THESPIANS ON THE WHEELS- THE FREE TRAVELING THEATRE KIKUYU CAMPUS-UNIVERSITY OF NAIROBI

Koki                : [Authoritatively] Stop it! You shall not fight in here! Stop it! I can clean all the   dirt here…but I am not ready to wipe out blood.

[They still go on]

Quessy                        : You have been sleeping with my girlfriend!

Dr. Isigi                       : You made my wife pregnant.

Koki                : [More authoritatively]Sit down! Both of you sit down! [pause] You are all here yelling and shouting and panting like pregnant penguins! [picking up the ARV pills].This pills belong to me…I put them in Bazle’s purse when you sent me for it. So brush it off your minds…none of you is positive…I am positive. Zamzam, girl, you are loose. Sleeping around with your lecturers for marks…what the difference is between and those cheap Koinange hawkers. You need to get yourself fixed. Grow up! Quessy, so you thought getting yourself a sugar mummy was a good idea…you call that payback to your girlfriend for ignoring you…What is the difference between you and a naïve little child. You need to get yourself fixed. Grow up! Hmm…Daktari….I am a well-trained Doctor, but my papers were spoilt by my lecturer who failed me because he wanted to take away my girlfriend from me. He made my girlfriend positive…and she made me positive! Mmh! A trained doctor, here cleaning your office and all you can do is bring in girls, lay them here and wait for me to clear your mess. What is the difference between you and a dog! You need to get yourself fixed. Grow up!

[Silence]

Koki                : Thanks Bazle for your dramatic help. They all learnt their lesson. [Looks at Mrs. Isigi, then faces the audience. He picks up a sheet and covers her entire body] She is dead.

The End

(curtains) 

 

 The Thursday weather at Kikuyu Campus had indicated all that shall transpire. When the charged audience started streaming in, I knew something attractive was coming up next. The Free Traveling Theatre Kikuyu Campus chapter has always been an art hub, this is where the University of Nairobi is boasting a large number of students of literature. When they showcased OYUGI MUST KNOW late last year, the college administration got the rumour, and funded a repeat of the same three weeks ago, attracting an audience population of close to 800 all cubed in MULTIPURPOSE HALL. Little did they know that another melo-tragic play CLITERATURE DEPARTMENT, scripted by SAMMY NAKITARE and directed by OUMA PETER and SAMMY NAKITARE was looming in the dark, ready to show its head. The evening was graced by MC EDMOND MAKENA who kept the audience in light moments every sing minute. Several poets- Desmond Walker, Moses Kimani, Ouma Peter, Sammy Nakitare, Ian Collince , GATC dancers among others generated heat in the room. When the play casts finally flooded the stage, the superheated audience kept the laughter and cries in the same pot. This group is amazing and great. I have seen real thespians in Kikuyu Campus. This is where theatre lives.

MY VALENTINE GIFTS: BASTARD AND EVICTION- By Peter K'ouma

The sun had set then. The dimly lit security lights that hung above the slum shelters were on. See a young girl of my age sent to go purchase kerosene from the shops that kiss the dumpy roads in the shanties at this time of the night is a common sight in the slums. Kibera has been my home for now seventeen years. I have been kissing the dusts and the smells in these dirty streets. These streets have taught me the art of making babies; of course you expect me to know that, staying with my sisters and brothers, sleeping in the same curtain-partitioned room with my parents, who are at the verge of reproducing still. These streets have exposed me to seeing women who part their legs along the walls so as to afford their house bills and meals.

Maybe most of you haven't grown up in the slums in my country and this might sound a written tale. That very day, I had met two thrown polythene bags at different spots, each holding the result of what happens in these slum streets. Where would that teenage girl take the thing if their house is filled with hungry rats? These young women would be kept out of the keg pubs, if they dare keep the pregnancy, and you know exactly what that means- no livelihood.  And the dump fathers? Of course they are never known. They are the Muthama, Kamau, Oloo, Mwakazi, Abdi, Mushokholo, Kipng'eno, and Miriti, who all have walked on her barefooted. She actually doesnt know who to cling to as the father to the thing. Therefore, only one name emerge- the  bastard, who has to be gotten rid off before the next customer on board checks.

The first man appeared from the front structure that lines the road. The structure blocks the light rays from reaching to illuminate the part of this slum street well, giving advantage to the anonymous. As a thunderbolt, I am picked and slid off the scene, with total haste and mouth shut to prevent the defensive noise that could cross my mind.  Laid prostrately, like a sheep getting the better of the butcher's knife, the three men took their turns on me, each scooping his pleasure from a teen slum-girl. You don't know when it is like hearing the moans of rough men, men whom you do not know their identities. Maybe men who go to mijengo with my dad every single sunrise or could be scooping the pleasures from the sluts in the slum pubs, scattering their seeds.

