THE MISS INDIA WORLDWIDE KENYA 2017

KENYAN INDIAN PAGEANT COMBINES BEAUTY AND BRAINS

BY Margaretta wa Gacheru (Posted August 23, 2017)

The Miss India Worldwide Kenya (MIWK) pageant was launched in 2000. But after that, there was a 15 year hiatus which only got broken two years back.

This international beauty and brains pageant was revived in 2015 and tomorrow night, the final competition for the 2017 Miss IWK will be held at the new Diamond Plaza 2 in Parklands.

It took the 24 year old 2015 MIWK award winner Aliza Rajah to confirm the continuity of this unique beauty competition. She’s taken responsibility for organizing both the 2016 and the current MIWK contests.

This year as in years past, the Kenyan winner will head to New York City to the Miss India Worldwide headquarters where the pageant will feature finalists from 40 countries.

The 40 are countries where sizeable Indian communities reside and contribute to their respective economies. Among the countries to be represented at the finals are Australia, Canada, Spain, South Africa, UK and USA.

Aliza didn’t win in New York in 2015. But that didn’t dampen her appreciation for the competition. On the contrary, at last Saturday night’s press conference held at the new Concord Hotel, she explained how she’d received so much in the process of going to the finals that she wanted to keep the competition alive for young Kenyan women who would come after her.

“I felt like ‘a winner’ irrespective of whether I’d won or lost the contest,” she said. “Just being part of the event was an eye-opening experience,” added Aliza who now runs the MIWK contest through her company, Eventique. She also has her own fashion line and website. She also runs the Shesha Lounge in the Concord Hotel.

The same attitude of appreciation expressed by Aliza was shared by the 2016 MIWK winner, Finali Galaiya, 22. She also went to New York but didn’t win. Ever so, she’s been inspired ever since by the question she was asked at the MIW finals. It was “What would [she] do to bridge the gap between Asian and African Kenyans?”

The question has become a challenge that she’s taken seriously. She now works with a number of charities, including one foundation led by Sarah Obama, the grandmother of the former US President Barack Obama.

Both Aliza and Finali believe one of the most important things they gained from the pageant was self-confidence. It’s a quality that the MIWK choreographer and coach Bhargav Joshi, 25, hoped he’s instilled in the ten contestants during the rigorous three-week training that he just went through with them.

Ranging in age from 17 to 26, the young women have been coached by Joshi in everything from verbal skills, poise and presentation to walking the runway. On Saturday night, they’ll be wearing both Indian and Indo-Western fashions provided by Suvidha of India and Shenu Gadu of Nairobi respectively.

Joshi also taught the young ladies to perform together for the Saturday night pageant, which is open to the public. His training also featured largely when they displayed their specific skills yesterday at the MIWK Talent Night which was again held at the Concord Hotel.

Speaking to a number of the contestants last Saturday night, I found none of them seemed to lack poise or self-confidence. Most of them were students, like Hiral Gohil, 20, who is studying Business at the United States International University (USIU) and is also a freelance artist.

Shivani Shah, 20, is a student of International Relations at Nottingham University who spends half her year in school; the other half she spends in Kenya working with charities like Freedom from Hunger and the Helping Hands Trust.

Shivani is also a former NTV children’s show presenter. She ‘anchored’ the G3 show from aged 9 up until she was 18.

Judges who’ll be participating in both the Talent Night and tomorrow’s final pageant are a well-kept secret. Aliza would only disclose that they include members of the media, the arts and the business community.

The main sponsor of the Miss India Worldwide Kenya is Crown Paint, represented last Saturday by the company’s CEO Rakesh Rao.

Tickets to the MIWK pageant can be obtained tomorrow night at Diamond Plaza 2 or before the event either from the Concord Hotel or Shenu Fashions on General Mathenge Drive.

MERCY KAGIA, ONE OF KENYA'S FINEST ARTISTS DONATES TO RAFIA'S APPEAL SILENT ART AUCTION

SILENT ART AUCTION ATTRACTS LOCAL ARTISTS TO TAKE PART

BY Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted August 30, 2017)

Mercy Kagia had only been back in Nairobi less than a year when she got a call from her friend, the award-winning Kenyan filmmaker Hawa Essuman inviting her to be part of her latest project.

