MARGARETTA'S ARTS BIO

Margaretta wa Gacheru, Ph.D has been writing about Kenyan art for the local media for decades. She began at Weekly Review and Nairobi Times with Hilary Ng’weno, when few Kenyans were committed to creating contemporary art. Today the situation has changed dramatically.

Margaretta has written about Kenyan art for nearly all the Kenyan press. She has worked for The Standard, The Star, The Nation Media Group, Viva, Men Only, The East African and others.

           Margaretta with Eunice Waititu at Tafaria Castle. Behind is Fred Abuga triptych commissioned by George Waititu

She went back to school and got a Ph.D in the sociology of contemporary Kenyan art. Her dissertation became a book, “The Transformation of Contemporary Kenyan Art: 1960-2010”.

Currently, Margaretta has a weekly visual arts column in The Business Daily and one in The Saturday Nation. She has personally witnessed ‘the transformation of contemporary Kenyan art’ and is excited by the rapidly changing Kenyan art world.

Margaretta also coordinates the Kenyan Arts Diary, an annual catalog of up-and-coming as well as established Kenyan and East African artists. The Diary 2020 will contain 70 artists.

                                                                     Staff at Business Daily 2019 August

August 30, 2019

                                                                            MG with Eric Gitonga, Photographer

TONI MORRISON: A TRIBUTE TO THE DOYEN OF AFRICAN-AMERICAN LITERATURE

BY Margaretta wa Gacheru (28 August  2019)

If you hadn’t read The Bluest Eyes, Beloved or Song of Solomon before August 9th, you might be among the multitude who made book sales of all Toni Morrison’s award-winning books shoot sky high following her passing on that fateful summer day in New York City.

Black America’s first Nobel prize winner (1993) was already renowned in many circles, (especially literary and African American ones) for her brilliant array of books before she passed at aged 88.

But it wasn’t just because she was the first Black American woman to win a Nobel that she was world acclaimed. She was also the first black American woman to achieve so many other things: she was the first of her kind to be a best-selling fiction writer, and as the first black female editor at a leading Manhattan publishing house, she was first to open literary channels for many more brilliant black American writers to prove that there are a myriad of powerful stories about the black experience that are yet to be told.

There are many more reasons why Toni Morrison has been so widely mourned since she stepped off humanity’s stage after years of teaching, writing and also editing some of the greatest English-language writers of our time. Possibly the most notable one would be in relation to her writing and her specific choice of subject matter. For she was intent on placing the black experience at the very centre of her writing. And not only that. She also felt deeply compelled to remove from her writing any hint or interest in taking heed of what she called ‘the white gaze’ (meaning ‘what will white people think of me?’ which was of no concern to her)

In the countless interviews, keynote speeches and dialogues that she had with scholars, members of the media and colleagues like Angela Davis, Maya Angelo and Oprah Winfrey, she made clear that the chief concern of her writing was speak of the black experience to black people, having no need to apologize for populating all of her books with black people in all of their many facets.

On more than one occasion, she had to set her white interviewer straight, that she had no desire to include white people in her literary world. What’s more, she was clearly offended when a journalist like Charlie Rose would ask her ‘when was she going to start writing about white people?’

In one interview, (one of the many that are now surfacing on YouTube), she explained that she had never really wanted to make the subject of slavery a central topic of her writing. But because she felt that whole traumatizing experience of slavery had been so sanitized, even by black writers who she felt didn’t want to offend their white readership, she had no choice but to address the theme in books like Beloved, the one that earned her the Pulitzer Prize for Literature.

Even a Black leader like Frederick Douglas who’d led the struggle to abolish slavery in the US (prior to Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation) hadn’t told the full story of the brutal, dehumanizing and traumatizing experience of those 400 years. And to her, that was because they had a white audience, not a black one, in mind as they wrote.

 “I know [Frederick] Douglas could not tell white people about the real horrors of slavery,” she said at The Hay Festival in UK. “It would have been too disturbing for them to hear,” she added. But then she was pressed by her Hay interviewer: ‘Then where have you gotten your stories about slavery?” He was genuinely curious since slavery has been a resounding theme of her writing, especially in a work like Beloved, the book many people believe is her best novel.

Beloved was so loved by Oprah Winfrey, for instance that she paid for the rights to produce the film based on the novel about a woman who killed her own daughter rather than have her grow up a slave.

