WAKIO DRAFT

I apologize ti Wakio for totally not understanding her play but a revised story is coming shortly Margaretta (written 6.10. 2023) Wakio Mwenze has been a busy woman over the last few weeks and months, creating works that only got disclosed last Friday night at Goethe Institute. That’s where she not only announced the formation of her new production company, BTM, short for Beyond the Mainstream. It’s first production was the play Ujumbe, which she told BDLife shortly before the show’s opening that it was just a ‘small’ two-hander, almost as if it were an incidental feature of the new company’s launch rather than the centerpiece of the evening’s program. In fact, Ujumbe is a marvelously revealing story about childhood trauma and the reverberating effects it can have on the families of those involved, including those left behind trying to understand what went wrong. Wakio admitted to BDLife that Ujumbe is semi-autobiographical. It is also an incredibly innovative piece of literature that she wrote, produced, and directed herself. And while she co-starred with Sam Psenjen, there were several more invisible cast members who lent their voices to fill out the storyline. Marrianne Nungo, Mary Mwakali, and Daniel Orenge each spoke briefly, one playing the heavy-handed Judge, one the harsh school Principal (and MC), and one the announcer respectfully. Then Wakio brought in Liboi to provide just the right delicate touch of soulful sounds. She shared the musical voice of an angel, hands that played the finger piano and percussive sticks, and occasionally, a West African talking drum. Wakio herself played several roles in this exquisitely experimental play. She started off apparently as herself, having asked audience members before the show to write something if they’d ever been traumatized in secondary school. That question and the responses that she got opened the way for the drama to begin. That was when we first met Ruth?, a humble secondary school girl whose teacher, played by Psenjen, apparently abused her sexually. The girl took her case to her school principal which led to the teacher going to court and then to jail where he was assaulted everyday by his fellow inmates. This whole story was largely revealed through mime combined with the accusing voices of the Principal and the Judge. But what the straight-arrow Ruth had to say was that her agemates blamed her for tattling on the teacher. She was shunned, mocked and made to feel like she shouldn’t have cared about what she’d been told. As a deeply-devout and prayerful person, she felt it was wrong to lose her virginity in that way. But she was haunted the rest of her days at school for squealing. Wakio as Ruth told of how she was accused of starting a student strike. That was a lie as this school girl was praying at the time she was supposedly master-minding the strike. Meanwhile, the Teacher had it rough as Psenjen illustrated so well in the miming of his painful moments in jail where he was experiencing his own traumatic moments behind bars. Through his silent mime, one could feel the agony that he endured. Who also endures pain is Rita, the girl who’d been accused of organizing the strike. She was forced to walk on her knees and then be suspended for several weeks. After that, this straight A student lost her motivation to learn, so much so that by form 4, her grades were all F’s. Rita then shares shreds of paper with handwritten messages of hope and comfort coming from her father, who she hasn’t seen in years. It’s only after she finishes school that she learns that he’s in jail and on what charge. But Rita doesn’t care. She has to go see him. But this is an even more disturbing experience. She gets to the prison and sees him in the crowd being pushed, shoved, and generally looking helpless and unwell. Just before he gets pulled away as if he were in a tsunami undertow, the dad sees Rita and they connect in that brief moment. The play ends with Wakio crying out for her Daddy. But it’s now that we wonder, is this the actor’s own experience? How close to reality is the play? Ujumbe, the Message, tells us what? That what Wakio calls an ‘episodic memory’ can stay with one the rest of their lives. These are memories one cannot forget. Whether Wakio really was the girl whose dad went to jail is only speculation for now. Either way, only something like forgiveness can heal the trauma of episodic memory that all of these characters felt.