Hawa is holding a Silent Art Auction tomorrow, September 2^rd from noon to 4pm in the garden of the Circle Art Gallery. 

“We are not involved in the auction per se,” said Circle’s co-owner and curator Danda Jaroljmek who is featuring a one-man exhibition of Michael Soi’s latest paintings in the main gallery. It opened last Wednesday night and will run through the month of September. “We just donated the garden for the auction which we were happy to do,” Danda added.

Hawa knew she had asked for Mercy’s contribution to her auction at short notice. But Dr Kagia has kept a relatively low profile since her return from Germany where she’d been teaching fine art and drawing at university. Actually, she recently had two drawings in ‘The Nude’ exhibition at One Off Gallery. She has also given a few Life Drawing classes at the Polka Dot Gallery where she’ll hold another such class tomorrow morning from 9am to noon in the Karen gallery.

But Hawa was hoping that Mercy could donate one of her recent drawings to auction for a worthy cause. Quite a few well known Kenyan artists had already agreed to take part and their work will be on display on Saturday. They include Chelenge Van Rampelberg, Beatrice Wanjiku, Justus Kyalo, Zihan Kassam-Herr, Maral Bolouri and Mwini Mutuku among others.

Mercy naturally agreed to donate one of her drawings since she’s a friend to Hawa and her sister Rafia who needs to go abroad for health reasons.
“Many local artists have wanted to be part of the auction since they know and respect Hawa who’s best known for her directing of the film, ‘Soul Boy’,” said Zihan Kassam-Herr.

A silent auction tends to allow art collectors a rare opportunity to buy established artists’ works at affordable prices. This should attract collectors who are aware that artists like Beatrice and Mercy have exhibited and sold their artworks overseas where the price ranges for fine art are relatively higher than what art sells for in this country.

What finally should make the art of some of Kenya’s finest artists affordable on Saturday is the hope in Hawa’s heart that she and her fellow artists will finally be able to assist Rafia who has a rare condition which could complicate the double hip surgery that she requires as soon as possible.

RESTORING NATURE'S BALANCE & BIOSYSTEMS STEP BY STEP

POCKET GARDENS RESTORE NATIVE ECOSYSTEMS

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (margaretta.gacheru@gmail.com)

Pocket gardens have become a kind of clarion call, signally environmentalists and everyone keen to restore a semblance of balance in the biosphere and on behalf of Mother Nature.

According to Mary Stout, chairperson of a North Shore neighborhood gardeners group, the Little Garden Club of Wilmette (Illinois), “Pocket gardens have become part of a national (and even international) environmental movement that is sweeping across the States.

That movement was best seen after the US President Donald Trump declared the US withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accord, signed by over 190 countries that committed themselves to reducing toxic carbon emissions in their countries.

Once Trump did that, a slew of US mayors and state governors turned round and reclaimed their community’s commitment to the Paris Pledge. Everyone from the former New York City Mayor Michaael Bloomberg to the Mayor of Pittsburg, Bill Peduto pledged their support for restoring the planet’s biodiversity in contrast to the short sighted view of corporate bosses, including President Trump.

Speaking modestly but with conviction Mrs Stout said pocket gardens can be found springing up all across the country. Her group recommends that people not only establish pocket gardens in window boxes and in pots on patios.

They can also look for neglected or unused patches of land, such as alley ways and begin tending those spaces and planting prairie seeds.

“We’ve been encouraging our members and friends to look at the alleys in their home areas and start planting indigenous plants there,” she said.

“We’ve seen indigenous prairie plants springing up in pocket gardens all over the alleys of the North Shore,” added Charlotte Adelman, co-author of ‘Midwestern Native Shrubs and Trees’ with Bernard L. Schwartz.

Now flowers, fruit vines and leafy green vegetables are increasingly beautifying and filling up areas that were once seen as spaces were garbage bins and old cars were stored. They are also areas where homemade compost is used to fertilize those tiny patches, ensuring they produce prairie plants in plenty.

The Little Garden Club advocates creating compost, the organic fertilizer made with food leftovers, including vegetable and fruit skins, stems and stalks as well as biodegradable paper products (no plastics) like toilet rolls. These are all mixed together and left to ferment for several days. After that, the compost gets spread all over one’s pocket garden, thus ensuring the plants grow quickly, nourished by those natural organic nutrients.

