/ARTS WEEKLY/CULTURE-KENYA: Fireside Tales

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Katy Salmon

NAIROBI, Feb 4 2003 (IPS) - It is a scene that has become all too familiar in Kenya in recent months. The dancing crowd sing ”Without Moi, everything is possible”, holding high yellow posters of their new president, Mwai Kibaki.

According to a recent survey, Kenyans are now the most optimistic people in the world following the exit of President Daniel arap Moi and the trouncing of his chosen successor Uhuru Kenyatta in the December polls.

Zamaleo Arts and Cultural Trust are out to burst that bubble.

On stage, a dread-locked old man frowns at the revellers. ”Do we have anything to celebrate?” he queries, as the young people twirl around him.

”The youth have light tongues that roll out sweet words. When they celebrate, we old people say, ‘Give them your eyes and see’,” he tells the audience.

The old man goes on to tell the youngsters what his eyes have seen – how the high hopes following the defeat of British colonialists and birth of independence in 1963 were dashed under President Jomo Kenyatta who reviled the Mau Mau freedom fighters as ”a terrible disease that was defeated” and saw to it that government critics were swiftly and brutally silenced.

The second new dawn of President Moi also proved a false ”Canaan”, as the government became a ”monstrous insatiable organ”, which the impoverished people constantly struggled to satisfy with the sweat of their labour.

They poke fun at Moi, impersonating his thick-Kalenjin accent, the sycophantic praise-songs that he encouraged and the insincerity of his war on the ivory trade – all the while clinging to his chosen symbol of authority, a silver-studded ivory club.

”We are trying to tell people, ‘Hold on, before you revel too much. It has happened before and it has gone bad. What is the difference?”’ explains actor George Chombo.

”Yes, it should be a time to celebrate but we should not forget ourselves in the celebration. We should always check that things don’t go bad as they have previously. It is challenging people to guard against that,” he says.

”This time round, we want Kenyans to be keen. Now that we have voted this guy in, is he going to serve us or is he going to be like the others?” echoes actress Alumbe Helen Namai.

”Should we be out celebrating or should we be just watching and being keen, now that we have learnt?” she challenges.

Zamaleo – a combination of the Kiswahili words zamani, meaning long ago, and leo, meaning today – provides a much-needed reality-check amid the euphoria sweeping Kenya.

‘The Roundabout Nation’ is part of their sixth series of ‘fireside tales’ , performed at Kenya’s National Museum.

The stories, including old folk tales and stories collected from different communities as well as new pieces devised from scratch, are told via music, song, dance and acting.

Zamaleo emphasise that their performances are fluid, interactive, story-telling sessions – worlds apart from western-style theatre with a script, set moves and the audience as ”peeping toms”.

”The text is never the same. It’s much more an interactive engagement between the performer and the audience. Audiences are different each and every time. The atmosphere and the experience differ. What remains the same is the general plot. The dramatic elements change,” explains producer and director Odero Aghan.

The fact that there is no script makes the experience an exciting one for the actors.

”It is the creative process that I enjoy most. Coming together with different ideas, backgrounds and being able to put these together in a performance. The fact that we are starting from scratch, as opposed to picking up a script written by someone else and acting it out on stage,” says Chombo.

”I think there is a lot of creativity that comes out of people just coming together and sharing their experiences towards a common goal,” he adds.

Zamaleo’s inspiration comes from traditional African culture of storytelling, where young people were invited to sit by the fire and listen to the old people’s wisdom.

”Story telling is an African culture. It was a tool of entertainment and teaching. Most people are thinking it’s old fashioned. That is why we are trying to make it contemporary. So that we can come up with a moral teaching and an entertainment,” says Namai.

”We asked ourselves, ‘What were the indigenous forms of African performance? How could we borrow that so that we can make that work for us, using forms that people are familiar with, that have grown through our cultural roots? That then brought us back to looking at the oral literature and how it was practised,” Aghan explains.

Storytelling is a two-way exchange that aims to make sure every voice is heard. Members of the audience are singled out and asked to give their opinions, to sing and dance with actors.

”We see our performances as a cultural space where people can dialogue. It must give everybody who has come the chance to say their piece. We try to structure our performances so that each and every view is given adequate time, however out of place it might seem to the majority,” says Aghan.

Zamaleo’s fireside tales are set to become a bi-monthly experience, touching on topical social issues.

”Before we create a performance, we ask ourselves, ‘How do people relate with this kind of story in terms of their daily lives? What it is that we are commenting on’?” explains Aghan.

Last year, Zamaleo were invited to use this popular format at a workshop for women candidates, preparing to stand in the elections. ”The issue is what particular challenges does a woman candidate face when she goes out to campaign? So we were able to create a performance which would help the participants to see what challenges they’ll grapple with at the grassroots,’ ‘ Aghan recalls.

In the future, Zamaleo hope to be able to take their performances nation-wide to rural areas and marketplaces. ”If it speaks to the majority, we’ll see that it is working, that it is communicating to the people that it is meant for,” says Aghan.