REFUGEE WOMEN’S CRAFTS MADE TRENDY AND TASTEFUL

                                   Goodie Odhiambo of Goodie's African Interiors and Gifts with Dadaab women's crafts

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted 26 February 2020)

Ever since the International Trade Centre found out about Goodie Odhiambo and her work in product development with women groups around Kenya, they went looking for her.

“ITC wanted to link me up with women artisans in Dadaab Refugee Camp,” says Goodie who helps lots of artisans to upgrade their products so they are in line with what she calls ‘market trends’.

This is what Goodie has been doing with Dadaab women groups for the last two years, the fruits of which are on display at Village Market’s Lower Food Court from Friday, February 28^th through Sunday, March 1^st.

The display by the ‘Nyota Farsamo Dadaab Collective’ is called the ‘Dadaab Connections: an interior design showcase from Dadaab” and will run all three days from 10am to 7pm.

“What are being showcased are beautiful baskets, mats, cushions, furniture, lampshades and tie dye textiles,” says Goodie, who adds that several of the women have come with their goods from Daadab and will be at Village Market to talk about their work with Nyota Farsamo.

At the time that Goodie was contacted by ITC, she had already been working with a number of women groups, many of whom she helped to organize.

“I especially like working with women groups who are already making things but need support, both in product development and by giving them a platform where they can showcase and sell their things,” adds the owner of Goodie’s African Interiors and Gifts in Westlands.

ITC wanted Goodie to assist Dadaab women through a program called the Refugee Employment Skills Initiative. They needed someone having the same skills set as Goodie has. A graphic designer by training and women entrepreneur by practice, Goodie had a special appeal to ITC in that she is known for assisting women groups develop community-based structures everywhere from Turkana to Kitui.

“I work with anywhere from 80 to 100 individual artisans. But among them, at least 20 of them represent their women group,” says Goodie.

She started her business in 2009. In the case of the Dadaab Refugee women, she found that many of them had traditional skills in things like weaving and hand-plaiting mats and baskets as well as in tie-dying fabrics. But they needed to improve their designs and learn more about market trends and tastes. These were the issues that Goodie was asked to address.

But before she could get to work on tackling those topics, she had to work on getting the women organized into groups.

“I have often helped women form working collectives,” she says. In the case of the Dadaab women, she helped them first to form five groups who then gave themselves the name ‘Nyota Farsamo Dadaab Collective’ and chose Fatuma Athar Haji to be their chairperson.

One of the things that Goodie does for the women is to add value to their products. For instance, the women send her beautiful tie-dye fabrics and she makes fluffy pillows out of them. “I also consult with them on the shapes and colors of everything, be it the tie and dye or the baskets,” says Goodie who also works with them on quality control.

Showing me a ‘before and after’ set of baskets, she explains that the ‘before’ basket was loose and floppy at the top, but after getting advice from Goodie, the women not only to make a new style of basketry but the basket also now had a tighter weave at the top so it has a more functional and attractive appeal.

Another way that she has helped the women to develop a new product to sell is by adapting the tie-dye to different formats. “We sell the tie-dye material in assorted colors and designs, but now we also transform the material into lampshades that have a market both in the Westlands shop and online at www.africaninteriors.co.ke.

But Goodie doesn’t only assist women. For instance, one of the artisans that she works with is a carpenter. “I had bought some beautiful fabric from Mali and wanted to do something useful with it so I gave it to him. He then used the material to make me a comfortable chair which is upholstered with my Mali material,” she says.

Goodie was tempted to take that chair home and keep it, but instead, it’s in her shop for all to see and for her to sale.

FORMER RARE WATTS DANCER PREMIERES WITH NEW MAASAI MORAN DANCE TROUPE

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted 25 February 2020)

Fernando Anuang’a may be best known as the founding ‘Maasai dancer’ of the dance trio Rare Watts. But that was years ago.

This weekend, he returns to Alliance Francaise, not with two in his team. This Saturday night in the AF garden, he will perform with 45 Maasai dancers, 15 from Magadi, 15 from Amboseli and 15 more from Maasai Mara.

The show, ‘Maasai Footsteps’ will be premiering in bright red suka pageantry that only Fernando could devise.

“I have been dreaming of creating a large Maasai dance company for years,” says the man whose lineage comes not from Maasai but from Western Kenya.

“I grew up in Kitengela so I started doing Maasai dances since primary school,” he says noting that his school used to win at annual Kenya Music Festivals.

It was in the 1990s that Rare Watts took off and performed not only in Kenya, mainly in Nairobi and in hotels at the Coast. They also went to Europe as part of African Heritage’s 11-cities tour and to South Africa as part of AH’s ‘African Renaissance’ showcase.

“Rare Watts fell apart in 1998, but I kept dancing. I went to Reunion to perform in a Maasai Festival and to the Seychelles after we reunited briefly to dance in hotels from one end of the island to the other,” says Fernando who went solo from late 2000 up until 2007 when he created his first Maasai dance troupe (after Rare Watts) with seven Maasai morans from Magadi.

Calling themselves the Maasai Vocal Dance Group (due to the deep guttural sounds that moran dancers make), Fernando recalls that their first performances were in 2008 in Nairobi, at The GoDown and Alliance Francaise. After that, they went on tour around central and southern Africa as well as to Morocco and Algeria.

But the incentive that spurred him to revive a new Maasai dance troupe happened earlier in 2007 when he was living in France with his French wife Patricia.

“I got the opportunity to meet the [acclaimed] French choreographer, Angelin Preljocaj who invited me to do a residence at Pavillon Noir (Choreography Centre) in Aix-en-Provence. That experience opened my eyes to appreciate both contemporary dance and improvisation,” says Fernando.

