Thursday 31 October 2019

KIPCHOGE’S EPIC RUN INSPIRES GRAFFITI ARTISTS IN EASTLANDS


BY Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted 30 October 2019)

Eliud Kipchoge inspired an entire nation as well as the rest of the world when he broke the world record, running 26.2-miles in Vienna, Austria, in less than two hours or 1.59.40.2 minutes.
The epic run of a man renowned for being ‘the world’s finest marathoner’ will go down in history. One place it will be especially remembered is the Eastlands suburb of Gomongo.
That’s the spot where two Graffiti artists found a brick wall that wasn’t cluttered with political posters or painted adverts for this and that. It is right nearby the home of Tony Blair Eshikumo aka Daddo, one of the two Railway Museum-based artists who took on the task of immortalizing Kipchoge in Eastlands with their graffiti art.

The other graffiti expert is Brian Masasia aka Msala, one of trio of so-called ‘second-generation’ graffiti artists known as BSQ. That’s an acronym short for ‘Bomb Squad’ because they used to ‘invade’ sundry spaces where they would create their graffiti art.
That is no longer necessary since they booked a whole railway car behind the Railway Museum where they set up their artists’ studio.
Also at Railway Museum is Patrick Mukabi’s Dust Depo Studio where Msale met up with Kaymist and Bebuto Thufu, and eventually formed BSQ. But all three artists have independent lives, which is how Msale linked up with the younger graffiti artist Daddo who had scouted out the space in Gomongo and invited his elder to join him.
“BSQ are who I’d call Nairobi’s second generation graffiti artists,” says Daddo who completed the Kipchoge mural less than a week after his historical run.
“The first generation are artists like Bankslave, Swift, Smoki, and Uhuru B who call themselves ‘Spray Uzi,” he adds. “I’m one of the third generation along with artists like Mutua and Ebrah. And now there’s a fourth generation coming up,” says Daddo pointing to the Railway Museum’s long brick wall where a number of young artists are arriving to participate in BSQ’s ‘Rangi za East’ which started October 30th and runs through November 3rd.

Daddo is also taking part in Rangi za East, having reserved one brick panel to create his own original graffiti design. He says BSQ organized the event especially so that the next generation of graffiti artists would have a chance to learn from their elders.
“That is how I learned,” he says. “I had always loved to draw, but it wasn’t until I met Smoki who advised me to go to PAWA254 where I would meet the pioneers in graffiti art. That was in 2017,” he adds.
But despite his considering himself a relative newcomer to the art form, Daddo actually just won a top prize at the recent ‘Graffiti Jam’ at Capital Centre where Bankslave was one of the judges. What’s more, his Kipchoge mural at Gomongo is what he calls ‘panoramic’ being 8.5 metres across and 5 metres high.
Daddo says that just as he and Msale were inspired by Kipchoge’s example, they also hope to inspire young kids in that neighborhood who may have never seen art before but now might want to try their hand at it themselves.
For ever since art was eliminated from the national syllabus as an examinable subject, Kenyan youth have little exposure to the arts. That’s why artists like Daddo, BSQ and Spray Uzi all feel they have a role to play in showing Kenyan youth the value of creativity and art.
“Many young people are inspired by what we do,” says Daddo who at 22, is thrilled to join the ranks of young graffiti artists.

Wednesday 30 October 2019

'SON OF AGICH' EXPOSES CHURCH CON-MEN VIA COMEDY

                                                                                        The Con-men in Son of Agich

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted 30 October 2019)

Corruption seems to permeate all facets of Kenyan society, which is why it has become such fertile ground for so many local scriptwriters to dig into and come up with remarkably relevant plays.
The latest one is Millaz Productions’ of ‘Son of Agich’ which Xavier Nato wrote and calls a comedy. The award-winning producer-director-playwright hesitates to call his script a satire but that’s because the show is indeed amusing from the word go.
Nato also directed the play that Millaz performed last weekend at Alliance Francaise. His pet peeve this time around is the duplicitous state of countless churches that have popped up in Kenya in the past few years.
“When people are desperate, they often turn to religion for solace. But that makes them susceptible to con-men’s trickery,” says Nato a few moments before last Sunday’s matinee.
                                                  Playwright, director, co-producer of Son of Agich, Xavier Nato 

That’s what’s happens to the people of Chacha village where a man claiming to be God on earth has brainwashed nearly all the villagers who are devastated by the disappearance of the ‘god’ who called himself Agich.
They have already submitted themselves wholly to Agich’s autocratic power. Believing him to be omnipotent, they bowed down to his authority, even to the ‘rule’ that women are not to speak a word when men are around!
But Agich’s henchmen  have a problem. The guy just died and they don’t know how to cover-up his absence except to claim he’s ascended and is bound to return after a time.
To their good fortune, three criminals who have just escaped from prison accidentally arrive at Chacha village. They are on the run from the cops who are hot on their trail. But then the henchmen have a bright idea:
Why doesn’t one of them become ‘the Son of Agich’ (Domwell Kidero) and the other two be his guardian angels? In accepting their new roles, the three are able to restore hope in the villagers who are quick to transfer their obeisance to the Son of Agich and his acolytes.

Nato’s genius is in tracing the psychological transformation of the self-proclaimed Son of Agich who is quick to start believing he really is all-powerful. Dressed like an archbishop with the gown and regal crown to go with his new-found ‘divine right’ to rule, the Son of Agich becomes tyrannical and forgetful that he’s just playing a part.
But his abuse of power doesn’t last long since the cops arrive and snag the three. They’d been tipped off after the ‘angel’ called Sando (Emmanuel Chindia) breaks character and professes his loving concern for one of the villagers, Pamela (Fulky Agnes). She is shocked, but not so much because he begs her to go to hospital to take a test for breast cancer since she’s in pain and Agich had taught that no one’s allowed to go for modern medicine.
She’s more upset that he and the other two are liars who conned them into believing Agich had returned, embodied spiritually in his son. Pamela tells her girlfriend who’s the one who squeals to the cops (Ken Aswani), which results in a whole tug of war regarding the criminals’ fate.
It only gets settled after Pamela intervenes and comes to their rescue. Her de-conditioning is almost too quick to believe, but it’s also part of the comedic turn. What’s more unbelievable is how easily all the villagers also reverse their loyalties and cope with their new awareness that they’ve been conned all along.
But then, Pamela is in pain and Sando is the only one who seems to care whether she lives or dies.
So “Son of Agich’ isn’t only about the corruption that permeates the churches, turning congregations into zombies who lose their ability to think for themselves. It’s also got a message about breast cancer that’s coincidental with October’s being Breast Cancer month.

Social messaging through theatre isn’t new, and this past weekend we saw it everywhere from Nakuru where ‘Sarafina’ the musical returned, raising public awareness about the racist horrors of the South African Apartheid system to Nairobi’s Lava Latte cafe where mental health and specifically suicide were addressed in Mugambi Nthige’s performance of ‘Every Brilliant Thing.’
But what Xavier Nato does with Millaz Production is also address another key concern about the development of Kenya’s theatre industry.
“With Millaz’,” he says, “we’ve aimed to create a platform for young talent coming out of the Schools Drama Festival so they have a place to go after Form Four to continue developing themselves in theatre.”








