Cirkafrika: The continent’s got talent

The Parisian audience is like a petulant child: very hard to please. So when French spectators and critics waxed eloquent over Cirkafrika, a show by an all-African circus troupe, I was intrigued, but pursed my lips à la française.

“Pfft!” I thought to myself, “What do they know? Yet another ho-hum repeat of contortionists and jugglers and human pyramids and dancers and unicyclists that are typical in plush resort hotels that line the Kenyan coast. Seen one, seen them all.”

A friend from Benin, also sceptical, went with his son to watch Cirkafrika and came away singing a new tune. “Mesmerising,” was his text message. That gave me food for thought.

So tickets were bought for an adult and three children for the show, which runs for over two hours. The children were to be the jury, with the main judge being my three-year-old whose attention span is pretty good – 30-40 minutes tops.

The French circus, Cirque Phénix, produced Cirkafrika. Cirque Phénix’s aim is to present novel artistic creations each new season. Having no proper circus tradition to speak of in Africa – we have only four big tops: one based in Egypt, two in South Africa and one in Tanzania – unlike the Chinese and Eastern Europe circus heavyweights, it is not surprising that Paris sat up and paid attention to Africa coming to town.

While looking for African talent comparable to circus chefs-d’oeuvre from Moscow and Peking, Alain M. Pacherie, the founder and director of Cirque Phénix, turned to the Zip Zap Circus (South Africa) and Circus Mama Africa (Tanzania). What was once a germ of an idea – an African show, unlike any other, in Paris – became a reality a few years later.

This was the reality we went to discover on a recent wintry Saturday afternoon in Paris.

The artists from South Africa, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Ghana, the Congo and Guinea; the costumes; the stage decor; the giant 3D animal and bird marionettes; the music – Lion King, move over! – were all made in Africa.

Forget clichéd African folklore and dancers garbed in traditional attire welcoming an African president or some other dignitary; forget the cold disciplined professionalism of Chinese acrobats and the aloof masterful excellence of trapeze artists from eastern Europe; forget the crisp, pasted smiles of chorus-line girls dancing the French cancan.

How could one not stand up, from the word go, and dance to Miriam Makeba, Youssou N’Dour or Touré Kunda numbers sang by three African musicians accompanied by a Big Live all-African band?

I felt Pata Pata.

The splash of colours from the costumes, decor and music reminded me of an African marketplace with its pyramid arrangement of colourful fruits and vegetables, and people talking, gossiping, haggling and laughing with music blaring from a nearby stall.

Cirkafrika is oh so cheerful, the music vibrant and the artists generous. The children couldn’t get bored even if they’d wanted to.

The artists – all very professional, focused and elegant in their performances – made their acts look so easy. They were genuinely having fun, their joy so contagious that I longed to join them on stage even though I have no circus skills.

Large, colourful plastic wash basins that can be found in African households replaced plates and bowls in the plate-spinning contortionist’s act. The artist spun five of them at a dizzying speed – one per limb and the fifth was spun using his mouth. The act was accompanied by vibrant dancing.

Pic: cirquephenix.com

The colourful basins took me back to Saturday mornings in Kenya: tending to household chores after breakfast using similar kinds of basins, the same ones that hold grain and spices sold at the market. Cirkafrika was a ray of warm tropical sunshine in the middle of a European winter.

The Ethiopian hoop artist made me forget that she was manipulating hula hoops. What I saw was a Samburu woman beautifully adorned with handmade beaded ornaments.

Cirque Phénix never presents animal acts as a matter of principle, but what would Africa be without her rich fauna and award-worthy costumed artists on stilts? The children saw an animal parade of graceful giraffes, tropical birds, crocodiles and a life-size elephant. And the frog! Oh the lithe green human frog, padded feet, croaking and all. How on earth did he manage to fit into that little transparent box?

Pic: cirquephenix.com

South Africa’s gumboot dancers made us long for more. So we asked for one encore and a second encore and yet another encore. We danced and we celebrated Africa. We saw the other face of the continent that has potential and talent and that can adapt and excel while preserving its Africanness.

Cirkafrika whispered that we can dare to dream and to believe in Africa because Africa’s got talent!

My children’s verdict? If Cirkafrika comes to a big top near you, drop whatever you are doing and run, don’t walk, to see it.

I agree.

The show, now on the road in Switzerland, Belgium and Ukraine, will be back in France/Europe in Winter 2013.

Jean Thévenet, a work-at-home mum, was born and raised in Kenya. She now lives in France and blogs at http://hearthmother.blogspot.com.

12 years ago

The stink of Lavender Hill

Sought-after residential neighbourhoods have developed in Accra in the last ten years, some with sophisticated names like Manet Cottage, Manet Ville, Trasacco Valley, Taysec Gardens and Ballon Court. They offer the ultimate suburban lifestyle: beautiful homes, pools, security guards and location. Trasacco Valley, for example, looks like a neighbourhood the desperate housewives of Wisteria Lane could live in.