At the end of his residency, he had to give three performance of the original dance that he’d created during his days at Pavillon Noir. His ‘Journey into the Future’ was well received. But he’d been inspired by Angelin’s ‘Ballet Preljocaj’ and now wanted to start his own company based on his Maasai dance roots.

His Maasai Vocal Group tours were a big success. But as they weren’t full-time, when he wasn’t touring with them, he went back to France where a friend invited him to perform at the newly-renovated castle in the South of France owned by the French philosopher Pierre Teilhard du Chardin.

“That is where I met both the French Minster of Culture Jack Lang and Pierre Chardin. That was in 2014 when I performed ‘The Traditional Future’,” says Fernando.

Both men were impressed with this Kenyan who was already in his thirties but still looked 22. “Jack Lang invited me to perform my dance at the Museum of African Art (Musee de Quai Branly) at its Claude Levi-Strauss Theatre,” he says, remembering what a huge honor that was.

But as he had already met with Chardin and proposed that he be given a residency at the great philosopher’s magnificent ‘Espace Pierre Carden’ also known as ‘Theatre de la ville de Paris’, he proceeded straight to Paris.

That residency lasted two months after which Fernando felt confident to give solo performances across Europe (in France, Sweden and Iceland) as well as in Costa Rico in Central America and Japan.

Coincidentally, he was contacted by an Irish filmmaker named Steve Woods who found him online and wanted to make movies with him. “The first one that we made was a short film called ‘Keeping Time’ and the current one is a documentary that he is now making called ‘The Making of ‘Maasai Footsteps’,” says Fernando.

Woods was there and filming while he was auditioning Maasai morans in Maasai Mara, Amboseli and Magadi. He had already left for Ireland when Fernando reunited Rare Watts and his Maasai Vocal Dance group to perform at African Heritage House for the African Twilight Gala last March.

But Woods will be there Saturday night when Fernando’s ‘Maasai Footsteps’ premieres at Alliance Francaise. It’s a performance you won’t want to miss.

GITHINJI’S ART CONVEYS THE DESPAIR FELT BY IMPOVERISHED KENYANS

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted to SN 25, February 2020)

Just as the acclaimed Irish painter Francis Bacon painted biomorphic portraits of people that were grim, disfigured and expressive of the torment that the individual (or the artist) apparently felt about life generally and Bacon’s life in particular, so Samuel Githinji also paints man-size figures that seem to reflect his own tortured perspective on his life and possibly on those of everyday Kenyans.

Githinji, whose emotionally powerful paintings are currently on display in his second solo exhibition at the Red Hill Gallery, fills his larger-than-life sized canvases with stick figures painted with bold black and red strokes set against a plain black and white background. Occasionally, he mixes his blacks with a deep, dark blue. But neither his colors nor his shapes, stark lines or scribbles are meant to suggest a semblance of beauty. Instead, like Bacon, his ghoulish figures are meant to be ugly and grotesque.

One feels they are meant to send a strong signal as to the suffering of ordinary Kenyans whom he occasionally paints with halos, as if to say they are society’s suffering servants in a state where corruption robs them of any hope for their future.

Compounding that sense of hopelessness and poverty, Githinji also sometimes rips his canvas with holes which are comparable to the tattered rags that his pencil-thin men are wearing.

Another feature that makes one feel his men are in bondage to their hopeless conditions is the horizonal black or blood-red straight lines that cross the chest of every man, as if he is dwelling behind bars. Hints of barbed wire also reinforce that feeling of entrapment that Githinji so effectively conveys in his paintings.

But what might be the most disconcerting aspect of his figures’ features are their faces which, like Bacon’s, are distorted beyond recognition of any humanity. Instead, some look more like bestial creatures which might imply that poverty itself turns men into beasts for survival’s sake.

The faces of others look hollow, featureless, as if their very identities have been erased in light of the heavy burdens they feel just being alive. Meanwhile, a few remind one of Edvard Munch’s painting, ‘The Scream’ which also has an emotional impact that is tragic yet undeniable.

Githinji’s art, equally, has an emotional impact that is desperate yet undeniable. Indeed, in spite of someone feeling ‘turned off’ by the tortured expressions of his figures, one may also find it difficult to take one’s eyes off these disturbing men. They seem to confront you with more questions than answers. They might even compel you to ponder what reasons could inspire this talented Kenyan artist to step away from painting the pretty decorative art that sells so well to tourists.

It’s because the artist has powerful sentiments to share about society and the powerful forces that ignore the needs of the vast majority whose lives are desperate.

Yet as nihilistic as Githinji’s stick-men seem to be, his art is not entirely hopeless. Instead, one can occasionally find a small flower (or two or three) sprouting out of the rubble and filth. The flowers, some white other blood red, seem to symbolize that touch of hope that Githinji suggests in the halo and crown he occasionally gives to his characters.

Yet one is not meant to be fooled by any sense of false hope. That crown is a crown of thorns, the kind first worn by Jesus Christ before he was crucified. It hints at the notion that times will continue to be tough in Kenya, but there may be hope. Yet who can wait for the kingdom to come? Not Githinji.

PAN AFRICAN JEWELRY AS ART

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted 24 February 2020)

Many months before he met his future business partner, the former Vice President of Kenya Joseph Murubi, Alan Donovan was inspired by the designs, creativity and technical skills of Turkana women.

‘I realized their designs might disappear before anyone outside their community would see what beautiful jewelry they made,” says Donovan whose ’50 years of African Heritage Jewelry’ just opened last night at the Nairobi Serena Hotel.

Donovan was on his second sojourn to northern Kenya when it dawned on him to sit with the mamas and learn how they made their earrings (aparaparat in Turkana) out of old melted-down aluminum cooking pots. Their aparaparat designs would subsequently become the basis for his own contemporary Pan-African jewelry lines which have been shown worldwide. Among them are the 14 unique designs now on display at the Serena.

