Letter from America: Obama & the Machine Gun Preacher Man

I'm stranded in America for a while so I started up a Letter from America column, similar in spirit but not necessarily comparable in quality to the late great British-American journalist Alistair Cooke. Cooke wrote his weekly Letter from America and aired it regularly on BBC for years, and i used to love listening to it: So while the Jua Kali Diary is stuck in the States for a time, I'll be posting my Letter from America regularly here at my blog. I'm first sending it to The (Nairobi) Star which often prints my Letters but as I don't know when or if they do publish, i decided I'd take it upon myself to share: This one (#7) was sent to TheStar October 15th,2011: (more past letters to be posted)

LETTER FROM AMERICA: Kony meets Obama meets Rambo at the movies

By Margaretta wa Gacheru. 10.15.2011

Barack Obama is already getting flak from the right wing media in the US over his decision announced Friday October 14 to send a hundred US “combat equipped” troops to Uganda to assist in finally undoing the horrible misdeeds of Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army.

According to BBC, those troops are prepared to move through four East and Central African countries searching out and bringing to justice men who have murdered, maimed, raped and abducted children by the tens of thousands in northern Uganda.

Why the world has watched silently since 1987 when Joseph Kony first came on the scene to start his supposedly messianic bloody mission to bring down the Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni is beyond me. Especially when Museveni would become the darling of foreign donors by the early 1990s, after the then-wealthy Western powers realized he was no threat to their ongoing activities.

Museveni came to power in 1986 and in all likelihood, one year later, Kony was initially propped up by covert forces who were keen to bring down the former guerrilla fighter who brought an end to more than twenty years of hell overseen by Milton Obote, then Idi Amin, and then Obote again.

I for one welcomed Museveni as a hero who proved that Africans can run their own affairs and quash cruel dictators who usually remained in power because they either bowed to or were installed by Western interests wanting to continue reaping the spoils of the region without any government interference.

But Museveni’s success didn’t seem to reach Uganda’s northern region where the LRA were wrecking havoc mercilessly. I never fully understood how the guerrilla fighter-turned statesman couldn’t quash Kony if he could finish Obote! But i’ve been told it was because the LRA would flee across the border into Sudan and melt into the local population.

What I also couldn’t understand is why the West didn’t come to Museveni’s aid, especially after their unforgiveable neglect of Africans during the Rwanda genocide. But now that Obama is trying to rectify that horrible oversight to a very limited degree, he is being attacked by the likes of Rush Limbaugh who despises Obama “on principle.”

Ironically, some of his fiercest critics didn’t sound a peep when he supported French President Sarkozy and British Prime Minister Cameron and agreed to send NATO forces to Libya. Instead, they quietly endorsed the Western invasion of North Africa in the name of ‘saving civilian lives’ because they cynically understood that what was really at stake was the OIL that no African, especially Gadaffi, should be allowed to control.

Most of Obama’s current critics don’t yet realize that once again the covert issue in this troop deployment could also be oil. Instead, Limbaugh complained on his radio show that Obama was “sending troops to Africa to kill Christians.” Can you believe it?

The guy is not only racist, but also so utterly ignorant that he upgrades a butcher like Kony to being an ‘authentic’ Christian. Launching his religion-based smear campaign, Limbaugh applauds the LRA for its “good work” of “fighting Muslims in Sudan.”  

What’s scary about this sort of smear campaign is that in America today, the likes of Limbaugh, including his Fox News colleagues, are commanding much of the mainstream media, meaning many ordinary Americans are likely to listen to Fox or right-wing radio talk, and believe what they hear.

This is a moment when Americans ought to applaud Obama for doing what Bill Clinton didn’t have the guts to do 17 years ago when more than a million innocent Africans were being slaughtered en masse in Rwanda. Since 1987, Kony”s LRA has also been murdering an incalculable number of Africans in Uganda, and at last, an American head of state is doing something about it.

The Ugandan foreign minister has welcomed the deployment of US troops. And while Emira Wood, co-director of Foreign Policy in Focus claims Obama’s decision had more to do with the OIL recently discovered in Uganda than any selfless initiative taken on behalf of his African kin, the locals are grateful for any sort of protection.