The story is actually about the child that died. In the film it’s a haunting, disturbing story about the child’s ghost who returns to haunt her mother and inquire why she had to die. But for me, the film didn’t quite capture the passion, conviction and depth of feeling that propelled Beloved’s mother into making the radical and devastating choice to kill her own child. 

Morrison told her interviewer that in that case, she had found a small story about a real woman, Margaret Carter who was caught having slaughtered her child. Being a slave who had escaped and then been recaptured, Margaret posed a problem for her slavers. Would they charge her with murder or theft? For depending on one’s perspective, she had taken a life that didn’t belong to her. The baby according to that system was born into slavery and thus belonged, like a piece of chattel, to the same slave owner as Margaret.

The newspaper story was incomplete but it set Morrison’s imagination in motion such that she wrote a dazzling novel, her 4th? After writing first The Bluest Eyes, Sula and Song of Solomon, she wrote what’s considered her masterpiece, Beloved.

But she didn’t stop after that. She wrote two more, namely Jazz and Paradise which, with Beloved, are considered to be a trilogy. Then she continued writing novels like Love, A Mercy, Paradise, Home, God Save the Child, and many more.

Morrison, who was born in a rural corner of Ohio, was brought up in a largely black community, so she says she wasn’t fully aware of racism in America until she went off to Howard University.

“I was determined to go to a school where there were many brilliant black minds,” which is why she chose Howard University, one of the leading historically black schools in the US. But while she majored in English, she said she gravitated towards the theatre department because they treated literature differently, less academically. In their readings, they dramatized writings which brought the books alife, and that was what she loved.

Yet one fascinating point she made in an interview she gave towards the end of her days, she confessed that Chinua Achebe had had a transformative effect on her consciousness. His creation of an Africa-centric world in Things Fall Apart impressed her deeply and spurred her on to do the same only within a black American context.

Born in 1931 as Chloe Ardelia Wofford in Lorain, Ohio, just four years before Achebe (1935), she read Things fall apart several years after it was published in 1958. She had already graduated from Howard (1953) and had moved on to Cornell University where she got a Master’s degree before returning to Howard where she taught English for a short time. By the late Sixties (after being married and divorced (1964) and having two sons), she’d moved to New York City and got a job at Random House where she became America’s first black female editor of fiction.

It was during her early days at Random that one of her first projects was working on the groundbreaking ‘Contemporary African Literature’ which featured relatively unknown writers like Achebe, Wole Soyinka and Athol Fugard.

But it was also while at Random House that she wrote her first novel, The Bluest Eyes in 1970, which brought her national acclaim and made her realize she was meant to be a writer in her own right. She remained at Random after writing her second novel Sula, but soon after that, she resigned to write full time.

Some readers love Sula above all her books, but it was her next novel, Song of Solomon (1977) which earned her the National Book Critics Circle Award the same year. And after that, it was Beloved (1987) that won her the prestigious Pulitzer Prize in 1988 and the American Book Award the same year. Oprah made it into a film starring Thandie Newton in 1998. And ever since then, Toni Morrison has been considered a national treasure, beloved for her writing and her wisdom all over the world.

RAZOR: CULTURE CLASH AS WOMEN FIGHT BACK

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (28 August 2019)

It’s never easy to stage a play, leave alone a musical, which is set in rural Africa without the tale looking slightly contrived. But Millaz Production managed to do it with ‘Razor’, the remarkable play scripted by Justin Ong’wen, directed by Xavier Nato and staged last weekend at Kenya National Theatre.

There are several reasons why the production worked. Millaz’s large cast was well rehearsed, including the singers who doubled up as villagers and the dancers whose stylish choreography made sense, especially when villagers went running after the two city girls and the chase got dramatized through dance.

What’s more, the costuming was consistent with what we know about traditional Maasai culture. The body painting was beautiful as was the jewelry, and the circumciser’s hut looked authentic.

But there were other features that kept us on our toes as we watched ‘Razor’, a production we learned after the show had been first staged at the 2014 Kenya Schools Drama Festival. Apparently, it made such a powerful impression on Xavier Nato that he’d vowed to stage it again.

One thing that worked was the way much of the play was staged as a flash-back. Or shall we call it a narrated memory of Melanie’s mother, Naserian (Regina Awuor), the Maasai woman who had run away from wedlock after she’d been forcibly circumcised at age 14 and then made immediately to sleep with the older man, Moiket (Andrew Smollo), in an arrangement that both her parents condoned.