Tuesday 29 October 2019

BOOK REVIEW: Mrs Sikand’s Sunflower A Memoir

BOOK REVIEW: Mrs Sikand’s Sunflower A Memoir

Pathpress, 2019 

Reviewed by Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted 29 October 2019)

Every mother deserves a child as expressive in their devotion as Joan Sikand is in her memoir to her mum.
‘Mrs Sikand’s Sunflower A Memoir’ is a testimony from an adoring daughter whose admiration for her mother is manifest in both her glowing introduction to her mum and in her inclusion of her mother’s oil and pastel paintings in the book. There are almost 50 in all.
The mother’s artwork is naturalistic and intimate, featuring her family in domestic poses as well as lovely landscapes, still life’s, nudes and graceful birds in flight.
What makes the artworks most remarkable is the way the beauty and simplicity of her paintings contrasts sharply with the painful journey she made out of North Korea when it was occupied, first by Japanese, then by Communists who subjected her to incarceration (more than once), starvation and torture.
Sikand explains it all in face-paced detail, including how her mother finally made it to the US on a scholarship, then met and married her dad. What we don’t learn is where the mum learned how to paint so well that she was eventually able to maintain the family by painting portraits for rich New York City elites.
The mother’s life story often blends in with Sikand’s o. For she too got scholarships first to Brandeis University, then to the UK where she met and married her Kenya-born spouse who brought her home to a life antithetical to the one her mother endured.
Sikand is clearly a student of comparative religions and her cosmic consciousness permeates the poetry that she has written and interspersed with her mother’s paintings. The poems that touched me most were those that revealed the truths of her mother’s everyday life experience and the way she managed to overcome all of that hardship largely through her art
Several of Sikand’s early poetry books also blended artists’ paintings with her verse. As a consequence of previous research for those books, she managed to find the right publisher who appreciates Sikand’s original style of aesthetics.
It is common knowledge that few publishers anywhere care to publish books of poetry since they tend not to be best sellers. But Sikand discovered Pathpress. They not only appreciate the author’s poetry but also the artistry of her mum.
The one peculiarity about Mrs Sikand’s Sunflower is the way the author only mentions her mother’s name once in the introduction. Her Korean name is Chang Jung Chwe. And at age 90, she is alive and appreciative of her daughter’s labor of love.
But since we don’t know if Chang changed her name once she became a naturalized American citizen, it’s an important detail to find out. For Chung deserves the recognition that Sikand’s book will begin to bring. But if the daughter expects to see her mother’s name and reputation as a world class Asian-American artist grow, we will need to know what name to give her. And that must be done as soon as possible.




MERCY’S REPORTAGE AROUND THE WORLD


By Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted 29 October 2019)

Mercy Kagia takes us around the world, not in 80 days as Jules Verne aimed to do. It’s more like four years (with stops in between).
But it was well worth waiting for the global reportage of this amazing visual artist whose watercolor paintings, sketchbooks and illustrations are currently at One Off Gallery through November 24th.
Kagia is one of those rare painters who humbly calls herself an illustrator, in part because she got her doctorate in Illustration at Kingston University in UK.
What makes her rarer still is that she’s an artist who visually documents virtually everywhere she goes, be it to a tea shop, a sea port or a temple, cathedral or grand old opera house.
Ever equipped with her portable box of paints, brushes, pens, ink and tiny container filled with water, Kagia can also rarely miss carrying at least two of her sketchbooks at a time.

The one other item (apart from a minimal stash of clothes) she’s needed during her four-year trek around the world was a backpack that left her hands free to paint and draw whenever she was moved to do so.
The ‘Travel Drawings’ that she’s displayed at One Off are only a fraction of all that she drew during her trips around Europe, Southeast Asia and Latin America. Nonetheless, they confirm Kagia’s genius and genuine joy in capturing both the mundane and magnificent moments that she sees. Hers is a fervor and freshness of perspective that she shares with the students she’s currently teaching in Augsburg, Germany.
It was back in 2015 that she went to Myanmar, a country that clearly captured her imagination. Yet this show won’t allow us to see all her artistic impressions of the terrain since the majority of illustrations included in this show were originally drawn in one of her precious sketchbooks.
“I chose just a few from each sketchbook to scan and include here,” says Dr Kagia who has been keeping all her sketchbooks since 2002. Admitting she now has hundreds of books which are not for sale, it’s still worth coming to see those few illustrations from her books since her travels take us all the way from the ‘Giraffe-Necked woman’ in Bagan, Myanmar to sights in Japan and South Korea back to Germany, Austria, Spain and Ferrara, Italy where she attended a Sketchbook Festival that brought together artists with similar habits as hers.
Because she is also teaching, Mercy didn’t take her extensive trek around Latin America until late in 2018 through mid-January this year.

”Because I was traveling for three months, I could only carry one sketchbook so I had to limit my drawing to one a day,” says Mercy who went all the way from Columbia, Peru and Chile to Argentina. “We even went by cargo boat up the Amazon [River] from Columbia to Peru,” she adds, clearly having relished the adventure.
“I was sorry I wasn’t able to get to Brazil,” she tells the Brazilian ambassador and his wife who is also an artist having an exhibition December 1st at the National Museum. “But I hope to get there next time,” she adds.
One can hardly doubt that Kagia is likely to get to Latin America again although there will be many more drawings that she’ll do before she gets back there.
Included in her ‘Travel Drawings’ is reportage of time she spent in Kenya, although watercolors like ‘Kisumu Municipal Market’ are only affordable postcards. But that means even art-lovers with a minimal budget will be able to afford one of Mercy’s masterpieces, albeit in a minimal form.


Monday 28 October 2019

AFFORDABLE ART SHOW BREAKS RECORDS

                                     Benson Gichuru the 'boxer' with his two pieces at National Museum KMS show

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted 28 October 2019)

This year’s Kenya Museum Society’s Affordable Art Show was actually bigger and better than ever before.
That might sound hyperbolic but it’s true that in the seven years the show has been running, it has become the ‘biggest art show in East Africa’.
The 2019 edition of the exhibition has broken its own record by displaying more than 430 artworks, (mainly paintings but also sculptures and photography) in Nairobi National Museum’s open-air Courtyard over the weekend.
Even the audience attendance on opening night last Friday was unprecedented. Well over 450 art-lovers attended.
                                                                                   Leah Njenga with Karura Forest

“What I was happy to see,” said Bonnie Donahue, a KMS Council member, “was so many young Kenyans attending the show this year.”
What was also satisfying for the Art Show Coordinator who’s also KMS’s Honorary Secretary, Dr Marla Stone, was the fact that more Sh2.6 million-worth of artworks were sold on opening night. “That is when most of the sales are made,” she said, noting that revenues raised from the Show go towards funding of various Museum infrastructure and exhibition projects proposed by Museum departments themselves.
“The artists retain around 70 percent of the sales,” said Saryoo Shah, another one of the KMS Council members who helped place the red ‘sold’ dots on over 90 artworks on opening night.
                                                                                                 Chesta

