Poet and author Adipo Sidang.
It is a lonely world out there. It could be raining, as it is at this time of the year in this country. Yet, no one would offer you an umbrella.
It could get quite cold, as it will soon be in Nairobi and some parts of the country, but no one would welcome you with a cup of hot tea, coffee or soup. You could be very hungry, with lots of food around, yet no one would offer you a bite.
What about illness? Not the kind that medication and bedrest or isolation would treat. Not that kind that a diet change would address. No. The one in the mind.
The one that in ordinary conversations is easily and casually described in terms such as unhinged, disturbed, unbalanced, troubled or unstable. Terms that always suggest movement away from what is assumed to be the balance, the acceptable, the rational or the normal.
Normalcy. What is it? Who designates it, when, why, how and what or who does it serve? Abnormal is the one word that easily rolls off the tongue of those who describe friends, relatives, colleagues or acquaintances that they deem to have veered off the course of normality. This is the kind of language - and the world it (re)produces - that people with mental health problems have to live with daily.
That is the kind of world that Adipo Sidang provokes the audience to imagine in the play, 'In The Seashell Hum' (2026). This is the world of Baraka (what a name for the character!).
Poet and author Adipo Sidang.
Baraka has a sister called Kendi. His girlfriend is called Salma. His cousin is called Athman. It is a small (family) world in which Baraka's life is an endless hum in his ears, or, should we say, mind.
Baraka should be reassured by his sister, cousin and girlfriend, or doctor, that all is or will be well, or that he will get well. But being or getting well is easier said than attained. His mind is a whirlpool of sounds, images and ideas. His is a world at odds with the reality of those around him. What are they to make of his world of sounds and his 'reality?'
What is the 'normal' story of In The Seashell Hum? Rather, what is the story of those who don't live in or don't see the world of Baraka? Clearly, Baraka is not blessed as his name suggests, at least from the viewpoint of those around him. But, would he see himself as unblessed? Wouldn't he see those who don't see the world from his standpoint as the unblessed?
When the mind is perennially disturbed, when the eyes can't see as expected, when the ears hear what other people's ears can't sense, when the world inhabited by the likes of Baraka isn't the same as that of family, friends, workmates etc, what are the mentally healthy to make of the one who is designated sick?
Reality check
In The Seashell Hum is a reality check on how those who are mentally well (whatever that means) can easily be boxed in a (sea)shell, fated to be tossed wherever by waves, cursed to weather the storms of the sea (the precursors to the likely mental illness).
But it is also a pithy reminder of the fragility of the mind and the existential crisis that causes this state of never-ending fragility. What is a woman or man to do when they are more or less boxed into some corner of an everlasting struggle to survive by social, cultural, economic, political or religious conditions from birth?
The tragedy of this play is that even if Baraka were to break out of the seashell, the hum would unlikely go away, nor would the stigma of his madness. Or, would they?
In the Seasgell Hum runs at the Kenya National Theatre from May 15 to May 17 May, 2026.
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The writer teaches at the University of Nairobi. He can be reached at [email protected]