The kerosene bottle that I held in my hand could have shared the same fate with my innocent blood flowing in that very outdoor bedroom scene, flowing for a short period before it is absorbed into the thick film of dust that cements our streets. Finding a teen with her virginity intact in our slum is anathema, since the hawks are ever hoovering to pick the chicks before they could have the claws for scratching and the head to think.

I gave away my virginity to these strangers on a valentine dish. They strangers were kind enough to reward me, to offer me the gifts of the world lovers day: a bastard in my lap and a kick from my mother's "parlour".
As you celebrate your Valentine, I too celebrate my gifts (bastard and eviction), but still in these dirty streets that suffocates me; the streets that choke me, on this Valentine.

  

GENDER INEQUALITY; IT ALL BEGAN WITH LANGUAGE- By Peter K'ouma

   

 “We are despised, stepped on, spat on, and unfairly treated by culture, religion, psyche and history. Hath a woman hands, legs, cardiac, feelings, just as a man? If you pricketh us, don’t we bleed? And if you tickleth us, don’t we laugh?” How many occasions have we heard of these words? Of course severally! Don’t you feel something hidden in the words? – Inequality, unfairness and unjust of gender.

After the title and the first paragraph, I know you are rolling back your sight globes to know the author’s sex. It is a masculine name bored by a man. Of course I have always written several articles before echoing the feelings of a woman, but still that doesn’t categorize me as one. I am born of a woman; all my younger siblings are girls; three-quarters of my friends are ladies; my first born and the only one I have brought onto this planet is a girl; pink and blue are my favorite colors; and Chris Mukasa will affirm that K’ouma has a shrill voice but, am proud of being a man. A man, born, raised and inducted into a blended culture. For the sake of my sisters, girlfriends, mother, aunts, nieces, cousins, daughter and my love, I hereby venture to scrutinize the genesis of the above scribbled disease that cripples our society at large.

I was reflecting onto my first linguistic lecture in the University of Nairobi and mirrored on the Norwegian, Anglo-Saxon, and influence of Italian, Greek and Scandinavian languages in the emergence and development of English language. The speculation landed me in three different ways in which English language must have engineered the existence of gender parity. I realized that language defines, ignores and deprecates women.

Definition

Language defines women in reference to occupational terms. Women are referred to as ‘wives’. The term ‘wife’ is in relation to a man. This means that women are defined according to the presence or absence of authority (Husband). Again, occupational modifiers have been constructed to redefine a woman; lady justice, woman doctor. When we say justice so and so, it automatically echoes a man/ men. Why do we find it difficult associating the term ‘doctor’ to ladies without adding the term ‘woman’? And when naming sexes? Experiment uttering this; ‘women and men’, ‘she or he’, ‘girls and boys’………………….. We will always unconsciously bring the feminine name or pronoun after the masculine one. We will say ‘Adam and Eve’ and not ‘Eve and Adam’. My predecessor linguistic Wilson Cohen(1560) once said, ‘ the worthier is preferred and set before’ a statement that I have found to be very sexist and hate with passion.

When a woman is married, why must

FEMINIZATION OF HIV IN THE KENYAN CONTEXT

 

                              FEMINIZATION OF HIV IN THE Kenyan CONTEXT

                                                                                                              By Peter K’ouma

 HIV and AIDS operate as an epidemic of signification concentrating more on the gendered and sexualized body of the Kenyan woman as its subject rather than the structural determinants of risk to infection.  This was my stand on a pedestrian argument I had with three learned University comrades from the College of Health Sciences (CHS) - University of Nairobi. Ndambuki, Lovy and Jairus are medical students and I kept wondering what kind of an argument they will have with a student of College of Education. They ended up concluding that I must have been a student of philosophy professors and my Literature gurus.

Jane lost her parents at age fifteen, while her younger siblings were between 5 and 13. Compelled to drop out of school to find a life for her minors, she moved with them to Kibera slums a year later. The same year she moved to the shanties, Jane was raped by a man of her late father's age and contracted the HIV virus. With no job or book knowledge to rely on, she turned to the streets of Nairobi as a commercial sex worker at seventeen. To her, this was a way of fending for her siblings as well as a way of punish the world that infected her with the virus. Unfortunately, Jane died late 2014.