What’s ironic to me is the timing of President Obama’s decision. People are asking, why now? And I don’t have an answer, but I have to say that just last week, a film opened at a cinema house down the street from me, starring the action-hero Gerald Butler (300) as a degenerate biker who finds hope and meaning in life by coming to Uganda and waging his own Rambo-like war on a “brutal renegade militia” known as, none other than the LRA.

The movie bombed in my neighborhood, but the following Friday is when Mr. Obama announced that he too was going to “do good” for African children. One only hopes his show fares better than Mr. Butler’s did at the box office. 

Letter from America #2, September 20, 2011

LETTER from America.2 September 20, 2011

By Margaretta wa Gacheru

It’s not only irate Kenyan MPs who are adamant about refusing to pay taxes.

It is also American Republicans, starting with members of the ultra-right wing end of the Party called the Tea Party (represented by ditzy brunettes like Michelle Bachman and Sarah Palin and fundamentalist religionists like Rick Perry, governor of Texas who doesn’t believe in Climate Change and calls Social Security, the workers-funded safety net set up during the Great Depression, a “Ponzi Scheme” to be trashed with the rest of government-backed people-oriented programs).

It’s also the corporate-backed media like Fox News that are fighting President Obama’s efforts to deal with the huge government deficit (amounting to trillions) by taxing the Super-Rich.

The corporate media along with Congressmen who signed up (with the Taxpayers Protection Pledge) never to support raising taxes are all accusing Mr. Obama of waging “class warfare” against who? Against the super-rich, of course!

What Obama has done is agree with one of the richest men in the world, Warren Buffett, who says the rich should be taxed more not less or not at all (as many of the super-rich have managed to do by putting all their assets into tax havens outside the US).

The ‘Buffett Tax” is what Obama’s plan has been called. It partly includes allowing all the Bush-tax cuts on rich people’s wealth to expire. It also involves cutting out special perks that George W. Bush designed to help out his rich cronies in and outside of Congress.

And how does Obama defend his plan? By noting that the Buffett tax “is not class warfare; it’s math.” For how else is the government to tackle the huge burden of debt that the US is carrying around? The rich want to cut all the government-backed programs that assist the middle class and the poor—everything from food stamps to Medicare and Social Security.

But Mr. Buffett’s perspective seems a whole lot more humane and thoughtful. He says that percentage-wise, he pays less tax annually than his secretary!! And that just isn’t right, he contends.

But Mr. Buffett has made enemies among the elites, just as those MPs who have paid taxes in Kenya are not liked for setting a “bad example” by breaking down and obeying the law, God forbid!

Mr. Obama has made even more enemies among the rich than Mr. Buffett however, since he has finally taken a stand and not caved into Republican pressures which his critics contend he has done all too often in the first years of his time in the presidential office.

In fact, as much as Kenyans may admire and adore Barack Obama, in the US his popularity hit its lowest ebb this week with only a 42% favorable rating. Yes, this is the man who the world adored in 2008 and who won the US presidency by a landslide, promising to close Guantanamo, and end two wars which were started with a credit card by George W. Bush (since the US was already in debt when Bush insisted on going for Osama bin Ladin (remember him?) first in Afghanistan and then in Iraq.

Obama also promised to fix the economy and get Americans back to work, none of which he has done. So whether Kenyans want to hear it or not, Mr. Obama might be a one-term president and only be in office until 2012.

But there is a glimmer of hope for Obama, now that he has gotten back onto the campaign trail, which he officially did last week when he gave his impressive Jobs Speech, claiming his $3.4 trillion Jobs program was bound to put Americans back to work.

Who knows whether the Jobs Bill will pass in Congress? Who knows whether Obama will manage to make the super-rich finally pay their fair share towards solving America’s debt problem?

But one thing is certain. And that is the eloquent Mr. Obama does his best when he is out on the road waxing lyrically about all he plans to do for the American people. The reality is that his sweet words won’t be as persuasive this time round as they were in 2008, since millions more Americans are jobless and just plain dissatisfied with the Government’s inability—meaning Mr. Obama’s inability to get them jobs.