The play had opened in a courtroom in which Naserian and her daughter Melanie (Brenda Gesare) are suing Moiket for damages caused to the mother. But as she is comatose as the play begins, the court has no evidence with which to convict the man so it’s about to set him free.

But moments before the ruling is made, Naserian revives and the flashback proceeds.

Naserian’s Maasai community is about to be evicted by Moiket since he was never repaid Naserian’s dowry and yet 20 years have gone by. He’s come either for another bride (he already has three wives) or for the dowry. Otherwise, he’s reclaiming the people’s property which he claims he owns.

That’s when Melanie arrives at her mother’s village. She’s a city girl who’s never visited rural areas before. But apparently, she’s come not simply out of curiosity or to get acquainted with her cultural ‘roots’.  No, she’s come for the unconvincing reason of wanting to ‘ask the blessings’ of her relations for her anticipated marriage to her gay girlfriend and partner, Taylor (Clare Wahome).

That’s the only unconvincing element in the play. It makes more sense for her to have come to meet her mother’s family. But even that seems contrived since she knows why her mother had fled.

In any case, Melanie falls into the trap of becoming the sacrificial lamb who’s picked to pay off her family’s debt to Moikot by marrying the guy. But before that happens, we have a flashback within the flashback and we see the reenactment of Naserian’s harrowing circumcision. What’s genius about this move is that the whole experience of FMG is never seen, but the pain inflicted on Melanie’s mom is palpable. (However, we didn’t need two weepy actresses replaying Naserian’s pain to feel it viscerally.)

What was also brilliant about Ong’wen’s script is the way Melanie, in partaking of her mother’s pain, was able to explain why she was gay and had no interest in being with a man after what men (and women) did to her mom.

Again, what doesn’t make sense about Melanie’s coming ‘home’ to her mother’s village to seek her grandfather’s blessing is that he is the man who didn’t just condone his daughter’s circumcision. He mercilessly made her go with Moiket, even before her wound was healed, thus ensuring her pain would be even more excruciating.

Who saved the day was the Circumciser woman (Bettina Nyanchama). She discerned that Melanie could not marry Moikot because he had hastily impregnated her mother, making Melanie his child.

The fact that some people have called ‘Razor’ a comedy is odd, but Xavier Nato managed to keep the story comedic despite its dealing with such heavy topics as FMG and homosexuality. Yet both issues are treated not in sensational terms but as topics that reflect one more clash of cultures. In this case it’s between patriarchy Maasai-style and women’s defiance of it, coming from a contemporary urban context which is a reality in Kenyan life today.

NEW SCULPTURE GARDEN ON ACRES IN ROSLYN

Bertiers' mama greets you at One Off Gallery's Roslyn Riviera Sculpture Exhibition

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted 27 August 2019)

One Off Gallery’s new Sculpture Garden started off small. Carol Lees, the Gallery’s founder-curator originally invited her friend and avid sculpture collector, Marc van Rampelberg, to curate a sculpture show featuring works by the family of the late Samwel Wanjau.

Renowned for being Kenya’s greatest sculptor, Samwel spawned two sons, Jackson and Anthony, both of whom took after their dad artistically. Then Jackson had a son, Samuel Wanjau, Jr. who clearly has imbibed the genius of his elder namesake as well as his dad’s and uncle’s.

Nonetheless, despite Marc noting the show could easily get underway, based solely and the families’ sculpture that he owns, he set his sights on a larger, more ambitious showcase of Kenyan sculpture.

“I wanted to open it up and put out the call for all sculptors to bring their art to One Off,” says the founder of Rampel Design who had already agreed to curate the event. “That way the premiere exhibition of One Off’s new Sculpture Garden could be inclusive.”

The Sculpture Garden is also a concept that took off almost by happen stance. Carol, being ever the conservationist, was concerned about the shrinking population of Colobus Monkeys who have been losing their habitat. An environmentalist friend suggested that she plant more trees in her backyard where the monkeys could happily find a new home.

“But in the process of tree planting, we realized the Eucalyptus had to go since they were effectively [hogging] the land where indigenous trees were meant to grow,” says Carol who initially had no idea she’d be uprooting scores of Eucalyptus trees. But it was while that process got underway that Carol and Marc together came up with the notion of the Sculpture Garden.