The 14 will also be shown in December among the 40 new designs that will be part of Donovan’s inaugural opening of phase one of his Timimoun Museum.

Donovan’s first trip to Turkana came after he’d retired from being a USAID relief officer in Biafra and driven across Africa in a second-hand Volkswagon van. Arriving in Nairobi, he only stayed long enough to get a permit to travel up north to Lake Turkana.

He was so impressed with the Turkana people’s material culture, he decided to collect one sample of every artifact they used, from the wooden milk containers (made by women) and the curved wooden food bowls (made by men) to the stools, headrests, lip plugs and jewelry. He brought them back to Nairobi where one former USAID colleague and his wife lent him their guest house and introduced him to the Studio Art 68 owner Sherry Hunt. The idea was that Ms Hunt might give him an exhibition, which she eventually did.

But first, she sent him back to Turkana to collect a second set of Turkana artifacts to sell in an exhibition since Donovan refused to sell his own.

He happily went again but took his time coming back. “That time, I spent about three months with the Turkana who took me out on a crocodile hunt and gave me the croc’s teeth from the one they caught,’ says Donovan who later made the teeth into a beautiful necklace.

He never studied design per se, only journalism, political science and African art at UCLA. But as soon as he got back to Nairobi after his third trip up north, he went to apprentice with Holland Millis at the Bombolulu Workshops where they made jewelry using indigenous materials.

And over the next 50 years, he would pick up elements in his travels around the region for African Heritage and later make contemporary Pan-African jewelry using traditional designs (mainly Turkana and Maasai) which he modernized to meet the tastes of a Western market.

That is how his jewelry came to include everything from amber from Mali, brass rings from Cameroon, sunifu masks from Ivory Coast, sufunia brass and copper earrings from Maasai and many other elements.

He’d also use things like Egyptian scarabs, Samburu beatle wings, Kenyan warthog tusks (now banned), , banana fibre from Mombasa and cow bone beads that he was first to batik. “I even made a ‘false ivory collection’ which I created out of bone,” he adds.

The Serena collection contains an assortment of aluminum, brass, silver and gold as well as malachite, agate, amber, ostrich eggshell and batiked cow bone.

But Donovan’s jewelry designs only began to evolve after his first Turkana exhibition where he met the one African who attended the show’s opening, Joseph Murumbi, the most avid collector of African art in Kenya.

Murumbi was so impressed with Donovan’s collection that he, like Sherry Hunt, sent him back up north to again collect elements of Turkana culture which had previously been largely unknown in Nairobi prior to Donovan’s exhibition.

It wasn’t long after his return that Murumbi shared his dream with Donovan, to create a Pan-African cultural centre in Kenya similar to what he had seen when he served the first President Kenyatta as his Foreign Minister.

Asking Donovan to assist him in fulfilling that dream, African Heritage Pan African Gallery was born in January 1973. Largely supplied by indigenous African artifacts, textiles and art as well as products made in Donovan’s jewelry and Kisii stone workshops, the current Serena exhibition of ’50 Years of African Heritage Jewelry ‘is the first show that the septuagenarian has had since 2003 when he closed the Gallery.

COLLECTOR OF MEMORABILIA SHOWED HER LIFE IN BOTTLES

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted 21 February 2020)

Leo Coimbra is a collector. She collects big things like incredible paintings from her homeland, Brazil as well as from other Latin American countries and places where she has traveled with her Ambassador husband Fernando.

She also collects small things that can easily fit into glass bottles and jars. Those includes everything from pebbles, bits of wrapping paper and hippo poop to what she calls the ‘flotsam and jetsam’ she found on the beach at Watamu and images from exhibitions she had prior to the one that just closed at Nairobi National Museum.

“I’ve been collecting things since childhood,” recalls Leo referring to the miniature memorabilia that fills the glass bottles included in her first Kenyan exhibition entitled ‘In Vitro’ which in Latin literally means ‘in glass’. But for her, the term specifically refers to her life and the precious memories embodied in those small things contained in the jars.

“I collect ordinary things from everyday life that have significance to me,” she says.

For instance, one bottle contains ticket stubs from plays and films that she and Fernando watched while living in various cities, including one filled with receipts from trips with her family to Nairobi National Park. Others contain items recycled from her previous shows such as strips cut from posters and invitation cards that she made by hand. Still others feature her ‘Family album series’ containing bottles for her brothers, sisters and parents.

The glass bottles and jars are themselves memorabilia collected for nearly as long as she’s been picking up things like seeds and tiny toys while growing up in Rio de Janeiro and Brasilia, her country’s young capital.

“I had over 1000 glass bottles in my first ‘In Vitro’ show which I had in Brasilia in 2010 and which I left there. But in my Nairobi exhibition, I only used bottles and jars that I collected in Kenya and assembled into small installations,” she says.

Noting that for two of the installations, she bought glass and metal stands used by Kenyan street sellers of sausages and hard-boiled eggs.

Leo’s paintings are just as autobiographic as her installations and glass jars. “The exhibition was all about my life, but the paintings are more emotional. I don’t think when I paint. I simply feel,” she says. “The bottles are more mental since I must think and decide which memories go in which bottles.”

Stressing the importance of painting in her life, Leo adds, “I paint because I have to. It’s the best way I know to be alive.”

Explaining that she paints to create a feeling of being at home and comfortable within herself, she says she was thrilled by the positive response her Museum exhibition received from literally thousands of visitors.

Leo only started painting in 1991 while living in Washington, DC. She describes herself as ‘self-taught’ as she never went to art school. In fact, she’s been inspired by many artists, but especially by the Dominican-born American painter, muralist and graphic designer, Aurelio Grisanty who was really her mentor.

“I assisted him in his studio, doing mundane things like washing his brushes. But in the process, I learned a lot [by osmosis] such that one day, he told me to ‘go home, set up a studio and paint’ because there was nothing more he could teach me.” So I did just that,” she says.