Charlotte Adelman has taken the concept of the pocket garden and expanded it to create the half acre Centennial Prairie on derelict land on the west end of her town.

The retired lawyer turned lay ecologist is committed to restoring indigenous grasses, flowers and shrubs that once grew naturally on the Midwestern prairie (where Wilmette is situated).

Reconstructing the prairie’s original habitat means that indigenous plants will attract local bugs which in turn will serve as special foods consumed by the birds and butterflies that once populated the area but disappeared when cement and so-called development destroyed the wildlife’s natural ecosystems.

Charlotte says she began developing her prairie garden in 2015, but she admits it wasn’t originally her idea.

“A young boy scout who wanted to earn his Eagle Scout status approached me and asked if I would help him create a prairie pocket garden which would serve as his Eagle project,” said the co-author of two authoritative books on native plants. The other is the “Prairie Directory of North America.”

“I then got in touch with the city to see if we could use that corner plot. I also contacted the Audubon Society’s Great Lakes office who put me in touch with Daniel Suarez, their Native Plant and Stewardship Expert,” she added.

Daniel was then seconded to Charlotte’s prairie garden project. He advised her on which native plants and seeds could flourish in that specific sandy soil.

Both he and Charlotte shared their experience and expertise with friends of the Little Wilmette Garden Club late last month when the club hosted them for a free tour of Charlotte’s Prairie Garden.

Pointing out everything from Butterfly Weeds, Aromatic Asters and Virginia Bluebells to River Oats, Canadian Wild Ginger and Switch Grass, both Daniel and Charlotte are proud that the prairie plants now flourishing on their garden patch have already begun attracting native bugs and birds as their work has restored a bit of the Midwestern prairie.

The Boy Dcout also received his Eagle scout status from the work that he put in, helping Charlotte to plant and weed the Centennial Prairie.

KET GARDENS RESTORE NATIVE ECOSYSTEMS

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted September 30th, 2017)

Pocket gardens have become a kind of clarion call, signally environmentalists and everyone keen to restore a semblance of balance in the biosphere and on behalf of Mother Nature.

According to Mary Stout, chairperson of a North Shore neighborhood gardeners group, the Little Garden Club of Wilmette (Illinois), “Pocket gardens have become part of a national (and even international) environmental movement that is sweeping across the States.

That movement was best seen after the US President Donald Trump declared the US withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accord, signed by over 190 countries that committed themselves to reducing toxic carbon emissions in their countries.

Once Trump did that, a slew of US mayors and state governors turned round and reclaimed their community’s commitment to the Paris Pledge. Everyone from the former New York City Mayor Michaael Bloomberg to the Mayor of Pittsburg, Bill Peduto pledged their support for restoring the planet’s biodiversity in contrast to the short sighted view of corporate bosses, including President Trump.

Speaking modestly but with conviction Mrs Stout said pocket gardens can be found springing up all across the country. Her group recommends that people not only establish pocket gardens in window boxes and in pots on patios.

They can also look for neglected or unused patches of land, such as alley ways and begin tending those spaces and planting prairie seeds.

“We’ve been encouraging our members and friends to look at the alleys in their home areas and start planting indigenous plants there,” she said.

“We’ve seen indigenous prairie plants springing up in pocket gardens all over the alleys of the North Shore,” added Charlotte Adelman, co-author of ‘Midwestern Native Shrubs and Trees’ with Bernard L. Schwartz.

Now flowers, fruit vines and leafy green vegetables are increasingly beautifying and filling up areas that were once seen as spaces were garbage bins and old cars were stored. They are also areas where homemade compost is used to fertilize those tiny patches, ensuring they produce prairie plants in plenty.

The Little Garden Club advocates creating compost, the organic fertilizer made with food leftovers, including vegetable and fruit skins, stems and stalks as well as biodegradable paper products (no plastics) like toilet rolls. These are all mixed together and left to ferment for several days. After that, the compost gets spread all over one’s pocket garden, thus ensuring the plants grow quickly, nourished by those natural organic nutrients.

