REFUGEE WOMEN’S CRAFTS MADE TRENDY AND TASTEFUL

                                   Goodie Odhiambo of Goodie's African Interiors and Gifts with Dadaab women's crafts

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted 26 February 2020)

Ever since the International Trade Centre found out about Goodie Odhiambo and her work in product development with women groups around Kenya, they went looking for her.

“ITC wanted to link me up with women artisans in Dadaab Refugee Camp,” says Goodie who helps lots of artisans to upgrade their products so they are in line with what she calls ‘market trends’.

This is what Goodie has been doing with Dadaab women groups for the last two years, the fruits of which are on display at Village Market’s Lower Food Court from Friday, February 28^th through Sunday, March 1^st.

The display by the ‘Nyota Farsamo Dadaab Collective’ is called the ‘Dadaab Connections: an interior design showcase from Dadaab” and will run all three days from 10am to 7pm.

“What are being showcased are beautiful baskets, mats, cushions, furniture, lampshades and tie dye textiles,” says Goodie, who adds that several of the women have come with their goods from Daadab and will be at Village Market to talk about their work with Nyota Farsamo.

At the time that Goodie was contacted by ITC, she had already been working with a number of women groups, many of whom she helped to organize.

“I especially like working with women groups who are already making things but need support, both in product development and by giving them a platform where they can showcase and sell their things,” adds the owner of Goodie’s African Interiors and Gifts in Westlands.

ITC wanted Goodie to assist Dadaab women through a program called the Refugee Employment Skills Initiative. They needed someone having the same skills set as Goodie has. A graphic designer by training and women entrepreneur by practice, Goodie had a special appeal to ITC in that she is known for assisting women groups develop community-based structures everywhere from Turkana to Kitui.

“I work with anywhere from 80 to 100 individual artisans. But among them, at least 20 of them represent their women group,” says Goodie.

She started her business in 2009. In the case of the Dadaab Refugee women, she found that many of them had traditional skills in things like weaving and hand-plaiting mats and baskets as well as in tie-dying fabrics. But they needed to improve their designs and learn more about market trends and tastes. These were the issues that Goodie was asked to address.

But before she could get to work on tackling those topics, she had to work on getting the women organized into groups.

“I have often helped women form working collectives,” she says. In the case of the Dadaab women, she helped them first to form five groups who then gave themselves the name ‘Nyota Farsamo Dadaab Collective’ and chose Fatuma Athar Haji to be their chairperson.

One of the things that Goodie does for the women is to add value to their products. For instance, the women send her beautiful tie-dye fabrics and she makes fluffy pillows out of them. “I also consult with them on the shapes and colors of everything, be it the tie and dye or the baskets,” says Goodie who also works with them on quality control.

Showing me a ‘before and after’ set of baskets, she explains that the ‘before’ basket was loose and floppy at the top, but after getting advice from Goodie, the women not only to make a new style of basketry but the basket also now had a tighter weave at the top so it has a more functional and attractive appeal.

Another way that she has helped the women to develop a new product to sell is by adapting the tie-dye to different formats. “We sell the tie-dye material in assorted colors and designs, but now we also transform the material into lampshades that have a market both in the Westlands shop and online at www.africaninteriors.co.ke.

But Goodie doesn’t only assist women. For instance, one of the artisans that she works with is a carpenter. “I had bought some beautiful fabric from Mali and wanted to do something useful with it so I gave it to him. He then used the material to make me a comfortable chair which is upholstered with my Mali material,” she says.

Goodie was tempted to take that chair home and keep it, but instead, it’s in her shop for all to see and for her to sale.

FORMER RARE WATTS DANCER PREMIERES WITH NEW MAASAI MORAN DANCE TROUPE

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted 25 February 2020)

Fernando Anuang’a may be best known as the founding ‘Maasai dancer’ of the dance trio Rare Watts. But that was years ago.

This weekend, he returns to Alliance Francaise, not with two in his team. This Saturday night in the AF garden, he will perform with 45 Maasai dancers, 15 from Magadi, 15 from Amboseli and 15 more from Maasai Mara.

The show, ‘Maasai Footsteps’ will be premiering in bright red suka pageantry that only Fernando could devise.

“I have been dreaming of creating a large Maasai dance company for years,” says the man whose lineage comes not from Maasai but from Western Kenya.