The actual process got underway last April, and up until the morning of the 31^st, she and Marc have been working to get not one, two or three but four spaces all set for the grand opening of the Sculpture Garden premiere.

“I’m curating in four spaces,” says Marc, noting there are three at the original One Off: one in The Loft, one in the former Stable and one on more than an acre of ground going from The Loft down to the far end of the property.

The fourth space is at Rosslyn Riviera Mall where Carol opened the One Off Annex several months back. “At the Saturday opening, you can come first to the Mall and after that, we will have tuk tuks available to transport people up to One Off Gallery,” says Kui Ogonga who assists Carol in the management of the Gallery.

A few days before the opening, sculptures were still coming in, brought by mainly up-and-coming artists who were hopeful that their work wouldn’t be excluded.

“Quite a number of artists whose sculptures are in the show won’t be in the catalogue since they came after it was complete,” says Carol.

But that’s not a problem since she is conscientious about captioning all of the artwork. That is how one can know that more than 60 artists are exhibiting in the show which is simply entitled “Form”. What’s more, many of them have more than one piece in the exhibition which means that even with four different venues, Marc and his team have had a challenge fitting everything in.

But this is where Carol’s new Sculpture Garden is spacious enough to accommodate all the works that might be a tight squeeze in the other three indoor galleries.

To say ‘Form’ is unprecedented is an understatement. But leave alone the settings, the spaces and open invitation to exhibit in one of the most influential galleries in Kenya. The works themselves are magnificent.

There are sculptures by well-known Kenyan sculptors like all four Wanjau’s (since Marc is sharing pieces by Samwel, Senior), Edward Njenga, Gakunju Kaigwa, Peterson Kamwathi, Maggie Otieno, Bertiers Mbatia, Meshak Oiro,  Kevin Oduor, Peter Ngugi, Nani Croze, Cyrus Kabiru Ng’ang’a, Dennis Muragure, Kepha Mosoti, Chelenge Van Rampelberg, Peter Walala, Morris Foit, Onyis Martin and the late Omosh Kindeh.

But there are also many rising stars exhibiting too, including Evans Ngure, Harrison Mburu, Irene Wanjiru, Peter Kenyanya, Lionel R. Garang, Sebawali Sio, Tabitha wa Thuku, Robinson Kimathi, Taabu Munyoki and Mario Cassini as well as Ugandan artists, Francis Nnaggenda, Charles Kamya, Michael Angelo and his father, the late Expedito Mwebe.

The exhibition includes conceptual sculpture like that of Xavier, Junk art by the likes of Cyrus Kabiru and Evans Ngure, semi-abstract art like that of Charles Kamya, abstract art like Darshana Raja and even live sculpture which Marc has arranged with a mime artist who will perform during the opening.

“There will even be a light show in which the light will be the sculpting medium,” says Marc who has worked hand in hand with Carol to ensure ‘Form’ is a world class event.

 

Phillda Njau performing at her Students' Piano Concert 2018

INDIGENOUS STONE SCULPTURES SPEAK FOR ENDANGERED WILDLIFE

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted 26 August 2019)

Kenya may be best known for its runners, wildlife, coffee and tea. But we have yet to gain renown for our indigenous stones, although it’s likely that would have changed had the multi-ton Kisii stone sculpture of Elkana Ong’esa’s ‘Elephant Family’ arrived as scheduled in Washington, DC for the Smithsonian Institution’s summer festival of 2014.

Sadly, the sculpture never left JKIA due to a combination of confusion and corruption on the part of Kenyan organizers of the Smithsonian trip.

“That sculpture was meant to be exhibited and then auctioned off at the Smithsonian, which would have given an international audience the chance to see the beauty of Kisii stone sculpture,” says Mutuma Marangu, curator of the Kenyan stone exhibition currently on at Nairobi National Museum.

“Nearly Extinct: Elephants and Rhino” is an exhibition of over 70 sculptures commemorating two of our most endangered species. Created by four of the country’s finest stone sculptors, they all ‘cut their teeth’ artistically working in Kisii soap stone.

But for this special show, the four have sculpted in more than 17 indigenous stones collected from not just Kisii but from seven other counties, namely Kajiado, Kiambu Kwale, Meru, Migori, Tsavo and Turkana.

The four sculptors are Peter Kenyanya Oendo, Gerard Motondi Oroo, Charles ‘Duke’ Kombo and Robin Okeyo Mbera whose ‘Afro-Cubism’ exhibition was curated by Mr Marangu at the Museum a year ago.