These are tough times for the American people, just as they are tough for people in Africa and even in Europe where countries like Greece and Italy may declare bankruptcy any day now.

Stay tuned for where these developments will lead. The last thing I heard was that several thousand Americans got inspired by the Arab Spring and decided to “Occupy Wall Street.” So civil disobedience a la Gandhi and Martin Luther King may be the way Americans may deal with the unemployment crisis and with their taxes as well. We shall see!

 

LETTER from America.2 September 20, 2011

By Margaretta wa Gacheru

It’s not only irate Kenyan MPs who are adamant about refusing to pay taxes.

It is also American Republicans, starting with members of the ultra-right wing end of the Party called the Tea Party (represented by ditzy brunettes like Michelle Bachman and Sarah Palin and fundamentalist religionists like Rick Perry, governor of Texas who doesn’t believe in Climate Change and calls Social Security, the workers-funded safety net set up during the Great Depression, a “Ponzi Scheme” to be trashed with the rest of government-backed people-oriented programs).

It’s also the corporate-backed media like Fox News that are fighting President Obama’s efforts to deal with the huge government deficit (amounting to trillions) by taxing the Super-Rich.

The corporate media along with Congressmen who signed up (with the Taxpayers Protection Pledge) never to support raising taxes are all accusing Mr. Obama of waging “class warfare” against who? Against the super-rich, of course!

What Obama has done is agree with one of the richest men in the world, Warren Buffett, who says the rich should be taxed more not less or not at all (as many of the super-rich have managed to do by putting all their assets into tax havens outside the US).

The ‘Buffett Tax” is what Obama’s plan has been called. It partly includes allowing all the Bush-tax cuts on rich people’s wealth to expire. It also involves cutting out special perks that George W. Bush designed to help out his rich cronies in and outside of Congress.

And how does Obama defend his plan? By noting that the Buffett tax “is not class warfare; it’s math.” For how else is the government to tackle the huge burden of debt that the US is carrying around? The rich want to cut all the government-backed programs that assist the middle class and the poor—everything from food stamps to Medicare and Social Security.

But Mr. Buffett’s perspective seems a whole lot more humane and thoughtful. He says that percentage-wise, he pays less tax annually than his secretary!! And that just isn’t right, he contends.

But Mr. Buffett has made enemies among the elites, just as those MPs who have paid taxes in Kenya are not liked for setting a “bad example” by breaking down and obeying the law, God forbid!

Mr. Obama has made even more enemies among the rich than Mr. Buffett however, since he has finally taken a stand and not caved into Republican pressures which his critics contend he has done all too often in the first years of his time in the presidential office.

In fact, as much as Kenyans may admire and adore Barack Obama, in the US his popularity hit its lowest ebb this week with only a 42% favorable rating. Yes, this is the man who the world adored in 2008 and who won the US presidency by a landslide, promising to close Guantanamo, and end two wars which were started with a credit card by George W. Bush (since the US was already in debt when Bush insisted on going for Osama bin Ladin (remember him?) first in Afghanistan and then in Iraq.

Obama also promised to fix the economy and get Americans back to work, none of which he has done. So whether Kenyans want to hear it or not, Mr. Obama might be a one-term president and only be in office until 2012.

But there is a glimmer of hope for Obama, now that he has gotten back onto the campaign trail, which he officially did last week when he gave his impressive Jobs Speech, claiming his $3.4 trillion Jobs program was bound to put Americans back to work.

Who knows whether the Jobs Bill will pass in Congress? Who knows whether Obama will manage to make the super-rich finally pay their fair share towards solving America’s debt problem?

But one thing is certain. And that is the eloquent Mr. Obama does his best when he is out on the road waxing lyrically about all he plans to do for the American people. The reality is that his sweet words won’t be as persuasive this time round as they were in 2008, since millions more Americans are jobless and just plain dissatisfied with the Government’s inability—meaning Mr. Obama’s inability to get them jobs.

These are tough times for the American people, just as they are tough for people in Africa and even in Europe where countries like Greece and Italy may declare bankruptcy any day now.