Her first exhibition was in 1994 in Quito, Ecuador. She has had many more since. Her Nairobi exhibition featured 68 paintings using multi-media such as canvas, paper and plates as well as magazine cut-outs, wooden boxes, cowrie shells, red wrapping tape and Buddhist prayer flags.

Her paintings come in series, the first one being entitled ‘Fragments’. “It reflects the way I felt when I first came to Kenya and knew no one, didn’t speak the language [hers is Portuguese] and felt like my life was fragmented,” she recalls. “But once I began painting again, the healing process came quickly,” she adds.

‘Healing’ was actually one of the series represented at the Museum as were series on ‘Crossing’ boundaries, ‘Family’ and ‘Buddhist Prayer Flags’ among others.

Her interest in Buddhism was piqued while living in India. That interest was best reflected by a triptych that expressed the spiritual processes of meditation that she practices every day.

Currently, Leo is working one a new series entitled ‘Flesh and Bones’, all about aging. “It’s a process I’m having to come to terms with right now,” adds the 62 year old artist.

FIRST WOMEN IN FILM AWARDS

Zippy Okoth is the chief judge of the women in film awards. here's photo of her upcoming film, Midlife Crisis

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted 24 February 2020)

The inaugural ‘Women in Film Awards’ night will be held March 4^th, just days before International Women’s Day on March 8^th.

According to Dr Susan Gitimu, founder of the Awards and Kenyatta University lecturer in film, there is a reason for inaugurating an ‘awards’ ceremony rather than a women’s film festival.

“We are not acknowledging only women’s films. We are acknowledging the achievements of individual women who are part of the whole filmmaking process,” says Dr Gitimu who is also founder of ‘Beyond the Film’ (BTF) which is especially focused on the genre of film for social change.

“We chose to name our organization ‘Beyond the film’ because we know most people associate film with entertainment alone. But our concern is promoting films that can make an impact on society and can change people’s thinking,” she adds.

Working closely with Grace Mercy Muruthi who is BTF’s creative director and Noel Awuor who is the ‘Women in Film Awards’ coordinator, Susan registered the awards late last year.

“We realized that there are so many amazing women working in film but they are largely unacknowledged,” she says.

That reality was illustrated last November at a conference organized by the Alliance of Slum Media Organization (ASMO) which named a myriad of Kenyan women in film. “It was a real eye-opener,” Susan recalls. But it also made her wonder why more women in film were unknown to the public.

Names like Judy Kibinge, Anne Mungai and Wanjiru Kinyanjui are women filmmakers that have received some recognition. But as is often the case, they are better known abroad than at home.

Susan together with Grace Mercy and Noel want to change all that. On December 15^th, they put a ‘call out’ on social media for the public to nominate their favorite women in film for any one or all of 14 categories. The 14 include Best Producer, Director, Script writer, Actress and Cinematographer as well as Most Influential Woman in Film, Best Newcomer Producer, Sound/Set/Costume/Lighting Designers, Make-Up Artist and Best Animator.

The call-out closed January 15. A total of 2400 names were submitted. After that, five judges selected five names in each category and again listed them on social media.

The judges include Dr Zippy Okoth who is Chief adjudicator, Kenyatta University film lecturer and founder of the Lake International Pan-African Film Festival, Victoria Goro, Deputy Director of the Kenya Film School, Wangechi Murage, Media Consultant, Suki Wanza, actress and KU lecturer with Zippy in Theatre Arts and Rachel Mwara, lecturer at Multimedia University.

The second call-out invited the public to vote for one of the five in all 14 categories. The voting went from February 10^th to 20^th, producing 6,500 submission!

The final tally is now with Dr. Susan who is holding the winning names until March 4^th when Kenya National Theatre opens its door from 6pm. The Guest of honor will be Dr Josephine Ojiambo, Director of the Commonwealth Businesswomen of Kenya.

The evening will be MC’ed by Brenda Nyambeki and Joseph Ochieng.

BEAUTIFYING A GARDEN YOU DON’T OWN

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted 24 February 2020) 

Living with a spacious lawn filled with ancient trees, lush scrubs, rows of ornamental flowers and grass regularly mowed and manicured by diligent gardeners all might sound like heaven to many people.

Leo Coimbra isn’t complaining by any means, although being married to the Brazilian ambassador does mean that luscious land doesn’t belong to her or her husband Fernando. It’s property of the Brazilian government.

Nonetheless, Leo says she, with her three gardeners, have transformed the garden in the two years that they’ve been living there. They planted a rainbow array of flowers and fruit trees.

 “I have a small garden back home in Brasilia,” she says as she gives us Portuguese names for some of the trees planted around their spacious five-bedroom house.

For instance, the giant tree with red flowers on its top tips is ‘Xixi de Macaco’ which she says is translated as ‘Monkey’s Pee’, for whatever reason she cannot explain.

Her other high-flying tree with yellow flowers is called ‘Sibipiruna’ and the one with spikey leaves growing nearer the family’s driveway is a ‘Palmeira de Madagaskar’.

Since arriving in Kenya in January 2018, Leo has quickly expanded her English vocabulary and fluency. But she has yet to learn English terms for the trees in her garden.

What she does know is that she has planted several avocado and mango trees to augment the other edible fruit trees that grow in the garden, such as the guava, pawpaw and banana trees.

“But I’ve never eaten an avocado, mango or pawpaw from the garden,” she admits. The same is true for the bananas and guavas. She does get plenty of lime from the two trees she planted with assistance from their three gardeners, Benson Okumu, Johnson Omari and Bevin Kimaiga.

“It’s the monkeys,” she says simply. She admits however that the avocado trees are so tall that their fruits wouldn’t be easy to harvest, in any case.