“I grew up in Kitengela so I started doing Maasai dances since primary school,” he says noting that his school used to win at annual Kenya Music Festivals.

It was in the 1990s that Rare Watts took off and performed not only in Kenya, mainly in Nairobi and in hotels at the Coast. They also went to Europe as part of African Heritage’s 11-cities tour and to South Africa as part of AH’s ‘African Renaissance’ showcase.

“Rare Watts fell apart in 1998, but I kept dancing. I went to Reunion to perform in a Maasai Festival and to the Seychelles after we reunited briefly to dance in hotels from one end of the island to the other,” says Fernando who went solo from late 2000 up until 2007 when he created his first Maasai dance troupe (after Rare Watts) with seven Maasai morans from Magadi.

Calling themselves the Maasai Vocal Dance Group (due to the deep guttural sounds that moran dancers make), Fernando recalls that their first performances were in 2008 in Nairobi, at The GoDown and Alliance Francaise. After that, they went on tour around central and southern Africa as well as to Morocco and Algeria.

But the incentive that spurred him to revive a new Maasai dance troupe happened earlier in 2007 when he was living in France with his French wife Patricia.

“I got the opportunity to meet the [acclaimed] French choreographer, Angelin Preljocaj who invited me to do a residence at Pavillon Noir (Choreography Centre) in Aix-en-Provence. That experience opened my eyes to appreciate both contemporary dance and improvisation,” says Fernando.

At the end of his residency, he had to give three performance of the original dance that he’d created during his days at Pavillon Noir. His ‘Journey into the Future’ was well received. But he’d been inspired by Angelin’s ‘Ballet Preljocaj’ and now wanted to start his own company based on his Maasai dance roots.

His Maasai Vocal Group tours were a big success. But as they weren’t full-time, when he wasn’t touring with them, he went back to France where a friend invited him to perform at the newly-renovated castle in the South of France owned by the French philosopher Pierre Teilhard du Chardin.

“That is where I met both the French Minster of Culture Jack Lang and Pierre Chardin. That was in 2014 when I performed ‘The Traditional Future’,” says Fernando.

Both men were impressed with this Kenyan who was already in his thirties but still looked 22. “Jack Lang invited me to perform my dance at the Museum of African Art (Musee de Quai Branly) at its Claude Levi-Strauss Theatre,” he says, remembering what a huge honor that was.

But as he had already met with Chardin and proposed that he be given a residency at the great philosopher’s magnificent ‘Espace Pierre Carden’ also known as ‘Theatre de la ville de Paris’, he proceeded straight to Paris.

That residency lasted two months after which Fernando felt confident to give solo performances across Europe (in France, Sweden and Iceland) as well as in Costa Rico in Central America and Japan.

Coincidentally, he was contacted by an Irish filmmaker named Steve Woods who found him online and wanted to make movies with him. “The first one that we made was a short film called ‘Keeping Time’ and the current one is a documentary that he is now making called ‘The Making of ‘Maasai Footsteps’,” says Fernando.

Woods was there and filming while he was auditioning Maasai morans in Maasai Mara, Amboseli and Magadi. He had already left for Ireland when Fernando reunited Rare Watts and his Maasai Vocal Dance group to perform at African Heritage House for the African Twilight Gala last March.

But Woods will be there Saturday night when Fernando’s ‘Maasai Footsteps’ premieres at Alliance Francaise. It’s a performance you won’t want to miss.

GITHINJI’S ART CONVEYS THE DESPAIR FELT BY IMPOVERISHED KENYANS

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted to SN 25, February 2020)

Just as the acclaimed Irish painter Francis Bacon painted biomorphic portraits of people that were grim, disfigured and expressive of the torment that the individual (or the artist) apparently felt about life generally and Bacon’s life in particular, so Samuel Githinji also paints man-size figures that seem to reflect his own tortured perspective on his life and possibly on those of everyday Kenyans.

Githinji, whose emotionally powerful paintings are currently on display in his second solo exhibition at the Red Hill Gallery, fills his larger-than-life sized canvases with stick figures painted with bold black and red strokes set against a plain black and white background. Occasionally, he mixes his blacks with a deep, dark blue. But neither his colors nor his shapes, stark lines or scribbles are meant to suggest a semblance of beauty. Instead, like Bacon, his ghoulish figures are meant to be ugly and grotesque.