Stay tuned for where these developments will lead. The last thing I heard was that several thousand Americans got inspired by the Arab Spring and decided to “Occupy Wall Street.” So civil disobedience a la Gandhi and Martin Luther King may be the way Americans may deal with the unemployment crisis and with their taxes as well. We shall see!

 

 

Letter from America #8. Unsettling Times.October 21,2011

LETTER FROM AMERICA #8: UNSETTLING TIMES.

At this point I don’t know what disturbs me more: the way the Kibaki government jumped to the conclusion that Al Shabaab—rather than renegade pirates--was responsible for the kidnappings of white women at the Kenya Coast, or the fact that Jubilation and Gloating were the first widespread reactions to the public execution of Moammar Gaddafi.

I’m afraid both stories leave me saddened and angry at the knee-jerk reactions of men who believe that guns, revenge and militarized solutions should take precedence over the rule of law, diplomacy and level-headed analyses of what’s at stake in the short and long run for our country and the continent as a whole.

In the case of the Gaddafi slaughter, I was grateful to the Guardian.co.uk online for publishing two videos a few hours after Gaddafi’s death was announced. One was of the Big Man’s bloodied body, which left me with no doubt that indeed he was dead; the other shot moments after he was grabbed from an underground sewage pipe, clearly showing Gaddafi was alive and actively engaging his captures who were obviously intent on ‘mob justice’.

The blood lust was palpable, and I believe it wasn’t any one rebel that offed the Big Man. It was the mob thirsty for Gaddafi’s blood. The gruesome glee was visible for all to see.

But it wasn’t only in Sirte that I saw the blood lust graphically displayed: When I switched my TV channel to see President Obama applaud the death of a dictator and Hilary Clinton equally elated at Gaddafi’s assassination, I couldn’t help recall that even Saddam Hussein got the benefit of a court conviction and “civilized” public hanging!

Switching the channel again, I then saw a late night news interview of an ordinary American standing at a Petrol Pump speculating how the price of gas was bound to go down now that Libyan oil would be back on line (probably pumped through a French- American- or British-owned corporate pipeline).

If there was any doubt at that point that the Obama-Sarkozy-Cameron troika, also known as NATO, didn’t swoop into Libya just to “save civilian lives” at Misrata, but there was in fact a bottom line at the base of their external intervention, then all you had to do was listen to Mr. Man-on-the-Street to hear what NATO’s interpretation of the so-called ‘Arab Spring’ is all about.

Fortunately, I wasn’t the only one who saw the video evidence of Gaddafi alive and dead. Now, Human Rights groups are demanding the circumstances surrounding the dictator’s death be examined thoroughly before the Gaddafi chapter is closed for good.

At the same time, African scholars are cautioning that we beware of a repeat of what happened in the late 19^th century, when Western powers decided to divvy up the region in their notorious “Scramble for Africa”. Could the coming of NATO to North Africa and the Americans to East Africa signal the start of a re-scramble for the region?

One sign that suggests Kenya may be inadvertently aligning itself with that path is the government’s hasty decision to take on Al Shabaab in Somalia. Using the kidnappings of white women tourists at the Coast as the basis of their reasoning, the government overlooked the more feasible explanation of Somali pirates being the ones responsible for the murder of Mr Tebbutt and the abduction of Marie Dedieu and Judith Tebbutt. (Sadly, Ms Dedieu reportedly died in captivity.)

Instead, it patterned its actions after those of the former US President George W. Bush who, when the Twin Towers were hit in 2001, didn’t go after 19 criminals, most of whom were Saudi nationals. Instead, he decided to attack an amorphous, previously unknown group known as Al Qaeda.

9/11 launched Bush’s ‘War on Terror’, and we hope that President Kibaki’s pre-emptive strike into Mogadishu doesn’t also get Kenya into a wider conflagration having unfortunate unintended consequences.

The fact that Al Shabaab has already spoken up with assurances to that effect is not a good sign. Nor do the Kenya police help pacify the circumstances when they promise to do a sweep of Eastleigh to weed out Al Shabaab sympathizers living in our midst.