Charlotte Adelman has taken the concept of the pocket garden and expanded it to create the half acre Centennial Prairie on derelict land on the west end of her town.

The retired lawyer turned lay ecologist is committed to restoring indigenous grasses, flowers and shrubs that once grew naturally on the Midwestern prairie (where Wilmette is situated).

Reconstructing the prairie’s original habitat means that indigenous plants will attract local bugs which in turn will serve as special foods consumed by the birds and butterflies that once populated the area but disappeared when cement and so-called development destroyed the wildlife’s natural ecosystems.

Charlotte says she began developing her prairie garden in 2015, but she admits it wasn’t originally her idea.

“A young boy scout who wanted to earn his Eagle Scout status approached me and asked if I would help him create a prairie pocket garden which would serve as his Eagle project,” said the co-author of two authoritative books on native plants. The other is the “Prairie Directory of North America.”

“I then got in touch with the city to see if we could use that corner plot. I also contacted the Audubon Society’s Great Lakes office who put me in touch with Daniel Suarez, their Native Plant and Stewardship Expert,” she added.

Daniel was then seconded to Charlotte’s prairie garden project. He advised her on which native plants and seeds could flourish in that specific sandy soil.

Both he and Charlotte shared their experience and expertise with friends of the Little Wilmette Garden Club late last month when the club hosted them for a free tour of Charlotte’s Prairie Garden.

Pointing out everything from Butterfly Weeds, Aromatic Asters and Virginia Bluebells to River Oats, Canadian Wild Ginger and Switch Grass, both Daniel and Charlotte are proud that the prairie plants now flourishing on their garden patch have already begun attracting native bugs and birds as their work has restored a bit of the Midwestern prairie.

The Boy Scout also received his Eagle scout status from the work that he put in, helping Charlotte to plant and weed the Centennial Prairie.

AIR BRUSH PROJECT SUCCEEDS BEYOND EXPECTATIONS

PAN-AFRICAN ARTISTS GIVE ‘ART TALKS’ AT BRUSH TU ART STUDIO

By Margaretta wa gacheru  (posted August 24, 2017)

AIR Brush ‘artist-in-residence’ project was launched by the Brush tu Art (BTA) Studio in conjunction with the Danish Embassy a little less than a year ago. Yet in the past few months, the Buru Buru-based project has grown far beyond its founders’ expectations.

“We didn’t know how big AIR Brush would become,” says Michael Musyoka who is BTA’s contact man with the Danes.

“We especially didn’t think our travel budget would be enough to bring artists from across the region; but we managed to pool resources to get them here,” he adds, referring to artists from Benin, Nigeria and Rwanda who are currently in residence at BTA.

In fact, the project has served as a source of inspiration to both local and Pan-African artists alike. That’s largely because the site has allowed artists to see their own and others’ creative output grow significantly during their stay at the studio.

It’s also got to do with the convivial atmosphere generated by the busy BTA founders, Boniface Maina, Waweru Gichuhi and Michael Musyoka.

The program is also carefully structured. What’s more it’s run solely by artists themselves, so there’s a natural feeling of creative comradery among them.

“The project is structured so that artists from outside Kenya are offered three month residencies interspersed with one month awards for fellow Kenyans,” says Musyoka.

Evidence of the Pan-African character of AIR Brush was seen this past Tuesday at BTA’s Buru Phase 1 studio where South – South creative cooperation took the shape of a trio of African artists sharing their perspectives and practices with a house-full crowd of local friends of BTA.  

In stand-up sessions, each of the three revealed wildly different persona. In part, this was because they came from different parts of the sub—continent: Stacey Okparavero from Nigeria, Lionel Yamadjako from Benin and Timothy Wandula from Rwanda. The rest had to do with culture, education, artistic inclinations and gender of course.

The one thing they all had in common was their penchant for social media. It was through Facebook that all three found AIR Brush and applied.

“We never anticipated the program would attract artists from across the continent, but we’re happy that it has,” says Waweru Gichuki who explains how much the Rwandese artist Wandula hopes to return to Kenya on a more permanent basis.