One feels they are meant to send a strong signal as to the suffering of ordinary Kenyans whom he occasionally paints with halos, as if to say they are society’s suffering servants in a state where corruption robs them of any hope for their future.

Compounding that sense of hopelessness and poverty, Githinji also sometimes rips his canvas with holes which are comparable to the tattered rags that his pencil-thin men are wearing.

Another feature that makes one feel his men are in bondage to their hopeless conditions is the horizonal black or blood-red straight lines that cross the chest of every man, as if he is dwelling behind bars. Hints of barbed wire also reinforce that feeling of entrapment that Githinji so effectively conveys in his paintings.

But what might be the most disconcerting aspect of his figures’ features are their faces which, like Bacon’s, are distorted beyond recognition of any humanity. Instead, some look more like bestial creatures which might imply that poverty itself turns men into beasts for survival’s sake.

The faces of others look hollow, featureless, as if their very identities have been erased in light of the heavy burdens they feel just being alive. Meanwhile, a few remind one of Edvard Munch’s painting, ‘The Scream’ which also has an emotional impact that is tragic yet undeniable.

Githinji’s art, equally, has an emotional impact that is desperate yet undeniable. Indeed, in spite of someone feeling ‘turned off’ by the tortured expressions of his figures, one may also find it difficult to take one’s eyes off these disturbing men. They seem to confront you with more questions than answers. They might even compel you to ponder what reasons could inspire this talented Kenyan artist to step away from painting the pretty decorative art that sells so well to tourists.

It’s because the artist has powerful sentiments to share about society and the powerful forces that ignore the needs of the vast majority whose lives are desperate.

Yet as nihilistic as Githinji’s stick-men seem to be, his art is not entirely hopeless. Instead, one can occasionally find a small flower (or two or three) sprouting out of the rubble and filth. The flowers, some white other blood red, seem to symbolize that touch of hope that Githinji suggests in the halo and crown he occasionally gives to his characters.

Yet one is not meant to be fooled by any sense of false hope. That crown is a crown of thorns, the kind first worn by Jesus Christ before he was crucified. It hints at the notion that times will continue to be tough in Kenya, but there may be hope. Yet who can wait for the kingdom to come? Not Githinji.

PAN AFRICAN JEWELRY AS ART

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted 24 February 2020)

Many months before he met his future business partner, the former Vice President of Kenya Joseph Murubi, Alan Donovan was inspired by the designs, creativity and technical skills of Turkana women.

‘I realized their designs might disappear before anyone outside their community would see what beautiful jewelry they made,” says Donovan whose ’50 years of African Heritage Jewelry’ just opened last night at the Nairobi Serena Hotel.

Donovan was on his second sojourn to northern Kenya when it dawned on him to sit with the mamas and learn how they made their earrings (aparaparat in Turkana) out of old melted-down aluminum cooking pots. Their aparaparat designs would subsequently become the basis for his own contemporary Pan-African jewelry lines which have been shown worldwide. Among them are the 14 unique designs now on display at the Serena.

The 14 will also be shown in December among the 40 new designs that will be part of Donovan’s inaugural opening of phase one of his Timimoun Museum.

Donovan’s first trip to Turkana came after he’d retired from being a USAID relief officer in Biafra and driven across Africa in a second-hand Volkswagon van. Arriving in Nairobi, he only stayed long enough to get a permit to travel up north to Lake Turkana.

He was so impressed with the Turkana people’s material culture, he decided to collect one sample of every artifact they used, from the wooden milk containers (made by women) and the curved wooden food bowls (made by men) to the stools, headrests, lip plugs and jewelry. He brought them back to Nairobi where one former USAID colleague and his wife lent him their guest house and introduced him to the Studio Art 68 owner Sherry Hunt. The idea was that Ms Hunt might give him an exhibition, which she eventually did.

But first, she sent him back to Turkana to collect a second set of Turkana artifacts to sell in an exhibition since Donovan refused to sell his own.

He happily went again but took his time coming back. “That time, I spent about three months with the Turkana who took me out on a crocodile hunt and gave me the croc’s teeth from the one they caught,’ says Donovan who later made the teeth into a beautiful necklace.