“This exhibition was first discussed three years back. Mr Marangu said he wanted to highlight the issue of conservation,” says Peter Kenyanya who was the first sculptor from Kisii that Marangu met. “He found me and my sculpture at Village Market 12 years ago [in 2007]. That is when he started collecting sculpture from Kenya,” Kenyanya recalls.

Professionally, Marangu works in the field of finance. But he has become one of Kenya’s most committed collectors of indigenous stone sculpture. “I started collecting once I realized that art was an excellent way to get to know Kenyans from other parts of the country,” he says.

But more than simply getting to know the artists, Mutuma feels strongly that their skills as well as the wide array of indigenous stones that they can sculpt makes them ‘world class’.

“Another thing that makes their work exceptional is that these four artists sculpt using both hand and power tools, which isn’t true of sculptors in other parts of Africa,” says Mutuma, comparing Kenyans to sculptors from Zimbabwe, Egypt and Senegal.

What also makes them special in the curator’s mind is that they can sculpt both in soft stones (like the soap stone from Kisii) as well as extremely hard stones (like the petrified woods from Turkana and Kisii counties).

Kenyanya credits Elkana Ong’esa for being the first Kisii artist to start sculpting in stones other than the ones from Kisii. However, Kenyanya’s 2014 exhibition at Village Market is the first time I personally saw so many indigenous stones carved by a Kenyan artist.

In this show, all four sculptors work in a variety of stones, although Kenyanya who has more than 30 pieces in the show has also practiced his skill on nearly all the various stones in the show. Those include everything from Amethyst, Basalt, Bluelace Agate, Granite, Graphite, Green Petrified Wood and Limestone to Magma (volcanic) stone, Marble and Mudstone, Opal, Petrified Wood, Pumice (volcanic) stone, Quartz, Sandstone (aka Grinding stone), Silicate, Soap stone and Water-filtered stone.

With all of the works under individual glass cases, the exhibition can initially feel slightly impersonal, especially as all of the stones seem to beg ‘please touch me’. All clearly have diverse colors and textures, although most have been carefully smoothed and polished.

The only sculptures that appear to have jagged edges are the amethyst, featuring a family of elephants carved in-the-round and one petrified wood elephant whose shape is semi-abstract, in part because Kenyanya’s sculpting seems to have followed the grain of the wood.

But whether jagged or smooth, the sculptures are not meant to be merely beautiful works of art. According to Marangu, he hopes the exhibition will be multi-purposed in that it will ideally generate interest in not only art and conservation, but geology, geography, and a host of other concerns that he sees arising from the exhibition.

With all the sculptures spread across the Creativity Gallery according to the chronology in which each artist carved his pieces, Marangu has also create a giant map of Kenya, clearly designating which counties are the sources of all the indigenous stones.

CORPORATES SUPPORT GRAFFITI ART @ CAPITAL CENTRE

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted 24 August 2019)

In some countries, graffiti is illegal. But in Kenya, graffiti is increasingly being seen as an art form, and one that’s serving to advance popular appreciation of fine art as a whole.

For O.S. Naul of the Capital Centre, graffiti was as artistic means that could beautify the walls around the Centre. “I originally had wanted graffiti art on all 42 stone panels of the wall. But we finally had to limit it just to ten,” says the man who master-minded the ‘254 Graffiti Jam’.

The Jam started last Wednesday, 21 August when the ten graffiti artists selected to be contestants in the Jam converged on the Centre. They got to work on their respective panels on the wall, creating graffiti patterned after the designs that got them accepted to be among the finalists.

The ten included Bantu (aka Harrison Chege), Daddo Omutitti, Msale (aka Brian Masasia), Sermone (aka Sammy Mwangi), Trevor Mutesia, Wallace Maina, Faith Mutano, Mohammed Mwaruwa, Ishartlives and Smokillah (aka Douglas Kihiko).

“Their deadline was last Friday, 23^rd August at 5pm,” says Emma Macharia of EM Consultancy who coordinated the Jam together with O.S. Naul and his Capital Centre team. “The following day was when they were judged by a team of four, including one of Kenya’s leading graffiti artists, Bankslave (aka Kevin Esendi), Buddha Blaze, a creative arts consultant, Edna Mamusi of Capital Centre and the arts correspondent from Business Daily,” Emma adds.