“I grew up in Uganda and only moved to Rwanda six years ago after meeting my Rwandese dad. Now I have citizenship, but Kenya reminds me more of my life in Uganda where I grew up,” says the self-taught Wandula. Displaying his paintings and sculptures via BTA’s rapid-fire slide show system, he says Kigali’s art scene is much smaller and more constrained than Nairobi’s where he feels free to sit on the roadside outside BTA and watch the world go by. He says that’s a pastime one cannot practice in Rwanda where artists learn early that self-censorship is the only way to survive.

Benin’s Lionel Yamadjako says Conakry is also a conservative city where dreadlocks are frowned upon, unlike Nairobi where dreads are considered quite fashionable within some circles.

Shy to speak English since his first language is French, “Yam” as he’s called, nonetheless was able to explain how he graduated from a technical college but moved on to become a professional full-time artist.

Social media, he says, is what’s enabled him to not only sell his art online but also find opportunities like AIR Brush and travel all over Africa and Europe attending workshops, exhibitions and art residencies.

Yam won’t be attending the trio’s final exhibition of their art since he’ll be traveling to another workshop before his Kenyan residency is done. But he’ll leave his painting produced while here for the exhibition to be held at Kobo Gallery on September 21^st.

Stacey Okparavero will be at their September opening and hopefully, this multi-talented painter, print-maker and performance artist will perform a reasonable facsimile of the rain dance that she did at BTA on the first day that it rained after she’d arrived in Nairobi.

Having found the city dry and dusty, Stacey’s modern dance recreation of traditional Nigerian rain-makers’ ritual was captured on a phone video, revealing the celebratory and graceful style of this dance yogi.

Explaining how she’d known from early on that she wanted to be an artist, her family’s opposition to that choice was only broken after she brought home the renowned Nigerian artist Bruce Onobrakpeya to meet her dad who finally got convinced that fine art was a serious profession. She subsequently studied art at University of Warwick, Lagos University and the Beaux Art in Paris.

 

AN UNPRECEDENTED EXHIBITION AT ONE OFF GALLERY

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted August 22, 2017)

Nudes are what people look at every day – in the mirror, in the shower and occasionally when they go to bed.

So inherently there’s nothing lewd or distasteful about the nude. Indeed, many artists throughout history have appreciated the beauty of the human form and represented it in paintings, sculptures, motion pictures and even in great literature.

Which is why no one needed to miss the stunning group exhibition on The Nude that just closed at One Off Gallery.

Featuring a wide range of works by some of Kenya’s most accomplished artists, the nudes range from being realistic and quite explicit to being semi-abstract, satirical and beautifully sensitive as well.

For instance, the sketched drawings by Timothy Brooke are evocative yet discrete and gracefully rendered while those of Ehoodi Kichapi are bold and broad-stroked; his women seemed almost militant, aggressive and practically ferocious.

Michael Soi’s nudes seem solicitous, yet their presence in his painting says as much about sexual double standards in Kenya as it does about the hypocrisy of those who preach moral rectitude while simultaneously indulging their lustful appetites.

In contrast, it’s Patrick Mukabi’s nudes who seem most proud of their fully-featured fleshy bodies. Their gaze is direct and unashamed. And unlike nearly all the other nudes in this fascinating show, Patrick’s women seem unconcerned about being represented for who and what they are, a plus-size that runs counter to the current Western standards of what constitutes a beautiful (read ‘sleek and slender’) body.

So while Patrick’s women are presented in forward frontal poses, unlike most of the other nudes represented in the One Off show, there is one exception. It’s also the only set of male nudes on display and they are by Mercy Kagia, a relatively new face on the ebullient Kenyan arts scene.

Mercy’s men seem to being looking at us eye to eye. And whether that’s because men are more confident about their bodies and less modest, Mercy’s drawings are refreshing precisely because most male artists seem only to be inspired by the female form, and most female artists apparently have other preoccupations besides the male nude.

In any case, most of the portraits of nudes in One Off’s show are rare and wonderful. I believe they are also setting a precedent since I can’t recall Nairobi ever having a group exhibition made up of all nudes ever before.

Of course, we have seen Soi’s, Mukabi’s and Brooke’s nudes in the past, but they have always been part of larger themed shows.