Dark clouds seem to be gathering over the continent right now, and we pray that reason, rule of law, and a return to level-headed negotiations prevail. However, it doesn’t look like rationality is to rule the day right now.

The more cynical assessment of the situation is as follows: Rather than be forced to explain to Kenyans why shillings are so hard to come by and why their value has depreciated so fast, the Government goes to war. Now we have no time to think about hunger, unemployment, IDPs or corrupt politicians. Now we just have to watch out that we don’t find bombs in our beds or Al Shabaab attacking from its base in Eastleigh!

BOOK LAUNCH ON DINKA BY BECKWITH AND FISHER

I'M back and now committed to blogging so friends can see what i have been doing. Today, Business Daily published this article by me on photographers carol beckwith and angela fisher. i have many other stories to share, but i will have to go backwards to catch up. The focus of this blog will now be Kenyan Art Reviews.

New book seals a prolific partnership

Carol Beckwith (left), ceramist Magdalene Odundo and Angela Fisher during the 40th Anniversary of African Heritage at the Alliance Francaise in Nairobi last week.  

By MARGARETTA WA GACHERU  (Posted  Thursday, April 26  2012)

The launch of their 15th jointly-authored book on the Dinka, at Alliance Francaise, Nairobi, sealed more than 30 years of collaboration between two of the gutsiest globe-trotting women in the world.

They felt an instant affinity, but it took several years before they started working together.Angela Fisher, an Australian jewellery maker, and Carol Beckwith, an American painter, were introduced to each other by African Heritage co-director Alan Donovan in the late 1970s.

They were each working on their own books when they met: Angela on Africa Adorned (1984) and Carol on Maasai (1980).

It took an invitation from the Ethiopian government, to document cultural ceremonies across that country, for them to join forces.

Kindred Spirit

“We knew we were kindred spirits and we both loved working in Africa, but it was that invitation that persuaded Angela to come work with me,” said Carol.

Her friend, the renowned palaeontologist Dr. Donald Johanson, served as the go-between for the women and the Ethiopian government.

From the project The African Arc (1990), was published and it grew into a broader pictorial study of the Horn of Africa.

They realised they were such a good team together and have proceeded to do more books and sign all their photographs jointly.They even live in the same flat block in London with Carole on the ground floor and Angela staying two floors above. Their studio and archive, which they share, sits between them.

Film maker
“It’s our home base, although we don’t spend much time there,” Angela says.

The two are too busy crisscrossing Africa documenting indigenous cultures in some of the most remote corners of the region.

“We record everything we can that’s traditional, from ceremonies that mark stages of life, to seasonal beliefs and ceremonies appealing to the ancestral spirits.”

“But the work we do doesn’t get easier over time, since it’s increasingly difficult to find cultures unscathed by globalisation,” Carol said.
They recently returned from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) where they spent time working, with independent filmmaker Kire Godal, inside the Kingdom of Kuba, where the indigenous culture is still intact.

The photos taken during their Kuba trip will be included in the volume of African Ceremonies entitled African Twilight to be published in 2014. It is part of a four volume compilation.They were accompanied by the Kuba Royal Prince Kwete Kwete, who was regaled in every village they visited with ceremonial dances performed especially for members of the royal family.

They are currently also working on archiving the nearly half a million negatives they have shot across Africa since they started working together.

“We probably have the most comprehensive collection of images on indigenous African cultures in the world,” Angela says. “And we want to ensure it finds the best home so it will be accessible to all African researchers.”

Their other book project is Body Painting Across Africa which is scheduled to come out next year.

The book is essentially the culmination of their travelling across African countries to document all that is beautiful in indigenous cultures. Body Painting records one of the world’s most ancient art forms.

Appreciation

Sitting with them at Donovan’s African Heritage House on the edge of the Nairobi National Park, just hours before their flight back to the UK, the women’s mutual appreciation is obvious.

“Angela’s special talent is her ability to melt icebergs,” said Carol, speaking of her best friend and business partner.“She has an [ineffable] talent for turning ‘no’s into eager affirmations from otherwise difficult characters.”