 “We artists appreciate the Affordable Art Show a lot since most of us are able to sell something during the event,” said Dickson Nedia who sold both paintings he had brought to the three-day exhibition.
“We also like it because we are paid promptly, within two weeks after the Show ends,” added the award-winning artist who won first prize several years ago at the annual Manjano (formerly Nairobi Provincial) Art Exhibition.
What that appreciation meant was that around 600 artists didn’t mind standing in a long line on October 16th until they got their turn presenting their art to the Show’s curators who included Wendy Karmali, Lydia Galavu and Dr. Stone.
“We took in 900 works of art that day,” Dr Stone recalled. “300 were readily eliminated, but it took some time to select the 434 pieces [representing works of 275 Kenyan and Kenya-resident artists] that we presented at the Show,” she added.
That same ritual has gone on for many more than seven years since the 1990’s witnessed another version of the Affordable Art Show in which KMS got annual sponsors like the ABN-Ambo Bank which no longer operates in Kenya. There were several years when the show was in hiatus after the bank left. But when the Show got re-activated in 2013, many artists were elated. Sponsors like Total Kenya PLC, NCBA Bank and others have also come on board in support of the KMS arts initiative.

Nonetheless, since KMS has an intractable rule that no artwork can be sold for more than Sh100,000, quite a few established artists stay away since they expect to sell their art for more than that. Fortunately, that is not the case for other well-known artists like Elkana Ong’esa, Geraldine Robarts, Zacharia Mbutha and Alex Wainaina.
Nor did the rule keep away Ugandans like Anwar Sadat and Ronnie Tindi, Tanzanians like Haji Chilonga and Happy Roberts, South Sudanese painters like Deng Choi, El Tayeb Dawelbait and Yassir Ali or even the Kenya-based Nigerian painter Akinyemi Ajibade.
What was also exciting to see was how many new artists came out this year after being mentored by more experienced Kenyans. For instance, several students of Joan Otieno’s Warembo Wasanii exhibited as did some from Adam Masava’s Mukuru Art Club and two from Esther Makuhi’s classes at Darubini and Green Yard Junior School, Ngong. What’s more, the number of former Patrick Mukabi students is uncountable since he’s been filling in the gap left when Kenya’s National Curriculum cancelled art as an examinable subject some years back.
Dickson's Nedia's art
There were a fair number of women participating this year, including artists like Beth Kimwele, Naitiemu Nyanjom, Nikita Fazel, Rose Ohono and Rose Kanini. But the numbers were less than 20 (out of 275) which barely reflects the activism of women artists working in Kenya currently.
For example, Sebawali Sio and Moira Bushkimani are exhibiting with other Brush tu Studio artists at One Off Gallery’s Rosslyn Riviera annex. Florence Wangui, Irene Wanjiru and Naomi van Rampelberg are part of another One Off show in the Stables’ side of the Gallery. And the wonderful watercolors and prints of Mercy Kagia are featured since last Saturday in a solo show at One Off’s Loft.




Thursday 24 October 2019

EAST AFRICAN ARTIST STRONG ON BLACK AMERICAN CULTURE


By Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted 25 October 2019)

Matt Kayem is a multi-talented Ugandan artist whose current exhibition at Kioko Mwitiki’s Art Gallery is appealing to a myriad of millennials who admire his ‘Me too’ sort of style.
But his style is not the ‘Me too’ that feminists have made into a mass movement against misbehaving men. His is one that boldly puts himself squarely into his paintings and prints, making no pretense of being modest because he isn’t!
Most of his prints are more like artistic installations in which he creates the visual context, including the colorful African wax-print fabrics used as a visual backdrop and then he inserts himself in assorted poses, depending on the concept he cares to create.

Clearly having fun placing himself at the centre of attention, he then works with a photographer who shoots him in funky poses. In both ‘Son of the Sun I and II’, he’s bare-chested with his most prominent attire being his brand-new Nike shoes.
 In ‘Royal Guard’ he also displays his six-pack as he’s stoically seated on a wooden throne, spear in hand and looking like a man in charge.
But Kayem also likes being transgressive. He explained to Saturday Nation last weekend just before the official opening of his ‘Cool Africa Vol.2’ solo show exactly why he called one print ‘Bad Muganda, Good Afrikan.’
“I am a Baganda, but no good member of that community would place his foot on a bunch of matoke,” as he does in the print. “Neither would he wear dreads or have pierced ears as I do,” he adds, explaining that he prefers being a ‘good African’ because he sees himself in a broader, more Pan-African context.\
Admitting he’s been influenced in his art by African American culture, it is more apparent in his paintings than in his prints. For instance, in ‘The Arrival of the Cool’, he features Michael Jackson, Mohammed Ali and Beyonce, together with George Washington Carver (Black inventor) and at the back of the line is a character that looks like himself.
But probably the clearest example of a contemporary Pan-African perspective that derives from African American culture is his painting of ‘Black Panther’, a work I believe he could have sold several times over before his opening night was past. It’s a painting like all his acrylic works, painted not on canvas but on denim jeans that he opens up and stitches into the shapes he plans to paint on.
One of the denim works that Kayem likes a lot is his portrait of the backside of ‘Natasha Kemigishe’. She’s a voluptuous young woman with a sizeable rear end, the kind he says African men adore, though not the type preferred by Westerners he says.
Natasha’s skirt is made with bark cloth, a fabric used traditionally in Ugandan art. It blends well with his Denim and Dutch-wax print. Natasha herself as a gleam in her eye, as if to say, ‘I know I am desirable; I’m proud of my shape.’
But one of the most interesting prints in his exhibition is entitled ‘Highly melanated’. It features three lovely young women and him, standing in a row. Initially, it’s a wonder what they have in common, but Kayem explains they are all different. Each is a different shade of brown and each is aligned from the lightest-to-the-darkest-toned woman. Coincidentally, they also stand in profile with the darkest being the tallest on down to the lightest being the shortest.
“I thought about deconstruction the ‘colour bar’,” he says noting that melanin researchers now believe ‘the darker you are, the better’ for your health and happiness.




