John Kilaka

John Kilaka tours the Western hemisphere and brings the African tales to us. With his captivating story-telling he is able to hypnotize hundreds of children for hours. But the traditional African tales are dying with old people and therefore John Kilaka crosses the African continent to collect and safe the tales. With his recorder he visits the most remote villages to capture the African knowledge which is fast disappearing.

The way from oral tradition to a book is long. Usually the tale is told in a tribal language, then translated to Kiswahili and then again to English and then maybe to other languages. John Kilaka also illustrates the tales with his distinctive Tinga Tinga style, sometimes called “Kilaka style”. His books have been often awarded, such as BolognaRaggazi Award. He was pronounced as one of the six best children writers and illustrators in Germany.

John Kilaka was also the main illustrator of the Tinga Tinga Tales commissioned by BBC and Walt Disney. The Penguin book “Tinga Tinga” contains many of his illustrations, yet he has not been attributed. Other books he has illustrated are Amazing Tree, Fresh Fish and True Friends. His paintings are also part of official FIFA art collection 2010.

To find the stories is the hard job which you are not sure if you will succeed. When you meet with some one you have to ask him in good communication if he knows the stories, If not you have to move to try to ask other people.

Every day at dawn I was walking by foot, some hours, looking for people who know the stories. To walk by foot for hours is hard if you want to work well, later I rented bicycle from my host so that I could be able to get in some places where I wanted to go for finding story tellers.

The culture of story-telling is dissappearing, so not many people knows the stories anymore. But on lucky day, you will find a story-teller, and then you will enjoy listening to amazing stories.

John Kilaka, 2009