The first prize winner would receive KSh150,000; the second prize Sh50,000 and the third prize would be Sh30,000. Plus all the contestants were to get Sh10,000 for their participation. All the cash awards came mainly from Prime Bank with a chunk coming from The Shack restaurant as well.

The other sponsors included Sparko and Basco Paints, providers of the spray paints and wall paints (respectively), Switch TV, Naivas, Telkom, Art Caffee and Capital Centre.

Finally, the winning artist got an art commission to paint a graffiti wall inside Capital Centre.

The challenge given to all of them was twofold, to create their graffiti based on the theme, ‘Nairobi: an urban city at its finest,’ and to include the red, white and blue Capital Centre logo in their artwork.

But the judges had a more stringent criteria. “We were judging on the basis of artistic technique and its effective execution as well as the clarity of the message [meaning the theme] presented and the use of color,” says Bankslave, a graffiti artist who will soon be celebrating 20 years of doing graffiti art, not only in Kenya but all over the world.

He adds it wasn’t easy to make the final pick but first prize went to Bantu for his managing to include a wide range of colorful, iconic images of Nairobi in his graffiti. He painted wildlife and city centre high rises as well as a matatu filled with passengers, including a sports fan blowing his vuvuzela. The Capital Centre logo was also there, discretely woven into the fabric of his art.

Winning a close second was Msale who was intent on amplifying the beauty of Nairobi’s ‘finest’, including a beautiful African woman and a garden filled with botanically-accurate flowers. His focus was slightly less on the urban elements of the city and more on what is most refined and rare about Nairobi. But his painterly technique was incomparable and classic, so the judges felt compelled to award the artist.

Finally, another close call came as the third prize went to Daddo for his graffiti art which also met all the criteria and equally had a stylish flare to his portrait of Nairobi.

  

AT THE CHANDARIA'S EXOTIC AND INDIGENOUS PLANTS MINGLE

 By Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted 21 August 2019)

While Aruna Chandaria may be married to one of the biggest industrialists and philanthropists in Africa, this award-winning gardener is also a powerful force in her own right.

Co-founding the Chandaria Foundation with her husband Manu almost 60 years ago, Aruna prefers keeping a low profile. But ever since they moved in 1969 to Muthaiga, into the home of the former Cabinet Minister Bruce McKenzie, she has been a masterful home-maker and dedicated gardener.  She’s also an author, having compiled ‘The World of Rice: 101 Delicious Recipes’, and a craftswoman whose tapestries adorn multiple walls in her beautiful home.

But it’s the garden, including her three greenhouses, that have given her the highest public profile since she’s won a myriad of awards over the years, for both her flowers, especially her orchids and also from her tasteful floral arrangements.

“I studied at the Sogetsu School of Ikebana in Japan,” says Aruna who’s a qualified teacher of this age-old Asian art. Having made several trips to Japan over the years, she also learned the art of creating and caring for Bonsai trees. She has a number of these graceful miniature trees doing well in one of her green houses.

The green houses are where most of her orchids are coming into bloom. “Unfortunately, this is not the season for most of my plants to be in bloom,” she says, adding that October is a better month to come back and see the garden in its full glory.

Nonetheless, Aruna’s five-acre garden is a showcase of greenery and glowing colors that makes a walk around the grounds a glorious opportunity to see both indigenous and exotic plants, shrubs and trees.

“As we have traveled [extensively] over the years, I have managed to pick up plants in many countries,” says Aruna, recalling how she has gotten permits to bring in exotic plants from Singapore, Malaysia and Holland as well as from Australia, India, New Zealand and elsewhere.

“I even have one from the Belgian Ambassador who I used to share cuttings [from the garden] with; and then he shared one of his Belgian plants in return,” she adds.

The one shrub that never lets Aruna down irrespective of the season is the bougainvillea. “It blooms in all colors as you can see for yourself. We have ones that are orange, pink, white, red and deep maroon.”

One joy that Aruna has had over the years is watching her plants proliferate. “Many of them started as just a single plant which then grew into a whole patch,” she says. That is clearly what happened with her anthurium as well as with her bougainvillea, honeysuckle and the monstera deliciosa (or ‘swiss cheese plant’) that she was given by a friend from Latin America.

One of the oldest areas of the Chandaria’s lush green grounds is the rock garden which Aruna says she and Manu designed together soon after they bought the house half a century ago.

