The Secret of the Seven Sisters - Special series - Al Jazeera English

The Secret of the Seven Sisters - Special series - Al Jazeera English

Peter King, a King on the Kenya stage and screen

coming soon

CYRUS N'GANG'A STUNS 'EM IN LA AND MILAN

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Comedy Comes to Nairobi in April 2013

HAVE AN APPETITE FOR COMEDY IN APRIL BY margaretta wa Gacheru Not Published in Saturday Nation, April 7, 2013 Comedy will be the calling card of Kenyan theatre throughout the month of April, starting with Heartstrings Kenya which opened last Wednesday night, April 3rd, at Alliance Francaise in yet another original script devised and directed by Sammy Mwangi and Victor Ber. [Sammy Mwangi directing Different Forest, Same Monkeys] Given Heartstrings’ inclination to pick up on the most pertinent, political and provocative news items of the day, then craft them into crazy scripts that capture the humour, irony and outrageous antics of local characters, it’s no surprise that Mwangi and Ber examines the recent elections from the ground up in Different Forest, Same Monkeys. It’s the perfect sort of show to defuse post-election tensions and reveal the reality that all Kenyans are Kenyans at the end of the day. Comedy continues across town at the Phoenix Players where yet another script writer, Robin Denault has devised and directed his play, Love by Shakespeare. It’s an adaptation of not one but three of Shakespeare’s originals, namely A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Othello and Romeo and Juliet. How the playwright can craft comedy out of two tragic love tales and one of the Bard’s most fantastic comedic farces is something to behold. This production is also well-timed since Nairobians are definitely in the mood to be entertained with theatre that allows them to release a bit of the tension many felt throughout the month of March. Premised on the notion that characters from Midsummer Night’s Dream “escape” the world conceived by Shakespeare and land in ours, the AMND crew arrive on the Phoenix stage like aliens from outer space, intent on clarifying who exactly Shakespeare really was. To them, he was not a hopeless romantic as one might imagine watching Romeo and Juliet or Othello, both of which end badly. Rather, they see him as a scoundrel who enjoyed manipulating the emotions of his audiences, especially those who believe in romantic love. The cast aims to convince us through humour, argument and wit that the joke has been on us. Shakespeare’s characters will continue ‘invading’ the Phoenix stage from April 21st through May 4th when The Theatre Company returns to Nairobi with its Kiswahili version of The Merry Wives of Windsor, Wanawake wa Heri wa Winsa. The production which Keith Pearson and TTC first took to London to perform during the 2012 Olympics has been on tour all over Kenya and now return for those who might have missed this hilarious show (replete with marvellous physical comedy) when it first came back to Nairobi. But even those who have seen the production before ought to see it again, that is, if they are among Nairobians who feel the need to see the Bard in a new light and to have a good laugh. Meanwhile, over at the Kenya National Theatre for three nights only, from April 12th through 14th, the Festival of Creative Arts will stage their indigenised adaptation of Ray Cooney’s comedy, Funny Money, entitled Catch Me If You Can. It’s all about two couples who stumble onto a fortune – apparently stolen and stashed in the thieves’ secret hiding place. What some Kenyans may find especially amusing about this show is the couples’ kleptomaniac conniving to keep the cash. Operating from the premise of ‘finders keepers, losers weepers’, once again, FCA will bring us a show that is bound to tickle people’s funny bone. Finally, a fortnight later the Friends Ensemble will stage another British comedy that they have adapted and indigenised. Called Home is where your clothes are, Friends will also be on the comedic bandwagon this month.