He never studied design per se, only journalism, political science and African art at UCLA. But as soon as he got back to Nairobi after his third trip up north, he went to apprentice with Holland Millis at the Bombolulu Workshops where they made jewelry using indigenous materials.

And over the next 50 years, he would pick up elements in his travels around the region for African Heritage and later make contemporary Pan-African jewelry using traditional designs (mainly Turkana and Maasai) which he modernized to meet the tastes of a Western market.

That is how his jewelry came to include everything from amber from Mali, brass rings from Cameroon, sunifu masks from Ivory Coast, sufunia brass and copper earrings from Maasai and many other elements.

He’d also use things like Egyptian scarabs, Samburu beatle wings, Kenyan warthog tusks (now banned), , banana fibre from Mombasa and cow bone beads that he was first to batik. “I even made a ‘false ivory collection’ which I created out of bone,” he adds.

The Serena collection contains an assortment of aluminum, brass, silver and gold as well as malachite, agate, amber, ostrich eggshell and batiked cow bone.

But Donovan’s jewelry designs only began to evolve after his first Turkana exhibition where he met the one African who attended the show’s opening, Joseph Murumbi, the most avid collector of African art in Kenya.

Murumbi was so impressed with Donovan’s collection that he, like Sherry Hunt, sent him back up north to again collect elements of Turkana culture which had previously been largely unknown in Nairobi prior to Donovan’s exhibition.

It wasn’t long after his return that Murumbi shared his dream with Donovan, to create a Pan-African cultural centre in Kenya similar to what he had seen when he served the first President Kenyatta as his Foreign Minister.

Asking Donovan to assist him in fulfilling that dream, African Heritage Pan African Gallery was born in January 1973. Largely supplied by indigenous African artifacts, textiles and art as well as products made in Donovan’s jewelry and Kisii stone workshops, the current Serena exhibition of ’50 Years of African Heritage Jewelry ‘is the first show that the septuagenarian has had since 2003 when he closed the Gallery.

COLLECTOR OF MEMORABILIA SHOWED HER LIFE IN BOTTLES

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted 21 February 2020)

Leo Coimbra is a collector. She collects big things like incredible paintings from her homeland, Brazil as well as from other Latin American countries and places where she has traveled with her Ambassador husband Fernando.

She also collects small things that can easily fit into glass bottles and jars. Those includes everything from pebbles, bits of wrapping paper and hippo poop to what she calls the ‘flotsam and jetsam’ she found on the beach at Watamu and images from exhibitions she had prior to the one that just closed at Nairobi National Museum.

“I’ve been collecting things since childhood,” recalls Leo referring to the miniature memorabilia that fills the glass bottles included in her first Kenyan exhibition entitled ‘In Vitro’ which in Latin literally means ‘in glass’. But for her, the term specifically refers to her life and the precious memories embodied in those small things contained in the jars.

“I collect ordinary things from everyday life that have significance to me,” she says.

For instance, one bottle contains ticket stubs from plays and films that she and Fernando watched while living in various cities, including one filled with receipts from trips with her family to Nairobi National Park. Others contain items recycled from her previous shows such as strips cut from posters and invitation cards that she made by hand. Still others feature her ‘Family album series’ containing bottles for her brothers, sisters and parents.

The glass bottles and jars are themselves memorabilia collected for nearly as long as she’s been picking up things like seeds and tiny toys while growing up in Rio de Janeiro and Brasilia, her country’s young capital.

“I had over 1000 glass bottles in my first ‘In Vitro’ show which I had in Brasilia in 2010 and which I left there. But in my Nairobi exhibition, I only used bottles and jars that I collected in Kenya and assembled into small installations,” she says.

Noting that for two of the installations, she bought glass and metal stands used by Kenyan street sellers of sausages and hard-boiled eggs.

Leo’s paintings are just as autobiographic as her installations and glass jars. “The exhibition was all about my life, but the paintings are more emotional. I don’t think when I paint. I simply feel,” she says. “The bottles are more mental since I must think and decide which memories go in which bottles.”

Stressing the importance of painting in her life, Leo adds, “I paint because I have to. It’s the best way I know to be alive.”

Explaining that she paints to create a feeling of being at home and comfortable within herself, she says she was thrilled by the positive response her Museum exhibition received from literally thousands of visitors.