Filled with several boulders and many rocks that are laid down in geometric patterns, the rock garden also features a gushing waterfall that flows into a pond filled with water lilies, bamboo; and just beside the pond, Aruna’s planted a bottlebrush tree.

The bottlebrush is another tree that has retained its bright red flowers during Nairobi’s cold ‘winter’ months unlike other plants at the Chandaria’s that behave more like her ‘Touch me not’s’. These are sensitive shrubs that fold up their leaves and droop when touched as a means of protecting themselves.

Aruna has the patience to wait for the warm weather when all her flowers bloom and bask in the equatorial sun. However, the one thing she has no patience for are the monkeys that like to come and eat her orchids. “That is why we have had to cover them in [cage-like] mesh so as to keep the monkeys out,”

Otherwise, Aruna has spent many years sharing her garden with family, friends and guests who come from all over the world to meet her family and walk with her around the garden.

Nowadays, she is not quite as hands-on a gardener as she was in years past. Even so, she walks the grounds early every day and gives instructions to her staff who help her maintain its well-tended look.

She adds that they are vigilant, even when she’s away either visiting her children and grandchildren in Europe and the States, or traveling with her husband for the Chandaria Foundation, one of the oldest philanthropic organizations in Africa.

  

FEMINISM ON THE LINE IN ‘CORPORATE WIFE’

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted 20 August 2019)

When the history of 21^st century Kenyan theatre finally gets written, Seth Busolo is bound to be identified as one of the country’s finest stage producer-directors.

For he not only knows how to assemble a highly professional cast and crew as we just saw this past weekend when his theatre company (Wholesome Entertainment) put on his ‘Corporate Wife’ at Alliance Francaise.

Busolo also has the advantage of being a brilliant scriptwriter who creates characters crafted so close to the bone of real-life Kenyans with all their complications and contradictions that no one who’s seeking insights into the Kenyan character should miss one of his plays.

This was especially true in the case of ‘Corporate Wife’ which Busolo was wise enough to get a first-class thespian like Mkamzee Mtawale to direct. Despite Mkamzee being one of the busiest actors in Kenya today (being on stage, film and TV almost simultaneously), she still found time to direct Busolo’s latest drama-comedy. It was she who ensured the show was both nuanced and suspenseful. 

Her direction also  kept us cringing as this one woman, Suzanne (Pauline Kyamo Komu), the ‘corporate wife’ is so caught up with becoming a corporate success that she forgets to be kind, mindful and respectful towards the people she’d previously cared about most.

That includes her spouse, David (played masterfully by Justin Miriichi), her best friend Diane (Marianne Nungo), and even her crazy nephew Kioko (Justin Marunguru).

The one thing that is slightly confusing about the show is the topic of feminism. But that is understandable since the concept of gender equality (which is essentially what feminism means) is hardly visible anywhere in the world, leave alone in Kenya.

But the play should generate important debates since every woman in the show represents a different characterization of what it means to be a woman, wife, worker and feminist in Kenya today.

There is Suzanne who wants to make it in the corporate world. However, she is obstructed from performing at her best by her boss, Jack (Alfred Munyua), who is flagrantly chauvinistic in the sense that he can’t stand seeing women stepping into previously all-male domains. He sees Suzanne advancing on the job and does all he can to frustrate her every move. He even admits that if she’d compromised herself sexually with him, she’d have had a better chance of getting ahead.

Suzanne also listens too hard to her girlfriend Diane (Marianne Nungo) who encourages her to not be ‘held back’ by her husbannd David, especially after he loses his job, leaving her to be the family bread-winner.

One could easily call Diane a feminist. But then she also shows little regard for Suzanne’s decision to marry David in the first place.

Meanwhile, Blessing (Kate Khasoa) is the sort of woman who defers to patriarchy and easily accepts her second-class social status. However, she’s also petty and plays an active role in bringing Suzanne down in the eyes of her best friend, her future boss, Sandra (Daisy Busolo) and even her spouse.

But Sandra seems to be the most progressive woman in the play. She knows what she wants, is not impressed with empty verbiage and is prepared to give other women opportunities to work for a fair wage.

Suzanne is so hungry for corporate success that she accepts Sandra’s job offer without consulting David first or even thinking twice about cutting her best friend out of a senior position, while taking it for herself instead.