Benson explains that the monkeys keep their eyes on those fruit trees and gobble up the mangos, pawpaws and avocados right when they have ripened perfectly. “They normally don’t come during the day. We leave work at 5 o’clock and the monkeys time us,” he adds.

They arrive between 5:15 to 5:30 which is after the gardeners go and before Fernando arrives home.

“They come as a large family,” observes Leo who often sees them arrive in large numbers when she is at home working. Clearly reconciled to never eating fruits from her garden, she says the monkeys don’t bother her in the least.

“But unless I close all the windows and doors, they will come in,” she adds, noting that once she walked into her kitchen and found one blithely eating an egg. He didn’t even bother to leap back out the kitchen window until he’d finished his mini-feast.

“He hadn’t done any damage to the kitchen.” Leo says. “But as I had the eggs covered and on a tray outside the fridge, he had managed to open the container and take the one egg out,” she adds, noting how intelligent these Sykes monkeys are.

The one yellow-green fruit that the monkeys don’t touch is what the Portuguese call ‘Chuchu’. It’s actually a vegetable shaped like a pear and having a similar texture and seed structure.

“Chuchu’s are rather tasteless, but just as tofu is tasteless but easily absorbs the flavor of whatever food they are being cooked with, chuchu’s are similar,” she says.

Noting that since coming to Kenya she rarely cooks. “We have an excellent kitchen staff,” Leo says although she often gets herbs and spices from their kitchen garden to enhance the flavor of a specific dish. But back home in Brazil, she adds that she loves to cook and has no hired help.

Their vegetable garden also grows spinach, kale, onions, beetroot, eggplant and potatoes successfully. “But the tomatoes can be a problem,” notes Johnson.

“Whatever grows in the garden is shared by everyone,” Leo says although she admits she prefers the staff eat from the garden during working hours and not carry things home. “Otherwise, there will be none left for us,” she adds.

Besides veggies, the garden also grows thyme, chives, mint, rosemary and parsley. And a Kenyan garden wouldn’t be complete without at least one jacaranda, acacia and bougainvillea bush.

The one tree the gardeners know well is the mwarubaini which is said to cure over 40 diseases, everything from typhoid and malaria to amoeba and ulcers.

ART AS AN INVESTMENT

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted 19 February 2020)

How does someone buy art as an investment?

That’s a question increasing numbers of Kenyans are asking as they begin to appreciate the value, both economic and aesthetic, of contemporary Kenya, African and international art.

People are beginning to hear about paintings and sculptures selling for not thousands but millions of shillings and dollars. They’ve even heard that some Kenyan artists’ works are being sold at that same level.

So what’s required to invest in art? According to Danda Jaroljmek, curator and founder of Circle Art Gallery and Art Auction East Africa, the most important thing, initially, is to like the way an art piece looks because it is the buyer who’ll be living with the work.

Next and equally important, the prospective buyer needs to do research. “They need to follow an artist’s career once they find an artist they like,” she told Business Daily.

One needs to find out where the artist has exhibited their work, both locally and internationally. And how much their art has been selling for. Has the value of their art gone up, and how much? Where and when did it start to rise?

Those questions apply to both young artists as well as more established ones. The trick is that if a prospective buyer is just starting to shop for art, they may not have heaps of cash with which to buy. So what to do, since the artists that can be found on Google or in art books tend to be more established and thus, more expensive to buy.

This is when someone needs to spend time attending art exhibitions and local galleries to find out what the less-known or up-and-coming artists are doing and costing. That constitutes another dimension of research that is essential.

Another important way to quickly learn more about the value of fine art is to attend art auctions like the one Circle Art is holding March 6^th at the Radisson Blu Hotel.

“This will be our seventh [annual] Art Auction East Africa,” Danda says. This time round, there will be a little more than 60 artists represented and 70 lots (or art works) that will be up for auction.

The artworks will be coming from all around the region, from Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Ethiopia and Sudan as well as from South Africa, DRC and Egypt.

The art will be previewed at Circle Art from Wednesday, March 26^th.

VALENTINE SHOWS WERE PLAYFUL AND POETIC

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted 19 February 2020)

Both Zippy Okoth and John Sibi Okumu were ‘in their element’ last week when Valentine’s Day put many people’s focus on Love, be it romantic, puppy, pleasurable or drenched in pain.

Fortunately, neither performing artist had much time to dwell on pain. Sibi-Okumu, at a private reading of poetry that I had the good fortune to attend, gave a delightful rendition of poems by everyone from Shakespeare, Yeats and Dorothy Parker to Maya Angelou, e.e. cummings and Ogden Nash.

“I’m a great lover of poetry so I was happy to come,” says Sibi who confessed he took some time poring over his many poetry anthologies to find just the best selection to suit the occasion, which was casual and did not necessarily include lots of poetry lovers.

Nonetheless, many unexpected guests showed up at the event. They had come specially to listen to Kenya’s own renowned poet-playwright and actor who is also a former TV interviewer at ‘The Summit’ and former French teacher.

Meanwhile, Dr. Zippy Okoth specifically chose Valentine’s Day to stage her latest one-woman performance, ‘Agatha: A Hopeless Romantic’’ at Kwa Wangwana Wine Garden in Lavington.

‘Agatha’ just happens to be the actor-playwright’s middle name, so we can assume her show was, like her previous two, based on her ‘Diary of a Divorced Woman’, autobiographical.

But unlike the Diary shows, where Zippy was slightly self-pitying due to her ex-spouse’s gross misconduct, ‘Agatha’ was light and lovely. Zippy was in fine form as a singer-actor whose mixture of song and story (more than seven short tales about her passing flings with a wide assortment of interesting men) was deliciously fresh. She veritably frolicked from one fellow to the next. But one has to say she only seemed to have one boyfriend at a time.