“Carol’s gift is her ability to transform disappointments [like having to wait for a special ceremony for weeks rather than days] into adventures and opportunities for further research into the culture and community we are recording at the time,” said Angela who shares Carol’s limitless enthusiasm for learning about traditional African cultures.

“We both see Africa as a continent rich in artistry, beauty and decoration,” Angela said. The ladies were in Kenya to launch their latest photographic tome, Dinka, as well as join their friend Alan celebrate the 40th anniversary of African Heritage.

They also received a Life Achievement Award for their exceptional documentation of disappearing indigenous cultures and for being one of the most prolific photographic partnerships ever seen.

The other way they say they complement one another is:

Carol’s ability to do life cycles, life passages and ceremonies from birth to death, to dig into one culture and learn about its ins and outs, said Angela. 

Angela’s talent has taken the broader, more pan African approach.

MAGGIE OTIENO: SCULPTOR AND ARTPRENEUR

MAGGIE OTIENO, MASTERFUL MULTI-TASKING ARTIST

By Margaretta wa Gacheru April 15, 2016

Maggie with old friends, Rakeeb with whom she shared an art studio during her days at Creative Art Centre and John Solly of Mombasa

Maggie Otieno didn’t become one of Kenya’s leading artist and art entrepreneurs overnight. She’s taken her time, first to figure out what specifically she wanted to do artistically, given her studies at the Creative Arts Centre had made her an all-rounder and primarily a painter.

It was after she’d joined a sculpture workshop with Elijah Ogira at Kuona Trust that she finally knew her special field was sculpting. She would eventually work in everything from wood, fibre glass, scrap and sheet metal; the latter materials can be seen standing at the entrance of Garden City Mall where her eight metal ‘Gatekeepers’ welcome shoppers and guests to the leading Thika Road mall.

Another key to Maggie’s success is working together with other artists, first at CAC, then when she, with several of her fellow students, rented a studio together, and finally at Kuona Trust which she joined soon after it opened in the late 1990s. She’s been staying close to the burgeoning Kenyan art community ever since, both by working side by side artists at Kuona, but also through the professional fine arts agency that she founded a few years back and which has enabled her to commission other artists to assist her in completing various commissioned work that she’s been given.
That’s what Maggie has been doing ever since she launched ArtTouch Ltd. back in 2007. Initially, she did smaller jobs like creating sculptures for people’s private gardens. But then in 2013, she got her first major commission with the Kenya Railways. Her company was to beautify several railway stations either with monumental sculptures or murals, which she’s done with a little help from some of her artist friends, including Kevin Oduor, David Mwaniki, Jackie Karuti, Meshak Oiro, Rose Ahono and Alex Njoroge among others.

Maggie working on a metal sculpture for a private client (photo by Eric Gitonga)

To date, Maggie’s most prestigious commission came from Garden City where her Gate Keepers which stand near the other artwork commissioned by the Mall. Both she and Peterson Kamwathi had submitted sketches of the artwork they’d proposed to create for the upmarket mall. So did a number of other Kenyan artists but the two designed by Maggie and Kamwathi were the ones chosen to make their sketches into authentic, show-stopping works of art.

But there’s one other key to Maggie’s success and that is her mastery of arts administration. It’s the less glamorous side of the local art world but it’s required her to keep updated on all that’s been happening primarily in the visual arts field. That’s what she did at the online art centre, African Colours, where she worked with Andrew Njoroge and had opportunities to travel all around the African region looking at how other sub-regional art worlds were faring.

She did something similar for the Arterial Network where she kept AN’s home office in South Africa updated on the whole East African arts field. And now through ArtTouch, she’s becoming a major player in the regional art field herself.

As far as offering support to her fellow women artists, Maggie got her start working exclusively with Kenyan women on a group project conceived by the Kitengela Glass founder-artist Nani Croze. It was a giant sculpture of Mama Africa which a number of women worked on. And since then she’s invited women artists like Jackie Karuti, Florence Wangui, Rosemary Ahono and Diana Achieng to work on some of her ArtTouch projects, such as the giant wall mural commissioned at the Imara Daima railway station.