Leo only started painting in 1991 while living in Washington, DC. She describes herself as ‘self-taught’ as she never went to art school. In fact, she’s been inspired by many artists, but especially by the Dominican-born American painter, muralist and graphic designer, Aurelio Grisanty who was really her mentor.

“I assisted him in his studio, doing mundane things like washing his brushes. But in the process, I learned a lot [by osmosis] such that one day, he told me to ‘go home, set up a studio and paint’ because there was nothing more he could teach me.” So I did just that,” she says.

Her first exhibition was in 1994 in Quito, Ecuador. She has had many more since. Her Nairobi exhibition featured 68 paintings using multi-media such as canvas, paper and plates as well as magazine cut-outs, wooden boxes, cowrie shells, red wrapping tape and Buddhist prayer flags.

Her paintings come in series, the first one being entitled ‘Fragments’. “It reflects the way I felt when I first came to Kenya and knew no one, didn’t speak the language [hers is Portuguese] and felt like my life was fragmented,” she recalls. “But once I began painting again, the healing process came quickly,” she adds.

‘Healing’ was actually one of the series represented at the Museum as were series on ‘Crossing’ boundaries, ‘Family’ and ‘Buddhist Prayer Flags’ among others.

Her interest in Buddhism was piqued while living in India. That interest was best reflected by a triptych that expressed the spiritual processes of meditation that she practices every day.

Currently, Leo is working one a new series entitled ‘Flesh and Bones’, all about aging. “It’s a process I’m having to come to terms with right now,” adds the 62 year old artist.

FIRST WOMEN IN FILM AWARDS

Zippy Okoth is the chief judge of the women in film awards. here's photo of her upcoming film, Midlife Crisis

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted 24 February 2020)

The inaugural ‘Women in Film Awards’ night will be held March 4^th, just days before International Women’s Day on March 8^th.

According to Dr Susan Gitimu, founder of the Awards and Kenyatta University lecturer in film, there is a reason for inaugurating an ‘awards’ ceremony rather than a women’s film festival.

“We are not acknowledging only women’s films. We are acknowledging the achievements of individual women who are part of the whole filmmaking process,” says Dr Gitimu who is also founder of ‘Beyond the Film’ (BTF) which is especially focused on the genre of film for social change.

“We chose to name our organization ‘Beyond the film’ because we know most people associate film with entertainment alone. But our concern is promoting films that can make an impact on society and can change people’s thinking,” she adds.

Working closely with Grace Mercy Muruthi who is BTF’s creative director and Noel Awuor who is the ‘Women in Film Awards’ coordinator, Susan registered the awards late last year.

“We realized that there are so many amazing women working in film but they are largely unacknowledged,” she says.

That reality was illustrated last November at a conference organized by the Alliance of Slum Media Organization (ASMO) which named a myriad of Kenyan women in film. “It was a real eye-opener,” Susan recalls. But it also made her wonder why more women in film were unknown to the public.

Names like Judy Kibinge, Anne Mungai and Wanjiru Kinyanjui are women filmmakers that have received some recognition. But as is often the case, they are better known abroad than at home.

Susan together with Grace Mercy and Noel want to change all that. On December 15^th, they put a ‘call out’ on social media for the public to nominate their favorite women in film for any one or all of 14 categories. The 14 include Best Producer, Director, Script writer, Actress and Cinematographer as well as Most Influential Woman in Film, Best Newcomer Producer, Sound/Set/Costume/Lighting Designers, Make-Up Artist and Best Animator.

The call-out closed January 15. A total of 2400 names were submitted. After that, five judges selected five names in each category and again listed them on social media.

The judges include Dr Zippy Okoth who is Chief adjudicator, Kenyatta University film lecturer and founder of the Lake International Pan-African Film Festival, Victoria Goro, Deputy Director of the Kenya Film School, Wangechi Murage, Media Consultant, Suki Wanza, actress and KU lecturer with Zippy in Theatre Arts and Rachel Mwara, lecturer at Multimedia University.

The second call-out invited the public to vote for one of the five in all 14 categories. The voting went from February 10^th to 20^th, producing 6,500 submission!

