This past week, I was stopped at Kanyonyo, in Kitui, on the Garissa Road, by the anti-terrorism police. The queue was long but the day was beautiful, my windows were down, inviting in the healing arid air.
The robot put on Mangelepa’s Embakasi, the one about Moraa’s boyfriend who is travelling, perhaps back to Congo, and he is trying to reassure her that he will come back.
I took off my safety belt to pull off a few Obachi Machoka dance moves, just to pass the time. The officer, who had a very good gun, very serious clothes and his face in a shroud found in that state.
“Mzee inaonekana hapo uko sawa (You seem to be alright),” he told me. I assured him I was having a good day and he waved me through.
The song reminded me of my boyhood friend, Kaburu Kubai, whose bushy beard and sideburns competed with his father’s, a burly doctor in the town. Kaburu was completely crazy about rhumba, not just the lyrics but also the instrumentation.
He loved Embakasi in particular. Like me, Kaburu was a thug: He smoked like a chimney, chewed miraa and drank moonshine from a local slum. So you can guess what kind of school Thai Secondary School was.
“Thai is private in all sectors,” our headmaster helpfully informed us. So long as the fees were paid, we were basically free to do as we pleased, including going to class. If you wanted not to attend class and spend the day loitering in town, you were free to do so, so long as you used the gate and didn’t jump over the fence.
We didn’t do a lot of school work but we experimented with the arts. I was in a makeshift band and we did well in drama. I didn’t have the courage to try a life in the arts. Some of us did though, and Kimaita Magiri, who wrote and directed our plays, became a serious professional producer and production manager for various TV stations.
In that school, we were all coming from somewhere; we had a past. I was lost. I had suffered some family trauma and I was also growing up. I didn’t go to O-Levels in my district. The Moi regime had come up with this District Focus for Rural Development policy which required children to attend school in their locality.
After Form Four, even though I had a Division One, neither my home district nor the district where my school was placed me in Form Five. I became “An Unplaced Division One Case”. So that lost season, I indulged in the arts: Film, music, theatre and books. I think it is a teenage thing; more so for the troubled ones.
Kaburu, I think, had been expelled from another school. He once told me how the headmaster of his former school, who was very hard on him, found cigarettes and miraa on him. He was sent home to bring his father. He was terrified of his dad. So, when they sat down for the disciplinary hearing, the headmaster said: “Kaburu tell your father what I found you with.”
The boy, theatrical with a chipped front tooth, was outwardly calm but terrified. His eyebrows shot up to his hairline in dramatic shock. “Me? You didn’t find me with anything. You just sent me home to get my parents.” The headmaster was astounded: “I didn’t find you with miraa and cigarettes?” Kaburu turned to his giant of a father and looked him dead in the eye. “Dad, he didn’t find me with nothin’.”
An Oscar performance. And the headmaster, who had unwisely not preserved evidence, had to concede defeat and send the boy back to class, obviously with the intention of fixing him some other way. Right there, in that lanky frame, was probably a great musician and an Oscar-winning actor who could extemporise convincingly under pressure. I came out of that season with an art that became my career.
The initiatives recently launched by the Ministry of Youth Affairs, The Arts and Sports have a great opportunity to reach those kids who are searching for an identity, perhaps even healing from something, in the arts. Even if they don’t get a career out of it, they will certainly develop a useful release from the pressures of life.
And there is a strong culture and expertise in the management of the arts already existing to tap into. Recently, I was swaying to Tushangilie Kenya , performed by Mwalimu Juma Odemba’s Kayamba Africa; what a glorious band, not just in the way they perform, which is fantastic, but in the flawless manner in which they fit in the high-profile programme.
Mr Odemba is not just a first-rate musician and manager; he is also a great diplomat for the arts. In the film, Mwaniki Mageria is an award-winning actor and filmmaker with broad experience in the regulation and management of the arts and is involved in organising international quality film awards.
Dr Donald Otoyo, a foremost music scholar and administrator, Edward Sigei, one of the continent’s brightest copyright lawyers and technocrats...
All this expertise exists and should be used to help our youth to identify, develop and make a good living from their talent. Embakasi was released more than 45 years ago. Help our kids to write the timeless hits of the future.