In fact, Mukabi has pioneered painting portraits of the male nude which he first exhibited back in 2008, following the country’s post-election violence. His nudes were specifically making a statement about man as animal impelled by instincts that led to the horrors of those troubling and traumatizing times.

The One Off show is far less political than Mukabi’s, but that makes it no less artful, effective and aesthetically attractive. Take for instance, Nadia Kisseleva’s beautiful back-sided nudes which are tasteful yet sensual, gracefully contoured and delicately colored.

Yet Michael Soi’s searing social commentary is never far from his portraiture. Often described as a visual storyteller, his work at One Off (the one I was able to see) was clearly critiquing the Christian clergy who don’t seem to practice what they preach.

And again Mercy Kagia’s portraits of male nudes implicitly convey a feminist fearlessness that reveals her willingness to challenge social conventions. Coincidentally, she is the only female artist whose works appear in The Nude. Why this is so is the subject for further research and discussion.

In the meantime, as of tomorrow, One Off will host an exhibition of paintings by Olivia Pendergast entitled Kenyan Atmospherics.

COMMUNITY GARDENING FOR HEALTHY EATING AND LIVING

By margaretta wa Gacheru (posted August 21, 2017)

Somewhere behind the two busy intersecting urban highways on the northern edge of Chicago, there’s a large piece of land occupied by a community (public) golf course, an animal shelter, a (garbage) recycling center and the James Park Community Gardens.

The gardens are no more than five acres. And yet they’re a site in which as many as forty amateur gardener-farmers come at all hours of the day and night to tend their postage-stamp size pieces of land.

“Community gardens have become so popular these days that people have to apply for a plot. And then they are selected lottery-style,” says Robin Gaston, a retired senior auditor for HP Hewlett-Packard) Inc. who got lucky three years ago, winning the lottery that allowed her to start a small garden of her own.

“I’d never been into gardening before, but when my friend Sue asked me to water her plants while she was away, I saw the appeal of being out in the open air and watching the way plants grow,” says Robin who adds she loves harvesting crops that she frequently transforms into healthy meals. She also enjoys sharing her bumper crops with friends and neighbors alike.

Out of the forty odd gardeners at James Park some are like Robin, retirees with leisure time on their hands. Meanwhile, others rely on the crops they grow to feed their families or at least supplement their diets with fresh fruits and vegetables which they’re assured have no harmful chemicals sprayed on them.

Technically, the land belongs to the City of Evanston and is overseen by a lands department head. But once a person pays a minimal annual fee (USD80), she or he has access to all sorts of benefits.

“We each get the key code to enter the garden. And once inside we have access to wheel barrels, shovels and other gardening equipment,” says Robin.

“We also have access to water and hoses so we can keep our gardens green and thriving.”

Having spent all her working life behind computers, analyzing company spread sheets and problem-solving in a transnational company, Robin says gardening has ensured she doesn’t miss the corporate world at all.

Having a plot that’s around 15 feet long and 10 feet wide, she’s been able to grow everything from beans, broccoli and Brussel sprouts to kale (sikuma wiki), Swiss chard, yellow squash and zucchini as well as egg plants, tomatoes and green peppers.

“But I’ve been in battle with the bunnies from the beginning,” Robin says. “Last season they destroyed my beans and nearly finished my lettuce. But this year, I’ve gotten better at fencing so I think my veggies will be okay.”

Fortunately, the bunnies are not as keen on munching Robin’s spices so she grows everything from mint and oregano to “parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme,” the latter a lyric that had me humming the Simon and Garfunkel classic tune the rest of our morning in the gardens.

I got to hum why my friend weeded and harvested scads of yellow squash, parsley and thyme. I had anticipated meeting some of other gardeners who I’d been told were regulars in the gardens. There was the African American man who’d been tending his garden plot for the past 20 years and who’d given Robin invaluable advice when she first started out.

Then there was the Eastern European gentleman who’d constructed a beautiful trellis at his garden gate on which he had draped raspberry vines, the berries of which were just starting to ripen as we passed by. The temptation to snitch one or two was almost overpowering; but seeing how careful members of the gardens were not to intrude on one another’s territory, I felt compelled to abide by their invisible ethic and kept my fingers to myself.