The final tally is now with Dr. Susan who is holding the winning names until March 4^th when Kenya National Theatre opens its door from 6pm. The Guest of honor will be Dr Josephine Ojiambo, Director of the Commonwealth Businesswomen of Kenya.

The evening will be MC’ed by Brenda Nyambeki and Joseph Ochieng.

BEAUTIFYING A GARDEN YOU DON’T OWN

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted 24 February 2020) 

Living with a spacious lawn filled with ancient trees, lush scrubs, rows of ornamental flowers and grass regularly mowed and manicured by diligent gardeners all might sound like heaven to many people.

Leo Coimbra isn’t complaining by any means, although being married to the Brazilian ambassador does mean that luscious land doesn’t belong to her or her husband Fernando. It’s property of the Brazilian government.

Nonetheless, Leo says she, with her three gardeners, have transformed the garden in the two years that they’ve been living there. They planted a rainbow array of flowers and fruit trees.

 “I have a small garden back home in Brasilia,” she says as she gives us Portuguese names for some of the trees planted around their spacious five-bedroom house.

For instance, the giant tree with red flowers on its top tips is ‘Xixi de Macaco’ which she says is translated as ‘Monkey’s Pee’, for whatever reason she cannot explain.

Her other high-flying tree with yellow flowers is called ‘Sibipiruna’ and the one with spikey leaves growing nearer the family’s driveway is a ‘Palmeira de Madagaskar’.

Since arriving in Kenya in January 2018, Leo has quickly expanded her English vocabulary and fluency. But she has yet to learn English terms for the trees in her garden.

What she does know is that she has planted several avocado and mango trees to augment the other edible fruit trees that grow in the garden, such as the guava, pawpaw and banana trees.

“But I’ve never eaten an avocado, mango or pawpaw from the garden,” she admits. The same is true for the bananas and guavas. She does get plenty of lime from the two trees she planted with assistance from their three gardeners, Benson Okumu, Johnson Omari and Bevin Kimaiga.

“It’s the monkeys,” she says simply. She admits however that the avocado trees are so tall that their fruits wouldn’t be easy to harvest, in any case.

Benson explains that the monkeys keep their eyes on those fruit trees and gobble up the mangos, pawpaws and avocados right when they have ripened perfectly. “They normally don’t come during the day. We leave work at 5 o’clock and the monkeys time us,” he adds.

They arrive between 5:15 to 5:30 which is after the gardeners go and before Fernando arrives home.

“They come as a large family,” observes Leo who often sees them arrive in large numbers when she is at home working. Clearly reconciled to never eating fruits from her garden, she says the monkeys don’t bother her in the least.

“But unless I close all the windows and doors, they will come in,” she adds, noting that once she walked into her kitchen and found one blithely eating an egg. He didn’t even bother to leap back out the kitchen window until he’d finished his mini-feast.

“He hadn’t done any damage to the kitchen.” Leo says. “But as I had the eggs covered and on a tray outside the fridge, he had managed to open the container and take the one egg out,” she adds, noting how intelligent these Sykes monkeys are.

The one yellow-green fruit that the monkeys don’t touch is what the Portuguese call ‘Chuchu’. It’s actually a vegetable shaped like a pear and having a similar texture and seed structure.

“Chuchu’s are rather tasteless, but just as tofu is tasteless but easily absorbs the flavor of whatever food they are being cooked with, chuchu’s are similar,” she says.

Noting that since coming to Kenya she rarely cooks. “We have an excellent kitchen staff,” Leo says although she often gets herbs and spices from their kitchen garden to enhance the flavor of a specific dish. But back home in Brazil, she adds that she loves to cook and has no hired help.

Their vegetable garden also grows spinach, kale, onions, beetroot, eggplant and potatoes successfully. “But the tomatoes can be a problem,” notes Johnson.

“Whatever grows in the garden is shared by everyone,” Leo says although she admits she prefers the staff eat from the garden during working hours and not carry things home. “Otherwise, there will be none left for us,” she adds.

Besides veggies, the garden also grows thyme, chives, mint, rosemary and parsley. And a Kenyan garden wouldn’t be complete without at least one jacaranda, acacia and bougainvillea bush.

The one tree the gardeners know well is the mwarubaini which is said to cure over 40 diseases, everything from typhoid and malaria to amoeba and ulcers.