WHY TITLE OBNOXIOUS OBVIOUSLY?

OBVIOUSLY OBNOXIOUS

By Margaretta wa Gacheru

The first sign that we might have trouble watching Igiza Arts Production of ‘Obnoxious Obvious’ at the Kenya Cultural Centre last weekend came at exactly 3pm, right when the show was scheduled to begin.

That is when we watched one of the set designers stick ‘presidential’ photos on the wall, as if that shouldn’t have been done at least an hour .earlier

After that, there was the mulling around of production people as some checked out the lighting and others did who knows what. We wondered why all of these last-minute details hadn’t been arranged in advance? Was this a sign that no one was in charge or just that the cast and crew kept the so-called ‘Kenya time’, meaning arriving at least half an hour late?

Either way, the show finally opened with the National Anthem after 3:40pm and the show that Wreiner Arnold Mandu scripted, directed, and produced finally took off. Mr. Mandu founded Igiza Arts, so we may have to hold him to account for his not running a tighter ship.

His story was a good one. It showed us several slices of Kenyan everyday life, starting with the most impoverished, shifting to an aspiring middle class, and revealing the dirty linen of the rich, powerful, and corrupt.

Kibali (Shammah Nyagaka) and his parents (Odhiambo Obonyo and Faith Andati) were living at the bottom rung of society. Their home was about to be taken since they had no means to pay off the loans they had borrowed. And their title deed had been the collateral Kibali’s father, Biledi (Odhiambo Obonyo) had used to secure those loans.

Poverty was the bane of their existence. But one ray of hope came when Kibali was offered a job as a bartender at an upmarket hotel. 

He went straight there, and immediately, his family’s lives were transformed. Biledi was even planning to take out yet another loan. But that was not to be since COVID had come to Kenya, and life would never be the same.

After several slow-going set changes, we finally met the Head of State, Okuzo (Darwin Wanjiru) who was the embodiment of corrupted power. He has a lovely wife, Oluyele (Milka Wangui) who on the one hand enjoys the privileges she has as First Lady, but on the other, finds his unethical plans to exploit the COVID pandemic for his personal gain abhorrent.

Oluyele challenges Okuzo, but rather than wrangle with her, he takes his daughter Erima (Lisa Odhiambo) with him to his public engagements to show her how to steal while looking like a saint.

The pivotal moment of the play comes when Okuzo responds to the COVID crisis. He is thrilled that COVID 19 has finally arrived in Kenya so he can inflate the numbers and on paper, look justified when asking for heaps of donor money for masks and other coverings that especially the hospital staff working with COVID patients need to stay safe from the corona virus.

Okuzo had been successful in training up his child to be just like him. Erima is greedy, selfish, and oblivious to the needs of her fellow Kenyans. She finds a billion shillings in her bank account, obviously from her father meant to be used to relieve Kenyans from the pain of catching COVID. But she could care less.

Erima’s boyfriend had been the hotel manager that was kind to Kibali when he started out on the job. But once she got her billion, and coincidentally, he lost his job due to the lockdown, she dumped him and went off with the Hotel’s manager.

The manager’s simultaneous loss of both his job and his girlfriend led to his doing something drastic. It was a stark statement, but the reality of Kenyans committing suicide is a sad reality.

Okuzo’s arbitrary style of extending the lockdown and the early curfew, also has consequences that reveal the high=handed cruelty of an autocratic ruler. It leads to Kibali’s getting picked up and roughed up by local cops for being out a few minutes after curfew. That’s the last we hear of him.

But Okuzo is not left unscathed. His darling daughter Erima suddenly gets ill and just as fast, falls over and is gone just like that.

Mandu’s story closely mirrors much of what we sadly know about Kenyan society today. He doesn’t shy away from truth-telling. But he must tighten up his production, making swifter set changes so the story flows.