Early Writing, Interrupted
After completing my O-Levels, I became convinced—naively, perhaps—that I could make a living as a novelist.
I drafted my first manuscript, a crime thriller set in Mombasa, longhand with pen and paper, writing daily for months.
That manuscript was saved to a hard drive and forgotten when I gained admission to Covenant University in Ota, Nigeria, to study Computer Science.
Instinctively, I chose History as my minor, unable to let it go.
Life, however, intervened.
During my second year winter break, while back home in Mombasa, I was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia.
My academic ambitions collapsed almost overnight.
What followed was nearly a decade marked by instability, recurring auditory persecution, and the slow, unglamorous work of recovery.
Writing was simply not possible.
Returning to Words, Quietly
My return to words came quietly in 2011, when I joined a Nairobi-based collective, Veritable Writers, as a freelance SEO content writer.
It was not literature, but it was discipline.
It taught me stamina, humility, and how to work through fog.
Years later, while working remotely for a Venezuela-based firm, iWorker, during a slow week in mid-2023, an old question resurfaced:
Could Mekatilili sustain a serious, adult historical novel?
I searched for answers, and found almost none.
Apart from one or two children’s or educational treatments, and the work of thinkers such as Professor Ali Mazrui, who remains one of the very few major African intellectuals to foreground Mekatilili in serious cultural discourse, there was no full-length adult historical fiction devoted to her life.
That absence felt less like coincidence and more like an invitation.
Research That Changed the Shape of the Story
The research deepened quickly.
I encountered Mepoho, a Giriama woman and seer, said to have foretold the arrival of Europeans on the Coast.
In oral history, Mepoho and Mekatilili are sometimes conflated, and I found that ambiguity fertile rather than problematic.
It allowed me to imagine young Mnyazi growing up on prophecy and defiance, longing not merely to witness history, but to shape it.
A pivotal moment came when I encountered an academic paper suggesting that Mekatilili may have written a protest letter to colonial administrator Arthur Champion while imprisoned.
That detail granted me narrative permission.
If she could write, she could reason, argue, and philosophize.
From there emerged Friar Mark—a fictional CMS missionary in nearby Rabai—anchored in the real historical role of the Church Mission Society in educating future Kenyan leaders, including founding PM and President, Jomo Kenyatta.
Dyeka, Guilt, and the Cost of Honor
Dyeka wa Duka’s storyline (Mekatilili's historical husband) evolved more painfully.
Originally, his journey toward becoming a moran was meant to culminate in an honourable return.
But as the novel expanded, I realised this arc was too neat, too forgiving.
Guilt, shame, and atonement demanded a longer road.
His failure, his self-exile, and his moral reckoning—particularly following the capture of Mwarandu, Mnyazi’s elder brother—became essential.
Only then could he become worthy of Mnyazi, not through triumph, but through humility.
Writing Against History’s Verdict
The hardest decision came later, when I returned to the manuscript in mid-2025 after another long hiatus.
History does not spare Dyeka.
Mekatilili becomes a young widow, left with one son, Katilili.
Dyeka was a character of incredible potential, but he could not be in Daughter of War, the second novel in the trilogy.
It’s one of the most frustrating choices I have made as an author.
Fidelity to history demanded that sacrifice.
A Beginning, Not a Conclusion
Today, Echoes of Valor is live globally.
I do not see it as a conclusion, but as an opening: a statement of intent.
This novel was written to reclaim memory, to complicate heroism, and to honour resistance without romanticizing it.
If it lingers with you, unsettles you, or prompts you to question how history is told, then it has done its work.
The journey continues.
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