John Ainsworth: British Colonial City Planner who Mapped Nairobi's Apartheid Design

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SWAN Day turned into a Whole Weekend, March 2013

SWAN WEEKEND TO CELEBRATE WOMEN ARTISTS Meant to be published on Swan Day March 30, 2013 but pulled at last minute: why? BY margaretta wa gacheru Kenyans have been celebrating women artists on Swan Day ever since 2008 when Sophie ‘Dowllar’ Ogutu first saw the day announced on the Internet at www.womenarts.org and vowed that Kenyans would also Support Women Artists Now (S.W.A.N.). She would see to that! Founded in 2007 by two American women who felt it was time to seriously applaud women artists worldwide, Martha Richard and Jan Lisa Huttner picked the last Saturday in March (which also happens to be Women’s History Month) to celebrate SWAN D. Being an artist, human rights activist and manager of the political theater group the 5C’s, Sophie Ogutu felt SWAN Day could be a great way to both mobilize as well as celebrate Kenyan women artists. She’s taken it upon herself to see that it’s happened ever since. Swan Day 2008 wasn’t a huge event, but by 2009, the day was celebrated at Kenyatta Conference Centre with support from the Centre for Multiparty Democracy. The last three SWAN Days have been held at the Kenya National Theatre with the assistance of the Kenya Human Rights Commission and a variety of other individuals and groups. This year, SWAN Day will be quite different from years past. “It’s the first time we’ll be celebrating women artists for a whole weekend,” Sophie said. “On Saturday [March 30], we’ll celebrate at Phoenix Theater with mainly live performances from 9am; then on Sunday we’ll be at Kuona Trust where the performances will continue and there will also be displays by women visual artists as well.” So many women performers have signed up either to sing, share their spoken word poetry or do story telling on the Phoenix stage that some will have to wait their turn until Sunday when Kuona Trust has offered SWAN women free space to make music, display visual arts and even share their culinary skills throughout the day. The line-up of women performers is impressive. The masters of ceremony for the day will be Shish and Tanya, actors in the hit TV show, Tahidi High. They will introduce a wide array of women singers including Achieng Obura, Iddi Achieng, Lydia Dola and Lady Masallah. Also coming on stage will be the winner and runner up in this year’s Tusker Project Fame competition, Ruth Matete and Amileene respectively. A number of up-and-coming singers will also perform, such as Vaniika Dohr and T.L. Moh. There will be plenty of poets and spoken word artists coming on stage as well. Among them are Maggie Karanja, Sitawa Wafula, Debra Kayalo, Frentaz, Sonia Gitome and Sophie ‘Dowllar’ Ogutu herself. Meanwhile, a number of television personalities will come to celebrate Swan Weekend, including cast members of Vitimbi and Papa Shirandula as well as puppeteers from The XYZ show. A few of the female visual artists will display their art at Phoenix Theatre; however more are likely to come to Kuona Trust on Sunday as there will be lots more space to exhibit women’s art. “Not all the artists have confirmed as yet,” said Sophie, “but for sure, Tabitha wa Thuka, Rosemary Ahono and Veronica Wanjeri will be there Saturday from 9am up until 3pm and on Sunday from 11am till 7pm.” The SWAN weekend welcomes all women artists to bring their artwork to Kuona Trust, Sophie added. Men are also welcome at the two events, but the weekend is especially reserved for celebrating Kenyan women in the arts.