After she’d finished weeding, Robin gave me a ‘grand tour’ of the gardens where I saw almost every postage-stamp sized plot proliferating with leafy greens, be they pumpkin, kale, Swiss chard or sundry spices.

That day we apparently arrived too late to meet any of the other gardeners since we’d got there around 9:30am, and the veterans are said to be there from dawn onwards.

But even in their absence, I was able to see the beauty of community gardens. What I especially loved was the way Robin brought all her veggie left-overs from home and throw them into her ‘compost tumbler’, a manual machine that provided her with all the organic fertilizer she needed to grow beautiful vegetables, like to yellow squash, baby tomatoes and parsley that I took home that warm sunny day.

NATURE THRIVES AT CHICAGO BOTANIC GARDENS

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted August 7, 2017)

In a country like Kenya where land is a precious commodity, particularly now when drought is making life impossible for the vast majority of people, it might seem unfathomable that one garden, filled with flowers and trees, islands and man-made lakes, rivers and waterfalls, can be 385 acres.

What might be even more inconceivable is the idea that the land is prime property for so-called development, located as it is just next to a busy eight-lane super highway connecting Chicago’s northern suburbs to the big city.

And what might be even more surprising is that nearly all of those 385 acres are open to the public. (And what’s closed off is only what’s being newly developed to make the Garden even more attractive to both science-minded people and ordinary families as well).

But that’s the way it is at the Chicago Botanic Garden.

In fact, the Garden is not just one public space. The site which is west and north of Chicago and Lake Michigan is made up of 27 different gardens.

My personal favorites are the Dwarf Conifer Garden (which reminds me of Christmas since conifers were traditionally our family’s Christmas tree), the Rose Garden which is inundated with roses of many colors, the Japanese Garden (with all its miniature Bonsai trees) and the Native Plant Garden (since it’s fascinating to see the growing interest of people committed to restoring the Illinois prairie by seeding indigenous plants. The ecologists say the native plants will attract indigenous bugs and pollinators which in turn will bring back both migrating and native birds who used to regularly stop by native gardens specifically to munch on those juicy bugs).

But frankly, all of the gardens and woods are amazing to walk around. The day I was recently there with a friend, the place was incredibly congested with human traffic. People from all over the Chicago area come to see the Gardens, but since the place is so vast, once you’re inside and on any one of the walking trails, you hardly notice how many hundreds of people come to the Garden on a regular basis.

Since we only had a short time to see the Garden that day, my friend and I paid to board the open-air Tram that took us all around the outskirts of the garden. We missed a lot not being able to walk around the interior of the place, but at the same time, we were able to see all the islands that were inside the man-made lake (which actually flows into the Chicago River).

We were also able to get an overview of all the scientific research centers that operate in the Garden. There's a Plant Science Center, a Learning Center and Learning Campus. And there’s even a whole Butterfly House filled with both indigenous and exotic butterflies.

What I also found intriguing were the activities under construction that our Tram drove by. We saw a slew of giant state-of-the-art green houses that were clearly going to be growing fascinating stuff.

Sadly,  the Tram we road on had a tour guide who didn’t know what would be grown there, but she was able to tell us about the new Kris Jarantoski Campus which is named after some politician who’s raised money for that construction.

My friend was a bit disappointed that all those new buildings going up were taking away land that could have been committed to more flora. But at the same time, that campus (located at the far end of the Garden) will attract more scientific interest and scholars who are likely to add more notoriety and prestige to the Garden.

And for better or worse, many acres out of the 385 are devoted to public parking. But even the open-air parking lots are carefully marked so someone cannot easily get lost.

But if you get to the Chicago Botanic Garden, make sure you come with good walking shoes since you’ll want to see everything, if you give yourself the time.

Fortunately, in the Visitors’ Center, there’s a well-stocked restaurant catering to all kinds of tastes (and pocket books). The foods are fresh and one can eat either indoor or outside where one can have a fabulous view of the Garden.

The fact that it’s open 365 days a year is pretty remarkable, since Chicago has four seasons, and one might think that in winter time, when there is snow and ice and freezing weather, the place would be closed. But being committed to nature, the Garden is said to turn (when it’s cold) into a magical winter wonderland.

But whatever the season, the Chicago Botanic Garden is one place to see the Midwest of America at its natural best.