Ndambuki moved in to dilute my true story with another. One of the sitting African presidents married a young lady in a colourful royal ceremony three years ago as dictated by his community’s custom.  He bedded her the very night, and later on, it turned up that the royal queen was HIV positive. The president was screened severally for any infection and he emerged negative. This is also a true story, just as that of Jane. Why is it that the president is alive and free of virus, yet Jane is dead? Was it the biological/ physiological structure of Jane (woman) that exposed her to the virus? Was it the physiological nature of the President (man) that saw him safe?  This is the key question that created tension among us for more than three hours. The interventions that are supposed to be used to combat the HIV menace are directly proportional to our understanding of the context through which this infection operates.

Going with statistics, The Kenya HIV Estimates Report 2014 released by the Ministry of Health in June 2014 provides several insights into this. Kenya’s HIV epidemic is geographically diverse, ranging from a prevalence of 25.7 % in Homa Bay County in Nyanza region to approximately 0.2 % in Wajir County in North Eastern region. Prevalence remains higher among women at 7.6 % compared to men at 5.6 %. In descending order, counties with highest adult HIV prevalence in 2013 included Homa Bay 25.7%; Siaya 23.7%; Kisumu 19.3%; Migori 14.7%; Kisii 8%; Nairobi 8%; Turkana 7.6% and Mombasa 7.4%. HIV prevalence among young females aged 15-24 was higher than that of males in the same age group at 2.7% and 1.7% respectively. Notably young women in this age group account for 21% of all new HIV infections in Kenya, a clear incidence marker.  There were approximately 88,620 new infections that occurred among adults and 12,940 among children in 2013, with the first five counties contributing about 50% of the total new infections.

The key question is

PETER OUMA IN TESO, KENYA-UGANDA BORDER

A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots. My first time in Busia County, Kenya, gave me a lot of insight into the indigenous practices, beliefs, customs, and culture of the Teso community. A time well spent knowing what is not found in my Luo community and that that is shared.

NANNY’S LETTER FROM PRISON CELL- by Peter K’ouma

NANNY’S LETTER FROM PRISON CELL- by Peter K’ouma

(Based On the Ugandan Nanny Case File)

 

 

At least I have had a chance

To a scribble today

And I would speak it out

Speak out what you,

Your Honour, did not listen to

To speak out the unheard side

Because a child is innocent unquestionably

And that is the rule of law

Yes, Your Honour

I believe a child is innocent

And I regret my actions on the child

Your Honour

Maybe we were all children in the house

Maybe i am as innocent as the child

Or maybe, you need to be my audience

Your Honour,

My life has not changed largely, even in the cell.

I have only

MY JUMUIYA FESTIVE TRIP

MY JUMUIYA FESTIVE TRIP

                                                                                                            Peter K’ouma

“The sun is setting at Kanyakiti”, that’s how I would have said while it goes down the Homa Hills, supposing the just concluded West African Prose Examination that marked my end-semester for December Holiday , was not here to hold me at the University of Nairobi. The third and fourth year Literature units ushered me into a world of culture, indigenousness, identity crisis, independence struggles, post-colonial theories, cosmopolitanism, subalterns and subliminal, hybridism and feminism, socialist and communists, as well as a world of gods, mythopoeism and glocalization. With only one semester to graduate, I am breaking for my Christmas holiday.

With the few thousands of shillings that I earned as a journalist and an editor for the college magazine, I am stranded on what, where and how to spend it during this festive season. Going to the coast and booking a one-week hotel at Nyali Beach Resort won’t be as rewarding as I now think. This will not quench my thirst for adventures. Exactly! It is now in my mind! I need to travel, I need to see flora and fauna, the terrain and physical appearance of the lakes falls, valleys, the ‘the other people’, and I want to see the region at large. I have an idea. When Naomi calls tonight, I am going to instruct her to write down a packing list for a one week- journey through the East African boarders. Of course I will remind her that we need not our little angel, Shannel (I am a daddy), for the baby will compete with the nature in demanding for our attention at a time when two means two and not any other figure beside. Besides, the various differences in weather of the intended destinations could be a challenge to her health. In the mean time, i will be drawing a map tonight. Ooh No! I would download it from the Google, to avoid many questions from Naomi.  The adventure diary would be well elaborative and self-speaking. I wouldn’t forget to send an M-Pesa to the Safaris Limited for the cab that I had asked for, three days ago plus a driver (Honestly, I had never been to a driving school).