Ultimately, both David and Diane call her out for her bad behavior. Diane explodes in thorough-going disgust that a life-long friend could sink to such treachery. And David reminds her of how she broke their vows, especially by ignoring their original plans and making self-serving decisions rather than sustaining a happy, albeit humble family and home.

The ending should conceivably spur lively debate. David accepts a job offer to go to work for Diane in Zanzibar. However, he’s cajoled by Suzanne to stick around and try to make their marriage work. His is a difficult position, and Miriichi leaves us guessing as he lingers over the choice of whether to leave his wife or stay.

He only decides in the final moments of the play, but I won’t spoil it by saying which way he goes. The audience had strong opinions about the direction he took. But in order to find out yourself, you may have to ask Seth Busolo to stage his ‘Corporate Wife’ again.

CREATING A GARDEN OF EDEN

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted 20 August 2019)

If someone wonders what the Garden of Eden looked like, she only needs to visit one home in Westlands to meet Tessa and Joseph D’Souza. The moment you turn into their driveway leading to the house and grounds that they’ve developed over the last 40 years, you’ll be in awe of the multiplicity of green growing things that carpet their ’Eden’.

“Before we moved in, the land had been part of a coffee plantation,” says Joe, a civil engineer and retired restaurateur who recalls how they had to uproot all the coffee before he could construct their spacious home.

“Initially, all we planted were trees,” says Tessa who didn’t take up gardening right away. Instead, they planted avocado, guava and rubber trees as well as plenty of palms and Flame trees.

It was just 15 years ago, after visiting a friend who had a splendid garden that Tessa decided to try her hand at gardening. Previously, she’d been a personal assistant to various corporate bosses before becoming the chief caterer for the International School of Kenya.

“I didn’t consult anyone. I just visited roadside nurseries and picked the plants I liked,” says the lady who now knows the names of virtually every single, flower, shrub and tree in her garden. “I started with anthurium and bromeliad, but as I was still working, I had plant one patch of land at a time.”

Nonetheless, she admits that now, the only item she shops regularly for (apart from family food) is plants. And over the last decade and a half, she, assisted by Joe, have created a wonderland of greenery that includes everything from hibiscus shrubs, orchids and bird of paradise to succulents, purple petrea and air plants which she says “only live on fresh air and love,” without a speck of soil.

Air plants are just one of the magical aspects of the D’Souza’s garden. They hang from practically all the trees, and they flourish just as does every other flower, shrub and tree that grows on their grounds. Air plants grow so well that Tessa is constantly having to clip them and create a whole other plant.

“The birds love the air plant since they pull out its threads to build their nests,” says Tessa who adds that both she and Joe love the birds that visit them all year round. “We have 15 bird feeders and ten water trays, so the birds are happy with us.”

For better or worse, the food and drink also attract two monkeys who are big consumers of her avocados and guavas. They also go for plants that look edible, which is one of the main reasons Joe constructed two ‘Shade Houses’ on the land.

The shade houses are covered in mesh which provides just enough light, but also plenty of shade. “Some plants don’t do well in direct light. They need shade to grow,” says Tessa whose shade houses are filled with everything from ferns, white lilies and asparagus plants to monkey’s tail, anthurium and money plants.

The D’Souza’s don’t chase the monkeys away. But after they molested her red and yellow parrot plant, she had to do something. That was when the shade houses were built.

Tessa is a member of the Horticulture Society, but it was just four years ago that she joined the Orchid Society and started growing orchids with Joe’s help. He added sprinkler systems in the shade houses so that during the hot weather, her plants would continue to flourish.

As you make your way along the narrow foot paths that Joe paved with Marula stones, one can’t help feeling the affection the D’Souza’s have for their garden. But one must also stand in awe of Mother Nature’s infinite variety of living things, some of which Tessa has brought home from those roadside nurseries. That includes the Stag Horns, Chinese Lanterns, Buddha bamboo and pink Floribunda roses. Then too, her garden attracts so many chameleons, squirrels, crows and weaver birds who have moved in to make the D’Souza’s garden a busy place.

Tessa insists on introducing visitors to the two gentlemen who help her keep the garden immaculate and the plants looking ever-green, lush and beautiful. Aggrey and Simon are gardeners who work full-time at the D’Souza’s.

Joe wouldn’t have it any other way since he agrees the garden is an elegant reflection of Nature’s infinite creativity. But equally, he says to keep it that way, “It’s a full-time job!”