Kitui Djo Thefu: How biking gives him stories that need to be told

By Pauline Odhiambo

In 1952, a young man named Ernesto Guevara de la Serna undertook what youth worldwide dream of doing at some point in their lives — a biking adventure to beat all adventures.

Ernesto's partner in this excitement of exploring the unknown on a motorbike was his biochemist friend Alberto Granado.

The duo's roller-coaster ride from Argentina to Venezuela was chronicled in a series of diaries published posthumously in 1993 as Notas de Viaje, better known as Argentine icon Che Guevera's epic The Motorcycle Diaries.

Thousands of miles away from South America, Kenyan illustrator and author Kitui Djo Thefu echoes Che's spirit of adventure, storytelling, interest in history, and love of biking.

For him, biking isn't just a journey. It's an effort to find meaning, humour and a slice of life in every mile he covers, and recording it all in his memoirs.

Djo Thefu's Now You See Me is a collection of short memoirs documenting his biking adventures and simple, everyday stories connecting humanity.

"My travels are important because the stories that come out of them allow me to share my life experiences even when I am doing comics for clients," he tells TRT Afrika. "Helping them tell their stories has helped me tell my own."

Paved with history

Djo Thefu started writing about biking on Facebook in 2015 before graduating to an independent blog detailing his adventures.

"Biking spurred me to write stories. I would go on a trip and share pictures on social media, but I always felt something was missing from the visual documentation. The pictures weren't telling everything that I felt," he explains.

That's when he decided to add words to pictures. Together, they combined to tell stories that were waiting to be told.

Djo Thefu's adventures have since led him to many places, including Kenya's northeastern region of Todonyang – a hot patch of sandy rugged plains where the remains of 42 Turkana tribesmen killed in 2011 by Ethiopian militia are buried.

"It is said that the Turkana people don't bury casualties of war. They leave them in the open fields, to be devoured by animals and birds," the Nairobi-based biker-writer explains in a blog post. "The Tondonyang Catholic Parish laid these casualties of war in a mass grave that today remains a stark reminder of the savagery of war."

The quirkily told and often brief narratives in his book are short memoirs that, along with the illustrations, draw from his daily experiences.

Travel to tell stories

"Storytelling is at the heart of everything I do. It's my passion," states the 43-year-old who compiled his memoir by selecting stories written over seven years.

"I do illustrations, ride my motorcycle, work on comics, dabble in photography and make music by playing bass, and all these things come together to tell a story."

Djo Thefu's narration skillfully reflects some of the day-to-day experiences that resonate with all of humanity but are often overlooked as not important enough to write about. Among other stories, he writes about the wariness of being approached by a stranger seeking money and the anxiety of going through a job interview or getting injured in an accident.

"Some of my struggles, including my divorce, are also revealed in the book," Djo Thefu tells TRT Afrika.

'Unattainable' engines

Djo Thefu grew up in an era when motorbikes were uncommon in Kenya.

Most motorbikes in Kenya at the time belonged to Kenya Power & Lighting Corporation employees.

Children would run out of their homes excitedly at the loud, rumbling sound of a motorbike engine, staring wide-eyed as their riders stopped to check the power lines.

"Looking back, I realise I loved motorbikes from way back then, but they always seemed so unattainable," recounts Djo Thefu. "When I got to university, I made a wallpaper stencil of a motorbike rider that covered an entire wall."

While still in high school, Djo Thefu developed another interest – comics.

He excitedly made scrapbooks of comic strips like The Phantom and Modesty Blaise, all cut out from the local daily newspaper. It was also in high school that he discovered his writing talent.

"The thing I loved most about comprehension was reading the cue and immediately starting to write, not knowing where the storyline would take me," he recalls. "Writing is a lot like biking because I never really know what will happen along the way or how the journey will end."

Spirit of social change

Soon after graduation, Djo Thefu landed an opportunity to work with Shujaaz Comics, a renowned publication founded on empowering and uplifting the youth through social change.

It is now East Africa’s most prominent youth publication, reaching 56% of young Kenyans and 24% of young Tanzanians.

Djo Thefu's second job was as an illustrator for a local daily, where he would meet motorcycle enthusiasts like him. His first motorcycle, a Daelim Daystar cruiser, was purchased from a business reporter colleague.

This cruiser is mentioned in the opening lines of Djo Thefu's book's first story, where he also humorously narrates his first biking accident. He eventually swapped the Daelim Daystar for a Yamaha Super Tenere XTZ 750.

Djo Thefu is currently working on a book exclusively about biking trips. He soon plans to ride to Kidish, a region straddling the Kenya, Ethiopia, and South Sudan borders.

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