John Ainsworth, an early architect of Nairobi's apartheid city plan

http://www.nation.co.ke/Features/DN2/John-Ainsworths-apartheid-plans-for-the-early-Nairobi/-/957860/1737874/-/jx34a8/-/index.html DN2 John Ainsworth’s apartheid plans for the early Nairobi John Ainsworth left a checkered mark on Nairobi. For not only is he the man credited with building the city “from scratch”, he also had a rocky relationship with the natives, who may never forget that during his days in office some of the largest British land-grabs got underway. Photo/FILE John Ainsworth left a checkered mark on Nairobi. For not only is he the man credited with building the city “from scratch”, he also had a rocky relationship with the natives, who may never forget that during his days in office some of the largest British land-grabs got underway. Photo/FILE In Summary The colonial pioneer credited with establishing Nairobi’s current demarcations is also regarded as one of the most vociferous plunderers of African lands John Ainsworth may be best known for being “the man who built Nairobi” at the turn of the 20th century, when the town was little more than an ordinary railway stop on the line from Mombasa to Kampala. And indeed, during the eight years that Ainsworth served as one of the chief administrators in the colonial government, he achieved a great deal. Called from Machakos to serve as a top civil servant at the swampy town populated more by lions, zebra, waterbuck, dikdik and frogs than by European settlers, Ainsworth arrived in Nairobi in 1898, three years after the region had become a protectorate of the United Kingdom. At that time, the swamp, which came right up to where the Kenya National Theatre stands today, was “chock-full of croaking frogs that kept the town busy as they croaked in unison, while behind it was a barren, open land, where hippos gnarled at the Nairobi River,” according to the Kenya-based historian, Jan Hemsing, in her 2004 book, Nairobi’s Norfolk Hotel: The First Hundred Years. One of the more important things he did during his brief but eventful time working as London’s Chief Native Commissioner in Kenya was to plant Tasmanian Blue Gum (Eucalyptus) trees all along the edge of the swamp land since the species require gallons of water to grow well. But his was not just a green-handed forestation initiative of Nairobi; Ainsworth knew the trees would be an organic means of draining the swamp while simultaneously beautifying the town. He had seedlings brought in from Machakos and planted on the clear plains between what is now Upper Hill and State House Road, an area demarcated specially for European settlement. In fact, Ainsworth was responsible for the initial demarcation of Nairobi, even though his idea of delineation would eventually lead scholars to identify colonial Kenya with an apartheid system of settlement and administration. Seen by the Foreign Office as one of the most competent colonial civil servants in East Africa, Ainsworth stamped his segregationist authority in Nairobi by demarcating seven districts in the town. They were the Railway Centre, Indian Bazaar, Railway Quarters, European Business and Administration Centre, Dhobi Quarters, European Residential Areas, and the Military Barracks. Africans (apart from those working for the Railways) were left to fend for themselves on the east side of the town. He did not even include them in the overall town plan, which goes some distance in explaining why that sector of the city now known as Eastlands is filled with sprawling, unplanned informal settlements. He also began in 1900 to demarcate the first roads. They were initially situated in the Indian Bazaar and included Station Street, River Street, Punjabi Street, and Khoja Mohola Street. But the British author, Elsbeth Huxley, was not impressed. In her colonial classic, White Man’s Country (all about the achievements of the aristocratic Lord Delamere), she called Nairobi a town with “one-cart tracks”. But to his credit, it was during Ainsworth’s time in office that the first church was constructed, the first two hotels were born — the Stanley (established by Mayence Bent in 1902) and the Norfolk (constructed by Major Ringer and Aylman Winecurts) — and the first cash crop plantations were put into place, starting with sisal. The coffee, tea, pyrethrum, sugar, and cotton plantations would get established years after he had left. Ainsworth, together with Canon Harvey Leakey of the Church Missionary Society — the grandfather of palaeontologist-turned-politician Richard Leakey and father of esteemed archaeologist Louis Leakey — among other European settlers, started up the East African Natural History Society which would eventually become the National Museums of Kenya. He also established the East African Horticulture Society and did a good deal of experimental farming on lands he obtained while living and working in Nairobi. But Ainsworth is also the first colonial administrator to set aside “native reserves” where Africans, whose lands had already been taken from them by the colonisers, were meant to reside. Ainsworth is also one of those first-generation colonial representatives to be part of the historic 1904 “Agreement” between His Majesty’s Commission for the East African Protectorate and the chiefs of the Maasai, including Chief Lenana, to allow the British to take over huge tracts of Maasai land while removing the Maasai to the newly established “native reserves”. The Agreement further “allowed (the Maasai) to occupy land between the Mbagathi and Kiserian streams”, which of course was a fraction of what the Maasai elders essentially gave