AYUB'S AMAZING MURAL IN KAHAWA WEST

 

                                       Ayub singing 'Kothbiro' at African Heritage House, 2012

 By Margaretta wa Gacheru

Ayub Ogada died a little more than three years ago. In his prime, he was renowned for being Kenya’s most acclaimed nyatiti player and a leading singer-songwriter as well.

Alliance Francaise has an annual “Tribute to Ayub” which took place March 2^nd, and it was packed with a multitude of young nyatiti players and other local musicians who vowed not to forget the memory of this great Kenyan artist who happily performed in his own Dhuluo language all over the world.

Another person who had a special connection with Ayub and who also feels passionate about ensuring that upcoming generations of musicians and poets don’t forget this maestro of Kenyan music is the photographer and ceramicist Lin Qi. He’s remembering Ayub by creating his idea of ‘street art’.

Lin was living and working in Kenya more than a decade ago when he first met Ayub at African Heritage House and took photographs of an event where the musician was the star attraction of the day. After that, Lin invited Ayub to perform at his wedding, also at African Heritage House. But it was one special photo that he took in 2012 that stands out as an iconic image of the artist. In it, Ayub is playing the nyatiti, and in the background is a blissful view of Nairobi National Park.

It is that image that Lin is using to immortalize Ayub. He’s creating a gigantic ceramic tile mural with that image transferred to it. The finishing touches were just being put on the wall mural when BDLife met Lin in Kahawa West.  

“I couldn’t have done it without the help of several people who really like the project,” says Lin who came back to Kenya in 2020, now happily married to the Japanese diplomat, Kazumi Kawamoto who is based with the United Nation in Mogadishu.

“She comes back to Nairobi periodically. But in the meantime, I keep myself busy with interesting projects,” he says, noting that he recently returned from Lake Turkana, having been accompanied by a camel that he got from the flock owned by the Kenyan environmentalist Piers Simpkin.

Lin admits the walk is not the sort of journey that would attract many international tourists. But having worked in Kenya, providing 3D printers and other machinery to Vocational Schools all around Kenya, he doesn’t quite consider himself an ordinary tourist.

Standing below the scaffolding that his fellow workers had been perched on while they put up the 54 ceramic tiles over the past week, Lin says he has three sponsors to thank.

There’s the ceramic manufacturing company in Kajaido that Lin says is the only one in Kenya with machines large enough to print his black and white image of Ayub on their ceramic tiles.

“The mural is 3.6 metres wide and 2.4 metres tall with each tile being 40 cms by 40 cms,” he says. It didn’t hurt that the mechanical engineer who runs the Kenya Ceramics Company (KEDA) is Chinese like Lin.

But the Kenyan workers who helped Lin put up the tiles on one side of the busy Quick Mart shopping centre came from Lin’s second sponsor.

“They are professional construction workers with AVIC, my former employer,” says Li who was a project manager with the State-owner aviation firm up until he wed and moved to Haiti, Gabon, and the US.

“Normally they are busy building the Global Trade Centre right next door to the Kempinski Hotel,” he adds.

The third sponsor was the one who helped him find a wall big enough in Eastlands to show off Ayub’s mural prominently for the public to see was French-owned Konnect Africa.

“They are a new ‘low-cost’ service provider that is currently providing internet services all over Eastland,” says Lin who also happens to know a senior manager at Konnect who is another Chinese engineer.

“They all have been happy to help me,” says Lin who was trained in aeronautical engineering at Xi’An University, in the same town (of Xi’An) where thousands of terracotta (or ceramic) soldiers have been excavated since 1974.

“These life-size ceramic sculptures were commissioned by China’s first emperor [Qin Shi Huang Di] to guard his burial site in the afterlife,’ says Lin who was inspired by the durability of the terracotta army.

“The good thing about ceramics is that they’re fragile but durable,’” says Lin who is glad the mural stands about 10 feet above a giant red Coca Cola ad, so everyone can look but not touch Ayub’s mural.