B2B's PORTRAIT OF A PROSTITUTE TOLD WITH EMPATHY

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted December 4, 2022) Mbeki Mwalimu and Back to Basics (B2B) took their time coming back to the Nairobi stage. But it was worth the wait after Mwalimu and her team went out to do their own eye-witness research into an under-privileged life they don’t pretend to understand first-hand. By happenstance, Mwalimu met a man who distributes sanitary pads to women and girls in Korogocho slum. His stories of the women’s lives inspired her to go meet them herself and learn more about the challenges they face. What she found is not exactly what happens in their new play, ‘Market Price’ which was staged last weekend at the Jain Bhavan Auditorium. Nyokabi Macharia, playing the journalist who ventured forth into the slum like some voyeur without a clue, isn’t meant to replicate the founder of B2B. But this stunning piece of writing, workshopped and then written by Saumu Kombo was definitely inspired by the women’s trip to Korogocho where they encountered life-styles they had never imagined before they had gone to meet women whose stories are synthesized and portrayed as Zamzam by Mary Mwikali. ‘Market price’ reveals the raw and risky world that especially women and girls lead in the slums of the city. It is a harsh story, but one told with immense empathy and depth of feeling as we witness with Zamzam’s life story embodied as flashback as the stage and set serve as a sort of ‘split screen’.

This was the first time Wakio Nzenge directed a B2B play and she did a brilliant job (although we don’t want to lose Wakio, the charismatic actor). She also worked with set designer, Isaac Njue to fill the vast Jain stage with three different slum sites, all made with mabati (rusty corrugated iron sheets) and cardboard, just like the originals). All three sets are inspired by the story Zamzam shares as part of the interview she gives to the flippant journalist who could hardly conceal her shock as the facts of Zamzam’s life unfolds on the second and third sets, designed to allow us to see in graphic detail how Zamzam grew up prostituting herself for food, just as her mother and grandmother did before her.

Nyokabi’s reporter had come apparently to do a story on some laudable lady distributing sanitary pads to fellow slum-dwellers. She had no idea that she would get to see the sordid and sad story of a child who never had a childhood, never went to school, and rarely knew her mom as a sober elder who wanted the best for her baby. Instead, Zamzam’s adult interview takes us back to the days when the young Zamzam (played by an amazing Sandra Chaoota) has to beg her drunken mother (Mkamzee Mwatela) for a few coins so she can buy food. When the mom has nothing to give, she has to quickly learn her mother’s erotic craft as her one means of eating anything at all.

Ironically, it is when she, at age 14, starts prostituting herself, her mom has much to tell her about men and how never ever trust them. She is passionate about her child not making the same mistakes that she did, in having faith in men. It rarely paid, and could even be life-threatening, as we saw, when one client had no means to pay. Zamzam the elder tells her story without shame since she believes she had no choice. Her own daughter Nicole (Shiviske Shivisi) is already prostituting herself as she confesses to the journalist who can hardly believe she’s interviewing prostitutes. Nyokabi starts off the play, miming and making her way past the ditches and filthy paths leading to Zamzam’s mabati ‘flat’. The drawings on the wall suggest Zamzam could have been an artist if she had a chance to broaden her outlook on life. But poverty had locked her into the slum world when the journalist is shocked to see that Zamzam didn’t even have friendly neighbors to advise or show her a way out.

Market Price is a tour de force that addresses a whole slew of women’s issues including the plight of single mothers and the immense need of many young women and girls for mentors and a helping hand to give them hope of a better life. At the end of the play, Mbeki threw in a pitch for Fred Ogolla’s Restoring Dignity Korogocho, the organization that first inspired her to make slum life the focus of her current play.