Wednesday 23 October 2019

‘MAN MOMENTS’ ROUSED WOMEN’S WILY RESPONSE

                                  (L-R) Ian Mbugua, Wakio Mzenge, Auudi Rowa and Mwikali Mary in Man Moments

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted 23 October 2019)

Can a play start a revolution?
Can art affect social change to turn the world upside down in a matter of ‘Man Moments’?
Ask audiences that watched the premiere of Back to Basics’ wonderfully radical production last weekend. Devised by Mbeki Mwalimu and her B2B company, it was scripted and directed by Nick Ndeda.
Ndeda’s a man best known as an actor and radio host. But now he’ll be known for writing a play that makes fun of men’s frailties and reveals women’s unnerving capacity to be unabashed in saying what they think, irrespective of whether they offend men or not.
To his further credit, Nick also directed actors just as genius as he is. All were awesome and had their moments to shine and ‘tickle ribs’. None faltered, not in Act one which revolved around a murder, nor in Act 2 which morphed from being a ‘reality show’ hosted by Ian Mbugua, into a ‘game show’ in which three contestants (Bilal Mwaura, Tim King’oo and Ian Mbugua) were literally at the mercy of three women, the show’s host (Wakio Mzenge) and two ‘expert judges’ (Mwikali Mary and Auudi Rowa).
The show had its surrealistic moments, as in act one when the unfaithful spouse (Tim King’oo) transformed into a hungry wolf who stalked, then got stabbed by his prey, the wife (Auudi Rowa) who had a motive for murdering her man but who also seemed to act in self-defense.
The other surreal bit was the futuristic interlude between acts one and two. It’s apparently a metaphor for the core concern of the play, namely the nature of true manliness.
Ian Mbugua played the last man on earth who could still cry, meaning a man who could empathize, who had feelings. A scientific team had set out to find him and collect his tears which were believed to have magical powers to save a human race on the verge of extinction. Staged with heaps of humor, it was still a scene too deep to be an interlude. It needs to become a whole play.
Nonetheless, it served as a segue into the game show in which the three women shame and sexualize the men in ways meant to mirror what men typically do to women.
It was a bit ‘too bawdy’, the women ‘too brash’ for some men. But it was brilliant in my book. I’m calling on B2B to bring us more!



‘MAN MOMENTS’ ROUSES WOMEN’S RADICAL RESPONSE

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (original unedited review)

Can a play start a revolution?
Can social satire set off a spark that explodes so many stereotypes that one’s only left with the bare-boned truth?
Put another way, can art affect social change so rapidly that the world can get turned upside down in a matter of ‘Man Moments’?
Ask audiences that watched the premiere performance of Back to Basics’ wonderfully radical production last weekend. Its original concept came from B2B founder Mbeki Mwalimu. But it was devised with input from the troupe as a team, and then scripted and directed by Nick Ndeda.
Ndeda’s a man best known as an actor and radio host with such a smooth, honey-sweet voice one could listen to him all day. But now that it’s known he has the capacity to write a play that makes great fun of men’s frailties and reveals women’s unnerving capacity to be shameless, daring and unabashed in their freedom to say and do what they think, irrespective of whether they offend male sensibilities or not, Ndeda could be ‘dirt’ in the minds of some ‘suck-it-up’ kinds of hard-core guys.
He was only stitching together ideas that had come out collectively from the team. Nonetheless, he wrote it so well that he deserves to claim credit for writing as well as directing a troupe of actors who are just as brilliant as he is.
One can hardly say that any one actor was more awesome than the other. All had their opportunity to shine and ‘tickle ribs’ with their ingenious performances. None of them faltered for a moment, not in Act one which revolved around a murder nor in Act 2 which morphed from being a reality show (hosted by Ian Mbugua) into a game show where three male contestants (Ian Mbugua, Bilal Mwaura and Tim King’oo) were literally at the mercy of three women, the show’s host (Wakio Mzenge) and her two ‘expert judges’ (Mwikali Mary and Auudi Rowa).
There were surrealistic elements to the show, as for instance, in act one after we had seen the woman’s (Auudi Rowa’s) frustrations with her unfaithful man (Tim King’oo). We see she had a motive for stabbing him multiple times. But then how did he turn into the wolf that she had to finish or be finished? Was the wolf a figment of her imagination that empowered her to do what had been in her subconscious mind since she realized he was an unfaithful beast? Probably, but whether that was it or not, the wolf mask was beautifully made. The arrival of a second female wolf was more than I could fathom however in this well-paced play.
The other wonderfully anomalous bit in the show was the futuristic interlude between what I call acts one and two. It was a fascinating way of introducing one of the core concepts being addressed in Man Moments, namely the nature of true manliness.
Ian Mbugua played the one last man on the planet who could still cry. The mission of the scientific expedition team that found him was to collect his tears to take back to their lab to reproduce. “Mankind” was supposedly at the verge of extinction and his tears were thought have the magic power that could save humans from self-imploding.
The absurdity of the supposed unmanliness of men weeping provided an excellent segue into the game show where the three women shamed and sexualized the men in ways meant to mirror what men typically do to women on a daily basis.
Ian Mbugua was the first man to accuse the women of impropriety for their crass, bawdy language. But he was easily shot down by the women who were unrelenting in their nonstop abuse that only the Rastafari ‘virgin’ (King’oo) was okay with, just because he didn’t get it.
Act two was where, for me, the revolution was born. For the women’s hilarious jokes were all at the expense of men who hadn’t caught on to the reality that the world has changed and women aren’t going to take minimizing stereotypes anymore.
Ndeda’s script was perfectly pitched as the ‘experts’ were merciless in their embodiment of men’s worst attitudes towards women which were now turned back on the men.
In real life, Mbugua, Mwaura and King’oo were great sports as they spoofed themselves and showed off the realities of patriarchy as well as the way male privilege can be shot down easily by women willing to do it. And ever so playfully as they did in ‘Man Moments’.  



YOUTH THEATRE KENYA SHOWCASE NEW SKILLS IN MUSICAL THEATRE


By Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted 23 October 2019)

Students came all the way from Kilifi, Korogocho and Karen last week to take part in a series of musical theatre workshops organized by the Youth Theatre Kenya and led by two brilliant thespians from the National Youth Music Theatre of Great Britain.
Some, like Antonia Akinyi, 12, of Kivukoni School, Kilifi, traveled eight hours by bus to attend the workshops. Meanwhile others, like Nina Redinger, 16, simply walked across the street to Hillcrest International School where Lizzy Jago and Jazz Moll of YTK had worked out logistics for NYMT’s Adam Gerber and Chris Cuming to run what were essentially master classes in music, acting and dance for nearly 100 youth, ages 9 through 21.
“It didn’t matter to us where they came from,” says Chris who, like Adam, runs workshops with NYMT all over UK and beyond. “Once we get to work, nobody cares or has time to think about where somebody comes from. We’re all in it together,” he adds.
That was perfectly clear last Friday night when YTK in association with NYMT staged a Showcase of musical theatre performances at Hillcrest featuring all 100 youth.
“The show was based on songs from Broadway and West End musicals like ‘Les Miserables’ and ‘Hairspray’,” says Adam who appreciates that he and Chris were introducing songs to young Kenyans, few of whom had heard them before. But as such songs are the staples of contemporary musical theatre, he reasoned they were the best way of teaching the basic skills of singing, performance and dance.
“NYMT conducted three [rigorous] two-day workshops in which each group learned two songs from Adam which were then choreographed by Chris,” says Kayla Hotz, 17, who is both a student at Hillcrest and Dance Centre Kenya as well as a member of YTK.
During the Showcase, each group sang and danced to either ‘Good Morning Baltimore’ from ‘Hairspray’, ‘When I grow up’ from ‘Matilda the Musical’ or ‘Seize the Day’ from ‘Newsies’.
There were also several solos, like ‘On my own’ from ‘Les Miserables’ which was sung by Resila Muganda who’s a music student at Kabarak University, interning in Korogocho with the Art of Music which runs Ghetto Classics, the arts program that was represented by other youth attending the workshops.
“This has been an amazing experience for me,” says Resila who was beaming during a rehearsal. “But it has also been quite demanding. I’ve loved it.”
The final piece of the program had all 100 youth on a stage (normally used as a gym) that YTK had converted into in a theatre-in-the-round. Then the full cast performed ‘This is us’ from ‘The Greatest Showman’. It was such a powerful performance, it practically ‘brought the house down’ on Friday night.
The finale was also a thrilling moment for the cast and the artistic directors.
 “What has made all the difference between our experience here and elsewhere is the passion that we’ve felt coming from these young people,” says Chris. “It’s what has made this project so exciting. We could feel how much they really wanted to learn all we had to give,” he adds, delighted that the audience was just as moved by their performance as he had been, working with them all week.
Both Chris and Adam are trained professionals who in addition to working with NYMT, also lecture at the Royal Centre School of Speech and Drama.
“I actually majored in piano and conducting for opera, but I moved into musical theatre when I found it was much more fun,” says Adam who is also a composer.
Meanwhile, Chris also splits his time between NYMT, lecturing at the Royal Centre School and choreographing musicals like ‘Chicago’ which he says is currently on in Cambridge and ‘Growl’ which is just leaving London for China in a few days.
The two-NYMT mentors first met Lizzy and Jazz via Skype after she approached the company earlier this year.
“I first saw a NYMT performance at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival when I was still teaching drama in Devon,” says Lizzy who actually started YTK with Jazz and Mimi Muturi in 2014 after scripting and staging several plays with Kenyan casts. Lizzy took one of those plays to the International Youth Arts Festival in UK and that’s where she linked up again with NYMT.
“We hope to get back to the [ITAF] in 2020 when we take our latest production, ‘Matu Maini’ there,” says Lizzy. “That is our next goal.”