Kwa Wangwana turned out to be the perfect venue for her performance as it was cosy, while her style was conversational, interactive and intimate. And as her audience was largely female, that also may have helped her convey her stories frankly and freely.

‘Agatha’ seemed to be a show that is all about ‘changing the narrative’ of the traditional (Westernized) woman who defers to her man and waits on him like the subordinate ‘help-mate’ who was born of Adam’s rib.

Zippy’s show was utterly entertaining as her magical mix of stories and songs like Crystal Gayle’s ‘Hopeless Romantic’ was accompanied by keyboardist David Mwangi.

A PASSIONATE PERFORMANCE OF ROMEO AND JULIET

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted 18 february 2020)

As choreographed by Cooper Rust, artistic director for Dance Centre Kenya (DCK), Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet was much more than a tragic love story. Staged last weekend at Kenya National Theatre, it was an enchanting performance including electrifying moments when literally life and death weighed in the balance.

The most beautiful scenes in the ballet, set to music by the Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev, were, of course, when the evolving relationship between the two young lovers was danced exquisitely by Joel Kioko and Annabel Shaw.

But as much tenderness was conveyed between these two ill-fated sweethearts, there was just as much tension surrounding their affair. For theirs was a forbidden love, the kind that was never meant to be, leave alone evolve so rapidly and passionately as theirs did.

That was due to the intense tribal rivalry between their families, the Capulets and Montagues. Despite their living in the same town, Verona, they shared a mutual aversion to one another, especially when it came to their youth meeting. And wedlock was utterly unthinkable, according to the elders.

But as is often the case among the young, their attitudes are more flexible than their parents. Nonetheless, there were plenty of young people in Verona who followed age-old traditions, which is why they fight in the ballet.

Dressed in elegant costumes and staged with beautiful backdrops, Romeo and Juliet was one of DCK’s most dramatic productions since it opened in 2015. Cooper deserves praise for also directing her cast, especially as she had just a week to rehearse her leads. Her Romeo, Joel Kioko was only able to leave his training at the English National Theatre School the Saturday before the premiere this past Saturday night.

Why she and her whole cast deserve extra credit for this marvelous performance is because they effectively communicated Shakespeare’s story while relying solely on the language of dance to ensure they conveyed all the Bard’s inspired ideas and heartfelt emotions.

Cooper had one big advantage, which was having her leads, Joel and Annabel, being her former star students who subsequently gained admission to top ballet programs in UK where they’ve excelled. And as one would expect, they performed like true professionals, debunking any stereotypic hint that just because the majority in the cast (including those two) are still teenagers (or younger), the ballet might be ‘amateurish’. That certainly was not the case.

But for all the beauty, sweetness and delicate sensuality that one saw as they performed, the scenes that were most electrifying were those when the most intense rivalry exploded in dramatic dance. It happened when the fencing duels got most ferocious, as when Romeo avenged the death of his dear friend Mercutio (Yigit Erhan) by stabbing his killer Tybalt (Baris Erhan) to death.

Initially, Romeo refused to be drawn into the fight, but once his friend was killed in a duel by the rival Capulet, Romeo could hardly restrain himself. Unfortunately, the dead Capulet was Juliet’s cousin which only made their love look even more like an impossibility.

Juliet’s parents (played by Cooper Rust and Gerald Osmond) were devastated, especially Lady Capulet, who was beside herself with the agonizing grief that only a mother can feel.

But what made matters worse for Juliet was that her parents were even more adamant that she married Paris (Francis Waweru), who’s a relative of Prince Escalus (Jazz Moll), the most powerful man in Verona. This compelled her to do something drastic as we all know. She consulted the Friar Laurence (Mishael Okumu) who gave her a vial containing potion that made her body simulate death for several hours, after which she would recover.

Most of us know what happened next: Romeo arrived at her open grave when she was still under the potion’s influence. Believing her dead, he swallowed a real poison and died. When shortly thereafter, she woke and found both Paris and Romeo dead, in her anguish she grabbed the blade that Romeo used to kill his enemy and stabbed herself.

Their deaths have gone down in literary and cultural history; their story has been used to illustrate many truths. One is the risk of autocratic parenting (as illustrated by Lord Capulet and Juliet) which can easily elicit a radical reaction from youth who are inclined to rebel.

Another is the risk of passionate (‘puppy’) love triggering emotional responses that negate rational thought. And in the extreme, can even lead to suicide as we see in Romeo and Juliet.

A SHORT HISTORY OF THE SARIT EXPO CENTRE

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted 14 February 2020 for Rotary Timeline)

The 2020 Rotary District 9212 Conference (DISCON 2020 for short) will primarily take place in the new Sarit Expo Centre which just opened last year in Nairobi’s up-market suburb of Westlands.

Technically speaking, the Expo Centre is part of the third phase of Sarit Centre, which itself was the very first enclosed shopping mall in all of East Africa.

The first phase of the Centre was completed in 1983. But the idea evolved out of a business partnership between two friends, V.S. Shah and Maneklal Rughani, both of whom ran family businesses, including bookstores upcountry. The Rughani businesses originally were in Karatina while the Shah’s were in Murang’a.

In 1965 the two joined forces and started the Textbook Centre on Kijabi Street in Nairobi. At the time, the Shah family lived on two plots in Westlands which would eventually be replaced by [the original] Sarit Centre.

It was in 1973 when a close family friend came to visit the Shahs and advised them to “never sell this land. Instead, you should buy the adjacent plots because this land is blessed,” the visitor said.

Shah took him seriously. Together with Rughani they followed their friend’s advice up until they owned five acres in Westlands. They had already begun thinking about building a giant shopping centre. But in 1976, Rughani traveled to London and saw the magnificent Brent Cross Shopping Mall. That was something of an epiphany for him because now that he had seen London’s first enclosed shopping centre, it was now clear what the two families would do with those five acres.

