The Talent Tappers performing in Mombasa as a crowd gathers to watch their act. Many struggling artists are hopeful that the industry will change for the better. Photo: Miriam Gathigah/IPS

By Miriam Gathigah
NAIROBI, Mar 5 2014 (IPS)

Lupita Nyong’o’s Oscar victory for her supporting performance in the critically acclaimed film “12 Years a Slave” has raised hopes of a much-needed boost to Kenya’s fledgling entertainment industry.

Nyongo’s global success, cemented by her Academy Award win on Mar. 2, has proved that, “Just like medicine or teaching, entertainment can be a serious career choice particularly for the many unemployed and talented youths in the country,” says Nairobi-based market analyst Danson Mwangangi.

But that new attitude to the arts is only just developing.

From Nairobi to Hollywood“The main problem is that many people have not fully appreciated that entertainment is a job just like any other and they are not willing to pay to watch a performance” -- Kenyan actor Paschal Kilei

Many Kenyan theatre aficionados like local playwright Peter Nderi remember 31-year-old Nyong’o as Juliet in Shakespeare’s classic play performed at the Phoenix Players here in Nairobi. “She was only 14 years old but even then, she showed great promise as an actor,” Nderi tells IPS.

But Nyong’o’s success, he says, has not been overnight. Hollywood’s newest it-girl paid her dues working as part of production crews for various films, including “The Constant Gardener”, “where she ran errands, including fetching the cast coffee,” says Nderi.

He also points to Nyong’o’s 2007 feature-length documentary “In My Genes”, which explores the challenges people with albanism face as a minority group in Kenya and which Nyong’o wrote, directed and produced.

She later starred in the MTV Africa sex-ed drama series “Shuga”, produced in partnership with the U.S. government’s anti-AIDS initiative PEPFAR and MTV’s Staying Alive Foundation.

Born in Mexico to Kenyan parents, Nyong’o was raised in Kenya where she honed her acting skills on the local theatre  circuit before attending Yale School of Drama, one of the United States’ most renowned acting programmes.

The new frontier

For Kenya, which is seeing some 40 percent of its workforce unemployed – 70 percent of those being people below the age of 35 – victories like Nyong’o’s are a happy note in the effort to develop a vibrant entertainment sector that could lift the economy.

“It is the new frontier for job creation,” Mwangangi tells IPS, adding that the government, through the Kenya Film Commission, has set an objective to generate 10 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP) from the entertainment industry, incuding all creative and cultural activities.

Recent World Bank statistics show 800,000 job seekers competing for just 50,000 jobs annually, making the governmet’s efforts appear a welcome initiative for many young poeple.

But the entertainment industry is not for the faint-hearted, local performers say, whose experiences highlight that the country still has a long way to come before it sees cultural activities as a valid profession.

“The main problem is that many people have not fully appreciated that entertainment is a job just like any other and they are not willing to pay to watch a performance,” says Paschal Kilei, a struggling actor with a talent group called ‘Talent Tappers’ in Mombasa County in Kenya’s Coast Province some 482 km from the capital Nairobi.

As a result, Kilei and his colleagues have been left to perform for free in the hope that, with time, people will begin to appreciate their work and pay to watch them perform.

The Talent Tappers do “magnate theatre”, in Kilei’s words, consisting of random performances in market places, bus stations, “Basically anywhere where there are a large number of people going about their business.”

And while their acts are well received, it hasn’t brought them any money yet.

Kilei is not alone. Asia Majimbo, another Mombasa-based actor, says that even for established performers the pay is not enough to fully depend on their craft.

“TV actors who earn about 250 dollars per episode are actually the envy of many,” says Majimbo. “In a month, about four episodes will air, or even less. And an actor may not even appear in all the episodes unless they are the main characters.”

Nderi highlights a lack of formal training as another factor impairing the industry.

“Many actors-slash-actresses in the country take on acting as a hobby, so they do not fully invest in it by trying to get some training in it, which affects the quality of their work.”

While not every Kenyan performer has access to a Yale drama eduction to set themselves apart like Nyong’o, Kenyan actors need not be discouraged, says Mwangangi.

The government’s keenness to boost the economy through enterntainment has already resulted in a mandate for the Kenya Film Commission to establish a film school in the country, he says, while Kenya’s 47 counties have all been encouraged to promote the entertainment industry as an avenue for job creation.

Steady growth

In building the industry, Kenya has a big brother on the continent to learn from, according to Mwangangi. “Nollywood, which is Nigeria’s film industry produces about 50 movies per week — much more than what Hollywood produces… second only to India’s Bollywood,” he says.

Both Nigeria and Kenya are particularly poised to reap the benefits from their expanding middle class, acording to the analyst, with Kenya’s middle-bracket income earners having doubled to 6.5 million in the last decade, according to the African Development Bank.

Although Kenya’s film industry still lags behind Nigeria’s, it has been growing steadily in the last seven years, according to Kenya’s Film Commission, which boasts an 85-percent growth in the number of film establishments and an increase of over 45 percent of people involved in the industry.

“The Samaritans”, a comedy series centered around the absurdities of a dysfunctional NGO in Kenya, is a recent example of a Kenyan production garnering international attention, with clips and reviews making its rounds on top news sites and social media.

Hussein Kurji, producer of “The Samaritans”, tells IPS that he was looking for something “innovative.” And he’s seeing his efforts pay off.

“The show has received over 150,000 hits in the last 14 days across Vimeo and YouTube and 90,000 hits for the show’s trailer on YouTube alone.”