Tuesday 22 October 2019

DEEPA’S FASHION PASSION GOES GLOBAL



By Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted 22 October 2019)

Deepa Dosaja has defied the odds against a Kenyan fashion designer making headway not just in the local fashion world, but on the global fashion scene as well.
Having just gotten back to Nairobi from a whirlwind fashion tour that took her first to Paris, then to Addis Ababa, Deepa again showed her new Spring/ Summer 2020 Collection last Thursday night at Fairmont Norfolk Hotel.
“Deepa was just at the Paris Fashion Week and then at the Hub of Africa Fashion Week in Addis Ababa,” says Lisa Christophersen who collaborated with the Norfolk management to create an improvised catwalk for five Kenyan beauties to model several outfits from Deepa’s new ‘Diversity’ collection.
“I showed 600 original designs in Paris, but I’m only showing fifteen tonight,” says the diminutive Deepa who’s wearing her own chic but simple black stretch-silk cocktail dress.
With Lisa’s assistance, she’s also curated several displays of her one-of-a-kind hand-embroidered and hand-painted dresses, coats, capes and pants. They are hanging on racks so we can easily see why Deepa’s fans don’t mind spending several hundred dollars on one of her original designs.
“They are dresses you can wear either to the beach or to the boardroom,” says the former fashion model and media personality, Pinky Ghelani as she moderates the Fashion Show. She’s wearing one of Deepa’s originals, this one a cream-colored silk cocktail dress which is branded ‘Conscious Fashion’. As it turns out, that is Deepa’s mantra, meant to signal her concern to not just create elegant fashions but also to make garments that do no damage to the environment.
“It also means that Deepa’s fashions are only made with organic materials, like cotton, wool, silk, linen and even bamboo,” says her sister Anuja who is also wearing an original Deepa design. “She only uses non-toxic dyes and never touches synthetics which invariably release micro-fibers and micro-plastics into the air we breathe,” adds Anuja who is clearly proud of her younger sister.
Having started designing her own clothes when she was only 13, Anuja recalls that after their father got Deepa a sewing machine, she began sewing non-stop. She’s been stitching and designing clothes ever since.
“I started by creating dresses for my sisters,” says Deepa who took sewing classes all through school, up until she went away to get a degree in fashion design from the LaSalle College of Fashion and Design in Montreal, Canada.
“I was actually born in Kenya, but when I was six, our family moved to Canada,” she recalls. But then after her first degree, she was on her way for further studies, but stopped off in Kenya to see relatives. She’s been here ever since.
“First I got a job offer that I just couldn’t turn down. It was as a merchandise manager for Tinga Tinga clothing company. After that I met my husband,” she adds.
After Tinga Tinga closed down, Deepa went to work for another design company. But then, six years ago she took the leap of faith and opened her own boutique. “That is when I finally began branding my collections with my own name,” she says.
Right next to the boutique, Deepa has set up her own manufacturing unit where she’s got tailors and young women who she’s trained to both embroider and paint so they can reproduce her signature flowers on her clothing lines.
“The women come from around the neighborhood, from Kangemi and Kibera. Most of them didn’t have skilled jobs before Deepa’s training,” says Stella Muthoni, Deepa’s production manager.
Because there are subtle differences in each of the women’s style of embroidery and painting, Stella adds that each garment is essentially one of a kind.
Meanwhile, Deepa often has fashion design students come to her boutique where she speaks to them about careers and gives them advise. “I often go out to fashion schools and speak,” she says.
One thing about her participation in the Paris Fashion Week was that she had been advised to create garments that were all size zero. But Deepa says that when she speaks to students, she tells them they must be prepared to create clothing that can fit any size from size six to twenty-six!
The other one who’s wearing a Deepa original is Lisa. “She designed it especially for me since I was participating in the Blue Economy Conference. The applique on the dress is made of fish scales!” says Lisa whose dress comes with a cute jacket with sleeves handmade in lace from India.  
