“It took some time after that before construction began in 1981 since they needed to do our research and planning,” says Nitin Shah, Chief Executive Officer of the Sarit Centre. “They did market studies, developed the architectural design and all the other planning that was required,” he adds.

The process was temporarily waylaid in 1982 due to the coup attempt on the Kenya Government. But by 1983, what Nitin now calls Phase One of the Centre was fully built, all 200,000 square feet of it.

Starting out with only two retail stores, the Textbook Centre and Uchumi’s Super Market, it wasn’t until 1986 when all the space was filled with retail stores.

“Most of the first tenants were start-ups, such as Healthy U and Hotpoint,” adds Nitin who says the concept of a shopping mall was initially new, but once the public got used to it, Sarit became a popular venue and business began to boom.

By 1994, Nitin explains that the demand for more retail space at Sarit had grown. It was around that time that he had gone to Singapore and seen shopping centres that were extremely innovative.

“I came back with a proposal that Phase two needed to include a cinema, a food court, a gym and exhibition hall that would allow us to accommodate both local and international exhibitions in that space,” he says, noting that these were new ideas at the time.

Phase two quickly attracted international franchises like Woolworths and Mr Price. Plus their original brands bought into the new wing and expanded their businesses significantly.

For instance, Uchumi grew from 10,000 to 50,000 square feet. Textbook Centre expanded from 3,000 to 10,000 square feet. And even a specialty store like Healthy U grew from 1,000 to 3,000 square feet. Plus, the food court featured nine different food franchises. In addition, Phase two was more entertainment- and activity-oriented. At the same time, the number of visitors moving about the Centre easily doubled.

Meanwhile, the families continued to plan and consider the possibilities of expanding Sarit even further. They had gradually bought still more adjacent land over the years until they lastly owned 12 acres.

The decision to embark on Phase Three was made in 2012. But it posed a challenge: how best to utilize that land? How to develop a clear vision and a master plan for the future of Sarit?

It was a that point that the families called in expert advice from abroad to help them devise that master plan.

“What we want Phase three to become is ‘a city within a city,” says Nitin who adds that construction didn’t start right away.

“It began in February of 2017,” adds Atul Shah, the Centre’s financial manager. “The construction is ongoing,” continues Nitin who is thrilled that already, a number of new international retail firms have come on board Phase three, including L.C. Wakiki, Clark Shoes and Sketchers as well as others like Carrefour from France which came in to replace Uchumi which has had its share of financial woes.

In total, as of now, Sarit houses over 500,000 square feet of space occupied by a diversity of retail shops, offices, medical facilities and other utilities. Over 25,000 visitors come to the Centre every day. And the families have even constructed a nine-level parking ‘silo’ that can hold no less than 900 cars.

Phase three will also include a new gym facility, cinemas, bowling alleys and even a children’s playground. And while not all the businesses have moved in as yet, the Sarit Expo Centre itself has already become a popular venue for international exhibitions as well as private functions and banquets like the one the DISCON 2020 will be hosting on the final night of the conference.

OLIVIA'S CREATING ART WITH STREET KIDS

                                                           Olivia's portrait of one of the Alfajiri street boys

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted February 13 2020)

Olivia Pendergast is an American painter based in Kenya who has a penchant for portraiture. She loves doing it the ‘old fashioned’ way, by having her live subject seated in her presence as opposed to relying solely on photographs.

Olivia has found she doesn’t necessarily need her subjects to be seated without moving. She has had enough experience painting portraits of people all over the US so she’s flexible about how she works with people she hopes to paint.

                                                               Painting by one of the Alfajiri street boy artists

One problem she has had during her current stay in Kenya (after visiting the country several times before) is how to engage Kenyans who she wants to paint. But ever since she met Lenore … and learned about the work she does with street children around Nairobi, that problem has largely been solved.

Lenore started Alfajiri in the slums to give street kids a temporary haven where they not only get a square meal and a bath but also an opportunity to share their stories and express themselves through an art project she started several years ago.

“It’s a project aimed at encouraging them to express themselves and potentially address the traumas they have experienced while trying to survive on the street,” Lenore told Saturday Nation.

                                                                   Olivia's portrait of an Alfijiri street artists

That objective hasn’t changed since I first met Lenore two years ago. But the art project has been enhanced since Olivia came on board to teach the children art.

“I have learned the children don’t want to be ‘taught’ in the traditional sense,” says Olivia who currently shares a show with the Alfajiri youth artists at One Off Gallery.

“What I do is simply give them paper and wax pencils and let them do as they wish,” says Olivia who has taught art in various places. “But when I see they are struggling with a specific image, I quietly come over and give them a drawing of what I think they’re trying to do. Then I leave them to follow my lead or not.”

It is while they are painting that she studies her young painters and then asks if they would mind sitting for her for a short time. Initially, she does sketches as they work so she can capture the subtleties of the boy or girl.

The young Alfajiri artists had a group exhibition last year at Nairobi National Museum, but this time round they are sharing space at One Off’s Loft with their new mentor. Meanwhile, more of her paintings are on display on the Stables’ side of the Gallery. Nearly all her art is focused on her portraits of the street youth.

One of her most beautiful paintings is of a double portrait which she created while still in the States for a women’s festival in California. “I created it be be used as a poster for the festival, but as I got to keep the original work, I decided to include it in this show,” says Olivia who also included several landscapes as well as portraits of her favorite cat and goat. 

One thing about Olivia’s method of painting is that she has to first feel something special about her subject before she can paint their portrait. Upon meeting Lenore and learning more about the trauma that many of these children face on a daily basis, she asked if she could help by volunteering to teach them art.

As for Lenore’s art classes, she was only too pleased to work alongside Olivia since the youth are experiencing new things, especially seeing themselves on canvas as portraits of a professional artist.