Maggie just completed her latest commission, another sculpture for a private garden. But it was a challenge to complete the work on time since she also serves on the Kuona Trust board which has been busy this month as various VIPs have been visiting and she’s played a part in showing them around Nairobi’s vibrant arts community.

So clearly Maggie’s a multi-tasker, even as we find most women are, and even as Maggie is also a mother of two. The big difference between her and other women is that her first passion is her art. It’s also keeping track of the art market which is one reason why she now has an art and craft shop of her own at the Galleria Mall on Langata Road. For more info on the artist, see her website, www.maggieotieno.com.

CHELENGE: WOOD SCULPTOR GOT FIRST FEEL FOR MEDIUM FROM FIREWOOD

BY MARGARETTA WA GACHERU

Technically speaking, Chelenge van Rampelberg never took a single art course until the early 1990s when she went for a two week workshop at Alliance Francaise where she first learned about the art of etching and wood cut printing. But realistically, Kenya’s first female sculptor was exposed to indigenous ‘material culture’ from an early age. Growing up in the rural Rift Valley when the forests were still thick, bushy and wild, Chelenge, 52, did everything a rural child was required to do. She fetched firewood, meaning she had to work with machetes, axes and knives to chop up fallen tree branches to carry home for use as fuel. The tools were some of the same ones that she works with today both to create her wonderful wood statues and woodcut etching, both of which are on display throughout October at One Off Gallery. Back then she also learned to weave grass ‘plates’ on which her mother would serve the family ugali almost every night. “It was like child’s play for us since all little girls had to learn to weave. Nobody had store-bought plates or cups back then. We also used to create our own cups by slicing gourds in two,” the artist said. Clearly nostalgic for that bygone style of life, chelenge still dreams of those forests. “I go deep inside them and that’s where I find the gorillas, elephants and birds that I etch onto wooden plates when I’m awake,” said the 52 year old mother of three who might not have begun to produce works of art if her last born child hadn’t insisted on staying in school with his big sisters rather than come home with his mom. “it was actually out of loneliness that I first began to paint,” she confessed. “After I agreed to leave him in school (despite his being only 3), I went out and bought all colors of house paint, brushes and Americani fabric, and then got to wrok painting behind our house. After that I hid my paintings under my bed so no one would see.” It was only when her spouse Marc discovered her stash and then told her work mate at Gallery Watatu Ruth Schaffner that he’d found a treasure trove of his wife’s art work. It didn’t take long after that for all that early work to find its way to the Gallery where “it sold like hot cakes” chelenge recalls. Then shortly after that, she attended the AF etching and print-making workshop, the fruits of which are at One Off today. Having neither paper or a proper printing press of her own, Chelenge’ stunning woodcuts are filled with images from her memories and dreams. She has a special affinity for elephats and gorillas, despite her never having seen the latter in real life. Her woodcut ethchings as well as her life si\ze sculptures of both forest dwellers reveal a warmth, affection and playful intimacy that feels almost anthropomorphic. But both her sculpture and her woodcut plates—which represent a full ten years of effort—also dwell on another important dimension of her life which is the family, including a mother’s pregnancy and child birth. In fact, some of chelenge’s most powerful sculptures are of women, one heavily pregnant (even as she’s eight feet tall) and looking grand, another in which the woman has just given birth, and yet another where she and her sweetheart are slow dancing in an intimate embrace. The theme of family affection recurs in her woodcuts as well where mama gorillas play games with their children and a regal elephant mama is deemed ‘Queen Mother of the Jungle.’ Human beings also welcome visitors home their humble mud and wattle huts, homes like the ones in which chelenge grew up. Remembering an idyllic rural lifestyle that she concedes no longer exists [in the Rift Valley], Chelenge may not have gone to a formal art college, but her early years were filled with indigenous artistry. The woods she works with today are more diverse than those she carried home back then: Today she sculpts using everything from doum palm, ebony and jacaranda to avocado, sikotoi and even the man-made wood created from recycled sawdust known as … But she learned to use the most basic tools for sculpting as a child. And while the grains, colors, textures and types of wood are impressive, what’s even more inspiring about Chelenge’s first art exhibition in more than ten years (her last one was at the Italian Institute of Culture in 1998) is her artistic vision which is deeply indigenous Kenyan, at the same time as it’s dreamlike and nostalgic for a pastoral past life that’s very different from the one existing in rural Kenya today.