Monday 21 October 2019

ASHWIN'S BOUNTIFUL BONSAI AND INCREDIBLE ORCHIDS



By Margaretta wa Gacheru
Step through Ashwin Patel’s front gate and you arrive at a magical garden where literally 1000s of orchids and hundreds of bonsai trees are mostly in full bloom and on display everywhere.
The orchids are in and outside the five open-air ‘green houses’ that Ashwin’s constructed over the last 30 years. And you’ll find the bonsai’s both on pedestals that he and his assistant of 19 years, Peter Mutisya have built. Or they’re growing in giant 20-liter buckets that Ashwin gets from his factory after all the glue that came inside gets finished and he recycles them to grow his baby bonsai.
“We occasionally sell the orchids, but not the bonsai’s,” says Ashwin who, with his electrical engineering wife, Aruna, bought their land in Nyali 35 years ago. “It was cheap back then, but now it’s not,” he adds.
“We built this house ourselves,’ says Ashwin who is not a trained architect. But in the same way he says he learned how to grow orchids—by trial and error – so he learned how to construct their lovely home.
He also taught himself to build the best ‘green houses’ for his orchids. “They need wind, sunshine and lots of water. But the water must be misty and light, not heavy or it can damage the plants,” he says, moving swiftly from his living room outside, onto a veranda-like area that’s topped with beams covered in a semi-transparent green mesh tarp.
“This is one of my green houses,” he says, walking over to a switch attached to a brick pillar that turns on the misty spray, the kind he explains he’s installed in all five of his open-air [wall-less] green houses.  
“Orchids need plenty of water, so Peter switches on the mist at least twice a day. This assures that our orchids will bloom and the blooms will stay fresh,” he says, adding they also need insecticide and fertilizer to ensure they grow well.
His insecticide is organic although I had never heard that hops [‘the leftovers’] from homemade beer are poured out onto trays at the base of his orchids so the snails and slugs (the most problematic pests) get attracted to the hops’ sweetness, drink it until they get ‘drunk’ and then they die.
“My son is a mechanical engineer but he’s also a brew master who studied how to make his own beer,” says Ashwin who also uses organic fertilizer. “We mix cut grass with the waste from our septic tank. Then we let it dry a few days and put it on all our flower beds and potted plants.
Ashwin says he started growing orchids 12 years ago after he decided he didn’t want to give his wife cut flowers anymore. Peter was already looking after his miniature bonsai trees, many of which are over 40 years old. But then they began experimenting with growing orchids so that today, he decorates his whole house with them.
Indeed, just as you step through his front gate and see green growing things everywhere magically sprouting out of buckets, crawling up giant trees and planted in everything from terracotta pots to gigantic seashells, so when you step into the foyer of his lovely home, you are dazzled by the wide array of orchids looking fresh and pretty in shades of pink and purple with yellow lips, ensconced on marble shelves.
The first ones I see are Oncidiums, which are a pastel yellow. Then come the Dendrobiums which have the pink and purple blooms that Ashwin says last just 15 days.
Then in the front hallway, I find lots of lovely Vandas, each of which has entangled roots hanging down like a scraggly-haired little girl who needs a haircut.
“They can last anywhere from three to four months in perfect bloom. They capture the water they need from the air,” says Ashwin who insists they be taken outside every four days to bask in the sun and get some fresh misty water.
Ashwin admits he doesn’t know all the names of the trees in his garden, although as I point, he easily informs me one is a rubber tree, another’s a guava, and another’s an umbrella tree.  He’s even got a Banyan or Bodhi tree which he says is the kind the Buddha sat under for seven weeks until he attained enlightenment.
What lights up Ashwin’s life is his discovery of how to transform any tree, even the Bodhi, into a baby Bonsai.

 


KIOKO’S GALLERY ATTRACTS LOTS OF YOUNG ARTISTS

                                                                                Kioko with Teresa and Za'idi

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted 21 October 2019)

Kioko Mwitiki didn’t need to set up an art gallery in his name to make himself a player on the global – leave alone the local art scene.
One of Kenya’s first scrap-metal sculptors, Kioko started early to create life-size replicas of Kenyan wildlife and take them everywhere from the JKIA, Berlin, London and Jos to Copenhagen, San Diego, Missoula, Montana and Tel Aviv.
He might have become one of those Kenyan artists who is better known abroad than back home if he hadn’t constructed his own Kioko Mwitiki Art Gallery next door to Lavington Mall.
Now his gallery attracts up-and-coming artists like Matt Kayem, whose one-man exhibition just opened last weekend (running through early December) to come have exhibitions at his spacious double-decker venue.

Kioko also attracts aspiring artists of all ages to come and take classes with art teachers like Teresa Wanjiku who offers one-on-one classes as well as group sessions upstairs in an atmosphere suffused with artistry by everyone from Kioko himself and Victor Omondi to Peter Kibunja, Annabel Wanjiku and Shade Kamau.
“I’ve taught students as young as three and as old as 39,” says Teresa who’s a graduate of Kenyatta University’s fine arts department.
“We have lots of professional people come in. Some are retired, others have successful careers but come in saying they have always loved art but had felt pressured to become a lawyer or some other professional,” says Kioko. “They admit they feel there’s a gap in their lives and want it filled with art. That’s how they start taking art classes with us.”
                                                Teresa Wanjiku with Victor Omondi's painting of Bob Marley

But Kioko says he has met a number of millennial artists who claim they don’t need galleries anymore since they successfully sell their works on Instagram. Meanwhile, there are others who want to rent space in his gallery to hold pop-up exhibitions without necessarily being represented by Kioko or even assisted by his new curator Za’idi Onsango.
“We are up for that as well, since we also meet young artists who sell their works online, but also want a little space to show their art in our gallery. We are happy to give it to them.
“We also don’t mind advising young artists who come in and ask for it,” he says as he introduces me to Za’idi, who assisted the Ugandan artist Matt Kayem in curating his current exhibition with Thadde Tewa.
“I really like Matt’s art because I feel his style is unique,” says Za’idi referring both to his way of painting on denim [not canvas] and his style of print-making which is to orchestrate visual settings and then including himself in them.
Practically all Kayem’s prints feature himself in self portraits either as a ‘Royal Guard’ holding his spear and sitting on a wooden stool or as a ‘Son of the Sun’ basking in equatorial light or as a ‘Bad Baganda, Good African’.
He’s ‘bad’, he says because he’s not a typical Baganda. He’s transgressive because he wears dreadlocks which most don’t, has pierced ears which few have, and in one self-portrait, he even places his foot atop a branch-full of matoke bananas which is unthinkable for an upstanding Baganda to do.
Intent on rejecting ethnic elitism, Kayem’s prints use colorful African textiles (aka Dutch wax-print fabric) as backdrops. In a sense, they are more like autobiographical installations in which he designs the visual content; and then photographer Saidi Stunner ‘shoots’ him in various poses, including one in which he aims to deconstruct color stereotypes. Called ‘Beyond Melanin’ he stands in a row with three beautiful young women, each having a slightly different shade of chocolate brown.
Kayem’s paintings are less polished but more reflective of his fascination with African history and African-American culture. Several works feature a mix of historic and contemporary images. One has an Egyptian pharaoh standing next to Kanye West, Ghanaian architect David Ajaye and himself! Another has Michael Jackson in a line with Mohammed Ali, George Washington Carver, Beyonce and himself.
Kayem’s art is meant to ensure you won’t forget him although his most unforgettable painting isn’t in this exhibition. It is on his Instagram account. It is a portrait of a male nude that Za’idi saw and assumes is him.
“His presence in his artwork gives it an intimacy which I like,” she says, wondering what would’ve happened if it had been included in the show.
“It might have shocked some people, but it could have sparked good conversation and debate.”   