Margaretta 'on the Move'

^{By Margaretta wa Gacheru}

^{August 5, 2017}

[out of Evanston, Illinois, USA]

^{Nancy Schultz has most generously afforded me a bit of space in her current issue of The DAR Bugle to revive my column, ‘Margaretta on the Move’.}

^{The occasion of her offer was our meeting at the Evanston home of the 19th century feminist reformer and DAR member Frances Willard. Nancy had organized an historic event in early August which the DAR claimed Willard’s identity as being not only a great woman leader who helped pave the way for women’s suffrage among many other progressive initiatives, but also being a committed DAR.}

^{By raising funds to renovate Willard’s Evanston home (which is now a national museum) as well as placing a marker at her grave at the Rosehill Cemetery in Chicago, Nancy did something important not only for the Fort Dearborn Chapter but for all women. That’s because Willard had been, like so many great women, almost forgotten by history and the DAR and Nancy’s initiative is serving to reverse that trend.}

^{I was so impressed with Nancy’s program and also with my own discovery of what a brilliant woman activist Frances Willard had been,  that I couldn’t turn Nancy down when she suggested I fill my fellow Fort Dearborn DAR women in on my recent globe-trotting.}

^{My current home base is still Nairobi, Kenya where I work for the largest English-language multimedia house known as the Nation Media Group. I write regularly in ‘Business Daily’ (Kenya’s equivalent of Financial Times) but my focus is not economics; it’s on the arts. I have several weekly columns in which I write about mainly the visual and performing arts. It’s my privilege to do so since there is a lot happening, and a great deal of creative energy is outpouring in both of these fields.}

^{I write stories and also take the photos for them, so I am technically a photojournalist although I do not consider myself a professional. I do earn a bit of cash (not much) in the process, but it is sufficient to inspire me to stick there for the time being. Plus I have free passage to all the theatre and dance performances (many of which feature international artists) as well as to all the exhibitions and book launches, etc. Plus I thrive on deadlines, so I am kept busy working seven days a week, both day and night.}

^{The other big bonus to my job is that I often get to go places where the expenses including transport are covered. Thus, I have been to the Kenya coast several times, especially to the picturesque town of Lamu, where motor vehicles are not allowed on the roads. I have attended several so-called ‘Painters Festivals’, organized by a wonderful German retired restaurant owner from Hamburg who fell in love with Lamu island, especially the village of Shela. Most of the artists are European, but increasingly Kenyan artists have also been invited. I confess I did a bit of advocacy work to see that the Kenyans also had the opportunity to spend three weeks with other artists painting picturesque sites all around the island.}

^{But then, in addition to traveling to galleries located all over the city and the outskirts of Nairobi and to theatres situated mostly in the city center, I have spent a fair amount of time visiting my son who stays currently with his wife and two precious little girls in Italy.}

^{Mike, who is a Major in the US Army, is based in Vicenza, not far from Venice. I have been blessed to have a wonderful daughter in law who is a marvelous trip organizer. So with them, I have visited Florence, Rome, Pisa, Venice, and all parts in between. All that is said about the breathtaking beauty of Italy is true, and I am so grateful to have a family happy to listen to my wish above all to visit Florence and the Uffizi Museum.}

^{Never have we had enough time in any of these places, but I am delighted to have had those few days with family and with fellow travelers. What is also a blessing is that my editor in Nairobi insists that I write about all of these places so I have done just that. I have a blog with the stories called Kenyan Arts Review, but I don’t recommend it since I haven’t had time to include all the photographs that appeared in the paper to accompany the stories. Nonetheless, I did start to set up a website, but I advise anyone with such a goal to make sure you get a trustworthy web designer. Mine never completed my website, but if you google my pen name, Margaretta wa Gacheru, you will find a few stories and possibly even the unfinished website.}

^{I am grateful to have come back to Evanston which is where I am while writing this brief M on the Move piece. I try to get back to the place I know is my real home in my heart twice a year. But in the meantime, my base in Kenya is a joy since I do love the sun and I love my work. But I am happy to reconnect with my DAR sisters. It was a privilege to see many of them at Frances Willard’s Rest Cottage, and I look forward to seeing you the next time I am in the area.}