PAWA 254 TAKES PHOENIX STAGE WITH POETRY AND SONG

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted July 10, 2023) PAWA 254 went silent after Boniface Mwangi chose to run for a seat in Parliament. Fortunately, it has been revived by his wife Njeri who has been running master classes in the arts since early this year. The most fruitful one thus far was run for young women poets and led by the award-winning poet, playwright, and actor Sitawa Namwalie. Among the fruits of it are a book of poetry, entitled ‘Give the Woman her Flowers’. The book was thereafter transported to the stage this past Saturday night at the Professional Centre. There is sweet irony in the fact that the same stage was once owned by Phoenix Players. The phoenix, of course, is a bird known in Greek mythology for being regenerative and capable of rising from the ashes of its predecessor. We who used to watch plays at the Phoenix were saddened when the stage shut down due to gross mismanagement. But theatre groups, particularly the one formed by Njeri and Sitawa are revitalizing that stage with poetry and stories of eight young women poets, four of whom performed on Saturday, accompanied by instrumentalist Muthama Kioko (aka Stingothao) whose bongos and guitar picked up the poets’ powerful vibe as if he’d been with them from the start. In fact, he’d only got to know them a few hours before.

The vibrant message of the four women, Ann Mumbua (aka Mombuh), Just Wairimu, Sylvia Mongina Onyonka (Singvia) and Freshiah Wanjiru (aka RJ), was stirring and strong. Their poetry revealed their awareness of the way their mothers and grandmothers had been socialized to be seen and not heard, and to be satisfied with the status quo in which men ‘ruled the world’. That painful awareness came out so clearly in Wanjiku Gicheru’s bitter-sweet poem, ‘Mother Wound’ about a mother disappointed that her daughter couldn’t fit into the traditional mold of women’s second class status. Fortunately, this generation of women have heard the clarion call of Beyonce, that “Women rule the world” not men. They seem ready to make that be not simply a slogan or a lyric from a popular song, but a reality that they intend to make come true for their own and for future generations. Singing, writing, and speaking both in Swahili and Sheng as well as in English, the four couildn’t escape telling stories of their vulnerability and heart-break at the hands of ex-partners. You could hear that in poems like Just Wairimu’s ‘Did you feel it too?’ and Spontaneous’ (aka Rachel Stephanie Akinyi)’s ‘He broke my heart. Ati! Akwende Kabisa!’

But then their poetry snapped out of that phase of ‘romantic love’ lost with a poem like Freshiah Wanjiru’s echo of a Bob Marley tune, ‘Everything is going to be alright’. But then again in their book, you will find Sylvia Mongina announcing ‘It’s not going to be alright’, but actually, after all the trials that women will go through, they will see that “it will be alright in the end.” There were poems announcing a woman’s confusion, with words like ‘She just don’t know which side She is supposed to hold onto… She is like a lost child in the desert Calling out for help… But there is no one around to help’, Again by Freshiah (aka RJ

But then we find a ring of self-confidence and assurance in a poem like Sylvia’s sassy lines entitled ‘Look at me’. She writes: ‘I have everything you want to see I have all that you seek Just look at me And you will see.’ Then again, a poem lieke ‘This Ain’t Love’ reveals women’s susceptibility to a charming, smooth-talking man, even when they seem to have a more militant attitude against the ‘old’ way of being a conventional woman. That’s one message that one finds in RJ’s poem. But the difference is that her friends rouse her by telling her, ‘Open your eyes and see That this ain’t love, this ain’t real So stop living in a fantasy.’

Ultimately, the messages that had the most ground-breaking impact were ‘How to be an African Queen’ by Wangui Kimani, which echoed the same ring of entitlement that one finds in both the title of their performance and the name of their book, namely ‘Give the Woman her Flowers’. In other words, women are not just coming into their own space, demanding it as their rightful and natural entitlement. They have already claimed that space and that’s the real tsunami that the world is feeling right now.