Wednesday 16 October 2019

ORCHIDS ARE FOREVER

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted 16 October 2019)

Orchids are one of the most celebrated plants on the planet. Renowned for their glorious beauty, diversity and complexity, they can grow almost anywhere. But nowhere are more exquisite orchids grown than in Kenya, a fact that will be indisputable for those who attend the 62nd Kenya Orchid Show which opened last Thursday running through Sunday at Nairobi’s Sarit Centre.
The new Exhibition Hall (named after the Loita Forest) is brimming over with more than 20 exquisite orchid displays, all of which were in competition for a wide array of donated trophies.
This past Wednesday, eight judges, headed by one senior judge, Michael Tibbs, spent several hours appraising every flower and floral display. That evening before the trophies were handed out, life-long orchid society members, like Heather Campbell, aged 91, came early to ensure she got a good seat so she could hear the judges’ selections and see if their choices tallied with her own.
“I’ve been a member since 1964 when my family first moved to Kenya,” says the nonagenarian who judged past orchid shows for several decades. “I also won trophies for my orchids, and I still have a lovely garden. But I no longer play an active part in the show. There’s too much hard work involved,” she admits.
Yet Heather fits in well with this year’s Orchid Show theme which is ‘The Vintage Collection.’ For just as she is a ‘vintage’ society member who has witnessed the way the orchid show has matured and changed over the years, the theme was also in keeping with the Orchid Society itself.
“This is the oldest orchid society in Africa,” observes Michael Tibbs who flew in especially for this year’s 62nd annual exhibition. “But what’s exciting about this show is not just its being the oldest. It’s also one, if not the most beautiful show in the region and possibly in the whole world.”
Having been a qualified judge of orchids for many years, Tibbs travels all over the world appraising orchid shows. So he knows what he is talking about.
“This year alone, I have done it in the US, Guatemala, Mexico and Peru as well as in [mainland] China, Taiwan and the UK,” he says. “The Kenya orchid show never fails to amaze me with the quality of members’ orchids and their dazzling displays.”
Noting that he has been coming to Kenya for the past 22 years, Tibbs says he’s observed big and beautiful changes over the years. “One reason the Kenya show has such fabulous orchids is because its members make the effort to bring in new species [and hybrids] whenever they go out of the country and come back with new orchids to plant,” he says.
One other thing that Tibbs finds impressive about the Kenyan orchid show is that it displays plants every year that have been there since the society’s inception. As he speaks, he also points the Dendrobium orchids that are hanging near the entrance of the show. “There are also Ansellia Africana and Cymbidium which, like the Dendrobium, were in the first orchid shows over six decades ago,” he says.
Asked what he thinks has contributed to the longevity of these species of orchids, Tibbs is quick to respond. “It’s because they have been well looked after, well cared for.”
Admitting he has a deep appreciation of those older orchids, he says, “I prefer old orchids that have been looked after well more than I do newer hybrids that are grown badly.”
Tibbs can easily tell the difference since he has been raising orchids since he was six years old. Growing up in the fertile Franschhoek Valley, not far from Cape Town, he recalls how his father built him a green house as a child. “It was just four poles that he covered in plastic sheet, but I loved it and learned early about caring for my plants,” he adds.
Tibbs is like many of the Orchid Society members that I met on the Judges’ day, who grew up surrounded by flowers. For instance, Nishi Raja grew up on a coffee farm with a father who also loved tending orchids. “I grew up surrounded by plants,” says Nishi whose joint display with Nita Shah at the show earned several trophies this year, including one for having the ‘Best Phragmipedium species’.
Anand Savani also comes from a family who loved to grow orchids. His display at the show is beautifully decked out with an elegant array of both exotic and indigenous orchids.
“We call our display ‘The Whiskey Room’,” says Anand who created his exhibit to embody the show’s ‘vintage’ theme.’ Whiskey rooms were popular back in the 1920s during the pre-prohibition days.
“We only included tiny whiskey bottles since we knew children would be passing through the show. We didn’t want to offend anyone,” says Anand as he sits casually on a cushy leather sofa meant to be a cozy prop in his display.
Anand isn’t the only one who has included aspects of vintage culture in their displays. One extraordinary exhibit features an old (but well-maintained) Mercedes Benz from the late 1950s. The owner has filled the front seat with a beautiful display of orchids. He also has opened up his Mercedes’ boot and filled it with even more pots that host more multi-colored plants.
“I believe this display set the record this year for the highest number of trophies received,” says Nishi shortly before the winning orchids were announced. “I think it won 11 trophies altogether.”
Other displays that have paid attention to the vintage theme include one that has an antique bicycle with carriers filled with exotic species of orchids. Another one has a wooden sculpture of an ancient African man seated amidst a gorgeous orchid display. And right above the old man is a beautiful blood-red Oncidopsis hybrid that also won a trophy.
The other group that has stayed true to the vintage theme is the students who took part in this year’s Orchid art exhibition. Organized by Jackie Guest who’s been running the exhibition for the last twelve years, the entries came in from all over the country from 23 schools. The youngest artists to take part are six years old and the oldest 19. 
“When we launched the art competition, we only received 300 entries. But this year we received 750, all of which we included in the exhibition,” she says with a touch of pride. “The idea is to get young people interested in orchids and the environment generally.”
That interest is evident in the way the youth include all things ‘vintage’ in their paintings, everything from old cars, bikes and an antique Victrola to 19th century ladies fashions and a dusty scull. One student even sculpted an ancient tortoise which reminded us of the 344-year-old Alagba, who died recently, his owners claiming he had been the oldest tortoise in Africa.
Jackie’s young people’s exhibition can be found at the far end of Loita Hall. Fortunately, she had plenty of room to display all the artworks. “But none of us was quite sure how we would fit into the new exhibition hall since this is the first time we held the orchid show in the new wing of Sarit Centre,” Jackie says.
In fact, the new hall is more spacious than the old  space. But it looks just right for the 23 members’ displays. There is even room for a glorious display of Michael Tibbs’ cut flowers that he flew in from Thailand and the Netherlands. “The cut flowers are purely for display, but I do sell plants for a living,” says the man with an encyclopedic mind when it comes to orchids and other plants.
Explaining that every species and hybrid of orchid has a designated name, Tibbs (who also lectures on orchids and other plants all over the world) says there are approximately 25,000 species of orchids and between 300,000 and 400,000 registered hybrids.
Asked if orchid species are more highly valued than hybrids (which are simply the result of a cross-pollination process, when two or more different kinds of pollen are used during the planting process), Tibbs explains that both plants are of value. “What elevates the value of an orchid is its rarity,” he says.
One joint exhibition that displays a type of ‘rarity’ that Tibbs appreciates is made up of only indigenous plants. Nishi says the display by Mr. Konos and Mr Sagoo is receiving a special Firth trophy for each man’s fulfilling the stiff criteria of including no less than six healthy indigenous orchids in their display.
“Most of these orchids come from forests in Kenya. They are classified as Epiphytes or plants that grow on trees, but they are not parasitic,” says Nishi.
What’s extraordinary about orchids that are epiphytes is that they are aerial and never touch soil in contrast to terrestrial orchids that only grow in the ground.
“The one other classification of orchid is the Lithophyte, meaning it’s a plant that grows on a rock or a stone,” adds Tibbs who admits that he like millions of plant-lovers all over the world is deeply fascinated by the infinite variety of orchids.
“But one thing that is not always understood about orchids is that they are not nearly so difficult to grow as some people think. In fact, orchids grow everywhere in the world apart from on permanent snowcaps and in arid deserts,” he says.
That is to say that anyone can grow orchids almost anywhere. The secret to being a successful orchid-grower is looking after your plant with tender loving care. That is how the Dendrobium has lived for many decades and how your orchids can also thrive. 
  