away. Ainsworth is also said to have been the one responsible for translating details of the Agreement for the Africans. But one cannot help but wonder how much of the Maasai language he actually understood well enough to translate such an important document so that the “natives” would truly understand the implications of their actions. It was Ainsworth who wrote frankly in his memoir: “I can assure you that it [was] at times uphill and tiring work breaking down the walls of barbaric ignorance and superstition and introducing in their places an acceptable form of civilisation.” John Dawson Ainsworth was born in 1864 in the UK and lived to be 100, passing on in 1964. He was 25 in 1889 when he first landed in Mombasa, an employee of the Imperial British East African Company Prior to his arrival, British land surveyors had already come to Kenya and identified much of the most fertile land as “unpopulated” and ripe for colonial settlement. There was no knowledge among the Europeans of African land ownership systems, such as the Kikuyu system of gethaka, where certain areas belonged to specific families. Nor were colonial civil servants aware of the fact that in the early 1890s, there had been famine and a series of epidemics — rinderpest and smallpox — leading to the decimation of Maasai herds and human beings as well. According the Jens Finke, the Kikuyu had also been profoundly affected by these calamities such that they had withdrawn from the very lands that European surveyors described as “empty” and ripe for colonial settlement. These included lands in Nairobi, Kiambu, Thika, and Ruiru. According to Finke, Kikuyu elders who witnessed the early appropriation (theft) of their lands by the British reported this crime to Ainsworth, who had just recently arrived from Ukambani. Understandably, he sided with his kinsmen and basically informed the Africans that they had little choice but to understand that times had changed and conditions were different now. Just before Ainsworth had arrived, the new administration representing the Protectorate had responded pro-actively to the African “threat”. They had sent out small military expeditions to keep track of both the Kikuyu and the Kamba, whose trade routes they had disrupted during Ainsworth’s days serving in Ukambani. Scholars of Kenyan history now believe that there had been thriving trade relations between the Kikuyu, Kamba, and Maasai, but that they had been “shattered”, according to Finke and others, by British overlords. Apparently, Ainsworth had been a bit more benign towards the Africans when he was an employee of the Imperial British East African Company. Arriving in the region in 1889, his initial job was being in charge of the company’s transport and supply department. But he quickly proved himself to be exceedingly competent such that before he left Ukambani, he was the commanding officer for IBEAC in Machakos, a town which was established as the original supply station for the railways. What the British apparently liked about the area was the well-developed trading networks that the Kamba had already established. Initially, Ainsworth had only praise for the Kamba, whom he assured his bosses based at Mombasa were willing and ready to work for the colonial regime. Ainsworth even supplied them with munitions to protect the British food supply lines from the Maasai. However, the IBEAC became increasingly uncomfortable with the Kambas’ involvement in the East African slave trade. The company’s attempts to disrupt the trade, including the Kambas’ activities in it, is part of the reason the London Foreign Office chose to take over direct control of Kenya and make it a Protectorate in 1895. Ironically, this led to the programme of constructing the railway using the very same caravan lines that the Kamba had created while conducting their trade. In other words, the Kamba were not terribly pleased with Ainsworth before he left for Nairobi. Their trade relations had been shattered and their activities were now being monitored by British troops who were already feeling Africans’ resistance to colonial rule. But it was the Kikuyu who may have felt the most pain under the new colonial regime, which had already begun fencing off the best land and excluding both Maasai and Kikuyu from entering what had previously been either Maasais’ grazing grounds or lands that the Kikuyu had cultivated for generations. According to Finke, the Kikuyu were dispossessed of between 30 and 70 per cent of their prime properties by British settlers who fenced off ranches and farms, especially in the area subsequently known as the White Highlands, around the Aberdares or the Nyandarua mountain range. Before Ainsworth left Nairobi in 1906, he had become one of the most powerful officers in the British East African Protectorate. Operating out of what is now frequently referred to as “the old PC’s office”, the space that was called the Nairobi Gallery until quite recently when it became another site where Joseph and Sheila Murumbi’s Africana Collections reside, Ainsworth left Nairobi before Kenya officially became a colony of the British Empire and the Colonial Governor’s position had been established. But as the most dynamic of the first generation of British overseas officers, he made a checkered mark on Nairobi. For not only is he the man credited with building the city “from scratch”, he also had a rocky relationship with the Africans who may never forget that during his days in office, some of the largest British land-grabs got underway.

Le Rustique Restaurant shows local and global art

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