The exhibition runs until February 23^rd.

HEARTSTRINGS SENT POTENT MESSAGES TO WOMEN

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

Heartstrings Entertainment’s cast put on a ‘no holds barred’ performance of their latest comedy, ‘Good for Nothing’ last Friday night at Alliance Francaise.

The ensemble shared an impressive rapport with one another, despite much of the dialogue having been loosely scripted and improvised, which tends to be Heartstrings’ style.

It worked well on Friday night. In fact, the comedy had many in the audience on the edge of their seats as we witnessed the crafty duplicity of the characters played by Paul Ogola, Adelyne Wairimu and Bernice Nthenge.

Ogola had a genius style of cheating on his wife Christina (Ann Kamau) while both university women (Wairimu and Bernice) also had duel identities, one for their parents, the other for their campus life in the fast line where they earn from traveling with married men and enjoying the high life.

As always, Heartstrings draws from real-life situations even as they put them together in ways that don’t just shed light on shadowy affairs like the one Thaddeus aka ‘Mr T’ (Ogola) is having with a young university woman who’s the same age as his daughter.

They also show the absurdity, not to mention the immorality of the lies, cheating and hedonism of both the girls and the old man. But the company never gets preachy when their shows expose the corruption and moral rot of Kenyan society. Nonetheless, there’s invariably a punch line at the end of their plays which knocks one’s socks off with the ferocity of the message and moral judgment that one cast member lets loose.

In this case, it is Ogola’s pious wife who seems to turn a blind eye when she arrives at her daughter’s dorm room and finds not Phoebe (aka Kimberly as she is known on campus) but her spouse playing around with Phoebe’s roommate Cinnamon who is having the affair with Mr T.

Phoebe is away when her mom finds her dad dressed in boxer shorts and wearing a hat having a playfully phallic rhino-like horn attached. But once she arrives at her room and finds her mother there, pretending she hasn’t seen her spouse half-naked cheating with her best friend, Phoebe loses it.

She breaks into a flaming tirade, blaming her (now former) best friend and her dad. But who also infuriates her is her mom who seems in denial of what is happening right before her eyes.

Actually, in the end it is Christina who speaks the most potent truths, challenging the young women for lashing out at each other, rather than seeing the wider picture. In fact, Cinnamon also speaks truth when she challenges everyone who is blaming her, saying society itself had let her and other youth down for not having jobs available for them. Thus, young women have had to find means of making a living ‘by any means necessary’.

Yet Cinnamon also gets shot down by her own mom, the Zambian washer woman (Joan Arigi) who had never seen this side of her daughter. But even more than being morally appalled by her child, she is shocked at the disrespect and shame that Cinnamon openly shows her mother.

Ogola is wonderfully shameless playing the old man who is having a ‘second wind’ with a girl more than half his age. But ultimately, I can’t help applauding the powerful performances given by all the Heartstrings women.

All played wily resourceful women who are survivors who think strategically about how to make due in their lives. Arigi, the newest member of Heartstrings’ ensemble fit in brilliantly as the laundry lady who’d once had an affair with Thaddeus, although he had fled the moment she told him she was pregnant.

The suspense of not knowing whether this means that Mr T has been sleeping with his own child was palpable on Friday night. Arigi took her time telling everyone Cinnamon was not his child. So as shocking as their affair is, it is not incestuous!

The chastening of everyone, especially the women, finally comes after Phoebe lashes out at her former BFF and Cinnamon returns the thrashing by explaining she didn’t know Mr T was her dad; nor did she appreciate Phoebe behaving as if she isn’t also culpable for sleeping with married men just as she has.

But ultimately, it’s Christina who ends up telling the women they need to stop quibbling and instead, share some solidarity among themselves or nothing will change in the future.

VALENTINE DAY SPECIAL SHOWS

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted 13 February 2020)

Valentine’s Day weekend promises to offer several impressive performances all about romantic love.

Starting tonight with Dr Zippy Okoth in her latest one-woman performance, this time as ‘Agatha’ who’s got many love stories to share.

“Agatha is a hopeless romantic who is ever in search of true love,” says Dr Zippy who gave us ‘Diary of a Divorced Woman’ last year.

“But Agatha has nothing to do with divorce,” Zippy adds, explaining that this solo show will be musically accompanied by keyboard.

“There will be a bit of singing amidst the stories of the men who come into Agatha’s life, starting from her teens and running into her 20s and 30s,” she adds. The one constant in the stories is Agatha’s passion for romantic love, which seems to elude her.

Then Saturday night, ‘Romeo and Juliet’, the classic tale of romantic love, written centuries ago by William Shakespeare premieres at Kenya Nation Theatre.

Set to music for ballet by the Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev in the early 20^th century, it’s his score that will accompany Dance Centre Kenya’s weekend production of the beloved romantic drama.

The ballet will star two former DCK students of Cooper Rust, the former prima ballerina from the States who has popularized the art form by regularly staging ballet classics at KNT and reaching out to train youth who come all the way from Kibera to Karen.

Both Joel Kioko and Annabel Shaw were trained so well by Cooper that they went on to study dance in two of the best ballet schools in UK.

But they both had to come back home to play the leads in Romeo and Juliet. Cooper has choreographed this version of the bitter sweet love story about two ill-fated young lovers whose love was never meant to be.

They are the children of warring families whose differences are bitter and intractable. Yet somehow these two find one another and momentarily are in bliss.

It cannot be a spoiler to say that their love is short-lived and tragic since many people know at least a bit about the story.

But even if one knows the story by heart, those who love the dance won’t tire of watching this dramatic tale unfold or hearing the glorious music of Prokofiev.

Two guest dancers who flew in especially to be in the ballet are Cooper’s former dance partner, Yigit Erhan and his brother Baris.