Kurji and Nyong’o exemplify the ability for Kenyan entertainers to excel in spite of challenges posed by a still-nascent industry.

They also embody a creative spirit that Kenya hopes to tap to attract people to the fledgling sector, perhaps best summed up in Nyong’o’s parting words at the Oscars: “…No matter where you are from, your dreams are valid.”

A sign advertising "Khmer Massage" conceals a story of exploitation of thousands of massage workers across Cambodia. Credit: Michelle Tolson/IPS

By Michelle Tolson
PHNOM PENH, Feb 22 2013 (IPS)

Times are tough in this Southeast Asian nation of 14 million people, where over 30 percent of the population lives below the poverty line of a dollar a day. Formal employment is hard to come by and many workers find themselves drifting in the murky waters of the “informal” market, where wages are unregulated and labour laws are seldom honoured.

A recent labour dispute involving massage workers employed by a luxury spa shed some light on the “entertainment” industry, arguably one of the most vulnerable sectors to labour violations.

When King Norodom Sihanouk died this past October and five massage workers from the Aziadee Spa were refused time off to pay their final respects, a sector that had hitherto been shrouded in secrecy found itself thrust into the spotlight.

When news of the king’s death reached the public on Oct. 15, 2012, the workers requested permission to break their 12-hour-long workday “to mourn for a few hours”, explained Mora Sar, president of the Cambodian Food and Service Worker Federation (CFSWF), a union that represents entertainment workers, adding that the women work from ten in the morning until ten at night, six days a week.

They returned the following day to learn they had been fired and were denied their final month’s pay.

Although the national Arbitration Council, the government body tasked with settling labour disputes, ruled that the employers had violated Cambodia’s labour laws, the spa did not comply.

During the official three-and-a-half-month mourning period that followed Sihanouk’s death, which lasted until Feb. 5, the workers’ plight fuelled a wave of protests.

From Jan. 11 until Jan. 18, fired workers, CFSWF and other entertainment workers staged a protest in front of the popular spa catering to foreigners, using loud speakers, signs and fliers in English and Khmer, drawing local media attention to the incident.

Finally, the five women were awarded their last month’s salary, damages, annual leave and severance pay, which ranged from 300 to 1,000 dollars based on seniority.

Though this is a landmark ruling for massage workers, it represents just the beginning, according to Mora.  In addition to this latest case, the union now represents 15 massage workers in the northwestern Siem Reap province who work at Alaska Massage, a large Korean-owned establishment employing some 200 workers who earn as little as 50 dollars a month with no per customer, amounting to daily wage of about two dollars.

Fine line between sex work and ‘entertainment’

Little is known about the working conditions for massage workers across Cambodia. Though the media has long reported on the country’s entertainment industry — which includes beer sellers, hostesses, karaoke singers and dancers—this coverage has largely focused on women working in local clubs and beer gardens rather than massage parlours.

In fact, the practice has a long history in this country, and those involved in the trade – mostly women without a formal education – bear the scars of a culture that simultaneously promotes male virility and female chastity.

Researcher Ian Lubek from the Canada-based University of Guelph found that young Cambodian men turned to the sex industry in part as a result of losing their parents – who would typically set up arranged marriages — during the Khmer Rouge years of 1975 to 1979.

However, married men also frequent brothels, according to Lubek, who cited government statistics showing that 25 percent of single and married men participate in the sex industry.

When Cambodia’s brothels closed in 2008 after the passage of the controversial Law on Suppression of Human Trafficking, brothel workers migrated to entertainment venues.

This sparked massive growth in the shadowy entertainment sector; a report by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) showed that in 2008, there were an estimated 494 massage workers who sold sex in Phnom Penh but a year later, at the end of 2009, the number had grown to 2,424, representing a 390 percent increase.  Beer gardens and beer promoters showed parallel increases, according to the report.

This study clarifies that, although entertainment work is distinct from sex work, there is some crossover.  This is attributed to a combination of low salaries, and customer and management expectations that pressure workers to sell sex to fill the gaps in their salaries.

Women interviewed by IPS admitted to supporting extended families in the countryside, making their wages utterly insufficient to meet basic needs.

Lubek told IPS, “After interviewing over 1,800 beer-sellers, hostesses, massage and karaoke entertainment workers, we found a pernicious and constant underpayment of women by about half, whether (from) managers of entertainment venues, global brewers, or local distributors.”

Sharing his most recent data covering the period 2002 to 2012, Lubek explained that entertainment workers earned only about half of their basic needs from their salary, showing a shortfall of 40 to 60 percent expected to be made up in tips.  His research shows that the pressure to engage in sex work precedes the closure of brothels.

Pisey Ly, a representative of the sex-worker-led collective Women’s Network for Unity (WNU), told IPS, “A massage session at a local, lower-level parlour costs 7,000 to 10,000 riel (1.75 to 2.50 dollars). When a worker decides to have sex, they charge an (extra) five dollars per service outside the massage place with local men.”

Sex workers use entertainment establishments as a front because their work is now illegal, according to Ly.  This particular market involves mostly local men, since “foreigners buy sex from freelance sex workers at bars and clubs”, rather than massage parlours.

Upscale spas tend to cater to foreigners and offer only therapeutic massage.  Here, masseuses experience a comparatively fortunate work environment.

According to Mora, places like Aziadee Spa charge customers between eight and eighteen dollars per massage, and workers can earn an additional dollar per customer, plus tips.  A monthly salary of 70 dollars represents the high end of the wage scale.

(END)