 


 











The new Expo Hall (named after the Loita Forest) is brimming over with more than 20 exquisite orchid displays, all of which were in competition for a wide array of donated trophies.
This past Wednesday, eight judges, headed by one senior judge, Michael Tibbs, spent several hours appraising every flower and floral display. That evening before the trophies were handed out, life-long orchid society members, like Heather Campbell, aged 91, came early to ensure she got a good seat so she could hear the judges’ selections and see if their choices tallied with her own.
“I’ve been a member since 1964 when my family first moved to Kenya,” says the nonagenarian who judged past orchid shows for several decades. “I also won trophies for my orchids, and I still have a lovely garden. But I no longer play an active part in the show. There’s too much hard work involved,” she admits.
Yet Heather fits in well with this year’s Orchid Show theme which is ‘The Vintage Collection.’ For just as she is a ‘vintage’ society member who has witnessed the way the orchid show has matured and changed over the years, the theme was also in keeping with the Orchid Society itself.
“This is the oldest orchid society in Africa,” observes Michael Tibbs who flew in especially for this year’s 62nd annual exhibition. “But what’s exciting about this show is not just its being the oldest. It’s also one, if not the most beautiful show in the region and possibly in the whole world.”
Having been a qualified judge of orchids for many years, Tibbs travels all over the world appraising orchid shows. So he knows what he is talking about.
“This year alone, I have done it in the US, Guatemala, Mexico and Peru as well as in [mainland] China, Taiwan and the UK,” he says. “The Kenya orchid show never fails to amaze me with the quality of members’ orchids and their dazzling displays.”
Noting that he has been coming to Kenya for the past 22 years, Tibbs says he’s observed big and beautiful changes over the years. “One reason the Kenya show has such fabulous orchids is because its members make the effort to bring in new species [and hybrids] whenever they go out of the country and come back with new orchids to plant,” he says
One other thing that Tibbs finds impressive about the Kenyan orchid show is that it displays plants every year that have been there since the society’s inception. As he speaks, he also points the Dendrobium orchids that are hanging near the entrance of the show. “There are also Ansellia Africana and Cymbidium which, like the Dendrobium, were in the first orchid shows over six decades ago,” he says.
Asked what he thinks has contributed to the longevity of these species of orchids, Tibbs is quick to respond. “It’s because they have been well looked after, well cared for.”
Admitting he has a deep appreciation of those older orchids, he says, “I prefer old orchids that have been looked after well more than I do newer hybrids that are grown badly.”
Tibbs can easily tell the difference since he has been raising orchids since he was six years old. Growing up in the fertile Franschhoek Valley, not far from Cape Town, he recalls how his father built him a green house as a child. “It was just four poles that he covered in plastic sheet, but I loved it and learned early about caring for my plants,” he adds.
Tibbs is like many of the Orchid Society members that I met on the Judges’ day, who grew up surrounded by flowers. For instance, Nishi Raja grew up on a coffee farm with a father who also loved tending orchids. “I grew up surrounded by plants,” says Nishi whose joint display with Nita Shah at the show earned several trophies this year, including one for having the ‘Best Phragmipedium species’.
Anand Savani also comes from a family who loved to grow orchids. His display at the show is beautifully decked out with an elegant array of both exotic and indigenous orchids.
“We call our display ‘The Whiskey Room’,” says Anand who created his exhibit to embody the show’s ‘vintage’ theme.’ Whiskey rooms were popular back in the 1920s during the pre-prohibition days.
“We only included tiny whiskey bottles since we knew children would be passing through the show. We didn’t want to offend anyone,” says Anand as he sits casually on a cushy leather sofa meant to be a cozy prop in his display.
Anand isn’t the only one who has included aspects of vintage culture in their displays. One extraordinary exhibit features an old (but well-maintained) Mercedes Benz from the late 1950s. The owner has filled the front seat with a beautiful display of orchids. He also has opened up his Mercedes’ boot and filled it with even more pots that host more multi-colored plants.
“I believe this display set the record this year for the highest number of trophies received,” says Nishi shortly before the winning orchids were announced. “I think it won 11 trophies altogether.”
Other displays that have paid attention to the vintage theme include one that has an antique bicycle with carriers filled with exotic species of orchids. Another one has a wooden sculpture of an ancient African man seated amidst a gorgeous orchid display. And right above the old man is a beautiful blood-red Oncidopsis hybrid that also won a trophy.
The other group that has stayed true to the vintage theme is the students who took part in this year’s Orchid art exhibition. Organized by Jackie Guest who’s been running the exhibition for the last twelve years, the entries came in from all over the country from 23 schools. The youngest artists to take part are six years old and the oldest 19.

“When we launched the art competition, we only received 300 entries. But this year we received 750, all of which we included in the exhibition,” she says with a touch of pride. “The idea is to get young people interested in orchids and the environment generally.”
That interest is evident in the way the youth include all things ‘vintage’ in their paintings, everything from old cars, bikes and an antique Victrola to 19th century ladies fashions and a dusty scull. One student even sculpted an ancient tortoise which reminded us of the 344-year-old Alagba, who died recently, his owners claiming he had been the oldest tortoise in Africa.
Jackie’s young people’s exhibition can be found at the far end of Loita Hall. Fortunately, she had plenty of room to display all the artworks. “But none of us was quite sure how we would fit into the new exhibition hall since this is the first time we held the orchid show in the new wing of Sarit Centre,” Jackie says.
In fact, the new hall is more spacious than the old Expo space. But it looks just right for the 23 members’ displays. There is even room for a glorious display of Michael Tibbs’ cut flowers that he flew in from Thailand and the Netherlands. “The cut flowers are purely for display, but I do sell plants for a living,” says the man with an encyclopedic mind when it comes to orchids and other plants.
Explaining that every species and hybrid of orchid has a designated name, Tibbs (who also lectures on orchids and other plants all over the world) says there are approximately 25,000 species of orchids and between 300,000 and 400,000 registered hybrids.
Asked if orchid species are more highly valued than hybrids (which are simply the result of a cross-pollination process, when two or more different kinds of pollen are used during the planting process), Tibbs explains that both plants are of value. “What elevates the value of an orchid is its rarity,” he says.
One joint exhibition that displays a type of ‘rarity’ that Tibbs appreciates is made up of only indigenous plants. Nishi says the display by Mr. Konos and Mr Sagoo is receiving a special Firth trophy for each man’s fulfilling the stiff criteria of including no less than six healthy indigenous orchids in their display.
“Most of these orchids come from forests in Kenya. They are classified as Epiphytes or plants that grow on trees, but they are not parasitic,” says Nishi.
What’s extraordinary about orchids that are epiphytes is that they are aerial and never touch soil in contrast to terrestrial orchids that only grow in the ground.
“The one other classification of orchid is the Lithophyte, meaning it’s a plant that grows on a rock or a stone,” adds Tibbs who admits that he like millions of plant-lovers all over the world is deeply fascinated by the infinite variety of orchids.
“But one thing that is not always understood about orchids is that they are not nearly so difficult to grow as some people think. In fact, orchids grow everywhere in the world apart from on permanent snowcaps and in arid deserts,” he says.
That is to say that anyone can grow orchids almost anywhere. The secret to being a successful orchid-grower is looking after your plant with tender loving care. That is how the Dendrobium has lived for many decades and how your orchids can also thrive.