KAAFIRI'S MAGIC PEN WINS AT BANANA HILL

KAAFIRI’S ‘MAGIC PEN’ DRAWS TRUE STORIES OF KENYANS’ EVERYDAY LIVES

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted December 6, 2017)

Kaafiri Kariuki has been away from the Nairobi art scene for a while, but the man never gave up his devotion to his ‘dancing pen’ or to painting and drawing what he sees and understands of the world around him.

One of the most grounded, analytical and challenging painters in Kenya today, Kaafiri’s art has never removed itself from interpreting the reality of Kenyan people’s everyday lives.

In his current Banana Hill Gallery exhibition, Kaafiri paints everything from ‘Slay Queens’, single mothers and struggling students to farmers, fishermen and freedom fighters. Yet he never paints or draws them out of context. Indeed, each portrait-like painting is intricately interwoven with lines and multiple layers of imagery that lead us to understand the larger picture and deeper meaning hidden in his art.

One persistent theme that his magic pen conveys is Kaafiri’s concern for the problem of poverty and the struggles people go through to escape it. He’s a keen observer of Kenyan life as well as a masterful storyteller.

However, Kaafiri is not an easy ‘read’. His art is filled with symbols such that every painting could constitute a chapter in the ‘book of life’ that he one day will hopefully write.

Each chapter would reveal the meaning of the images embedded in his art,  like the two fishes in his “Jesus Magic”. The artist reminded Saturday Nation how Jesus fed the 5000 with just two fishes, according to the Biblical account. “So if Jesus came back today, I’d have him head straight to Kibera to feed the hungry people there!” he said.

One section of Kaafiri’s ‘book of life’ would have to be about women. He’s the child of a single mother and his empathy for women comes through in nearly all his paintings of females. The one exception are his two portraits of ‘slay queens’. I’m told these are Delilah-like women who are beguiling but dangerous. They specialize in seducing men in ways that invariably lead to their total ruin, to the loss of everything that men hold dear.

Otherwise, Kaafiri’s portraits of women reflect his compassion for their hardships. The painting of his own single mother is entitled ‘Freedom Fighter I’. It’s a masterpiece in visual storytelling with a lovely life-like portrait of his mum at the centre of the work. Her five children are balanced in a basin on top of her head, and her utensils for keeping them alive at her feet.

But as I said, Kaafiri is all about context. In this instance, his mum’s story is surrounded by four chapters in the history of Kenyan working women. Each ‘chapter’ occupies one corner of the work. For instance, in the lower left corner, he illustrates the point, as he put it, that “The first paying job rural women had was selling firewood to the British troops.”

Then, reading counter-clockwise, he portrays women worked on the shamba. And right above that image, we see women having taken a giant step forward. “These women [wearing caps and gowns] are educated; they’re in the process of graduating and getting higher degrees,” he says proudly. And finally, in the upper left hand corner, he portrays the women’s campaign “My dress, my choice.”

For me, this painting is the most poignant work in the show. It’s also one that reveals Kaafiri’s qualitative capacity to paint and draw hyper-realistic portraits of the kind that has earned him commissions to paint high-level politicians as well as humble farmers.

There’s one other painting in the exhibition entitled ‘Freedom Fighter II’ which is similar to his ‘Fighter I”. Only this time, the subject at the centre is Jomo Kenyatta and the miniature paintings surrounding him tell tales of the country as well as the man. Again, Kaafiri’s taken time to create a hauntingly life-like portrait of Kenyatta. But the rest of the painting would require a whole volume to explain the artist’s symbolism and the various stories that jump out of this stunning painting.

Kaafiri has been drawing most of his life, but he only conceived of his ‘dancing pen’ after discovering that his drawings were sought after, not just by classmates, but by tourists he’d meet while he was still living a musician’s life. His meticulous style of drawing and decisive attention to realistic detail make him one of Kenya’s most remarkable visual storytellers, he and his ‘magic pen’.