A street in Trasacco Valley. (Flickr/Talata M)

One of the houses in Trasacco Valley. (Flickr/Talata M)

Lavender Hill sounds like one of these posh gated communities, but it’s not. Despite its pretty name, it stinks. This site is where liquid waste from the city is dumped into the sea daily, and residents and road users have been complaining of the stench and health hazards for years. The Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) has been promising to shut down Lavender Hill since 2010, but the dumping continues daily.

See pictures of the waste disposal here.

I recently took a taxi from the CBD in Accra to Lavender Hill, a mere ten-minute drive. The taxi driver offered some advice on the way there: “My brother, you might throw up by the time we reach the end of [Accra Beach Road]. Even with the windows closed, you’ll still get the stench.”

We passed some houses when we reached Lavender Hill, and I stopped to chat to some of the residents.

Unlike me, Nancy Awuah wasn’t showing any discomfort with the foul smell in the air, and I did not want to show any disrespect by covering my nose. She and her husband moved to the neighbourhood from Maprobi since it was closer to where he works. “The smell was tough in the beginning but we have gotten used to it … other people live with other smells around them. In some parts of the country that l have lived in, the people have to smell cocoa waste all their lives and so [this] is the same,” Nancy told me.

I asked her about the health hazards of living near a highly polluted site. “We only smell the stench, what about those of you who eat the fish that feed on the human waste?” She had a point – most of the fish sold in the markets around Accra are sourced from the James Town fishing community.

James Mensah, who has lived here for ten years, gave me a short history of Lavender Hill. “At first it didn’t have a name because it was not part of any of the city’s suburbs and no one wanted to live here because it was a waste dumping site. But by the middle of the 90s, with the high demand for accommodation in the city, some smart people thought of making money by encroaching on the land around the place and built houses for rent. Desperate people who could not afford the high rent in the city moved in gradually and before we all knew what was happening, it had become a township and given an exotic name.”

City officials agree Lavender Hill is not fit for human habitation because of the environmental pollution that is caused by the dumping of human waste. “Once in a while, we hear that the city engineers department wants to build a modern waste facility here but it has taken years for the project to happen. We have come to see these city officials as people who only talk and do nothing,” James said.

The most recent promise came three weeks ago when the mayor of Accra, Alfred Nii Okoe Vanderpuije, gave citizens the assurance that Lavender Hill will be eliminated by June 2013. In its place, the AMA is building a scientific liquid waste plant that will recycle waste into organic material and biofuels for further use.

James and Nancy are sceptical about whether government will fulfill its promise this time. Until it does, Lavender Hill remains a blot on the nation’s pride. For the residents who live here, life is anything but sweet-smelling.

Francis Kokutse is a freelance journalist based in Accra. He writes for the Associated Press, Nation Media Group of Kenya and the Indo Asian News Service.

12 years ago

Born lucky: Tales of a high-class hooker

I met Lynn (not her real name) a few months ago at a club in town, and we’ve been friends since then. We see each other around, mostly by chance, and our friendship has strengthened. Born to a rich family at the coast, Lynn was educated at a private, “international” school in Mombasa and counted more white friends among her classmates than black Kenyan ones – you can tell by the absence of a Kenyan accent.

She’s bright, no doubt about it, and beautiful, with wild two-inch tufts of bleached blond hair, huge doe eyes, caramel skin and strong, bright white teeth. She could probably make a good living in front of the cameras in Cape Town but when she arrived in Nairobi she couldn’t find a job, so she became what she describes as a ‘chick hustler’ instead. She is only 20 years old and quite good at her job.

I sent her a SMS last week saying I wanted to write a piece about her.

“Sawa” (Okay), she replied, and we arranged to meet the next day.

“What do you want to write about me?” Lynn asks when we sit down, leaning on the table and squinting at me with mock seriousness.

“A true story,” I reply. She’d heard it before. My SMS had mentioned it.

“Why? There’s nothing exceptional about me.”

“Well, you’re hardly ordinary,” I say.

Lynn shrugs and leans over to rest her arm on my leg, her new white Alcatel smartphone in her hand, batting her eyelids and gazing into my eyes as if she had just found Prince Charming.

“Hold on, I’m going to the bank,” she announces suddenly.

She is slim in a Kate Moss sort of way, skinny legs and all. She’s wearing a tight white sleeveless T-shirt, grey tights, and a pair of flat sandals with beads on the top – the kind you get at the various Maasai markets here. She’s got a small grey sling bag and a long striped scarf wrapped around her neck in five shades of grey. It looks like it’s woven from raw silk.

“The system was down when I got here,” she explains as she gets up. “I just need to draw some cash.”

She leaves me at the table, promising she’ll come back. I know Lynn well enough by now to be sceptical, but I wait anyway. Ten minutes later, she’s back. Heads turn to follow her entrance.

“Escort me downtown,” she immediately commands.

“Okay. Where are we going?” I ask, realising that my story is about to slip away.

“Just downtown! I’ve only got a little money. I can’t afford a taxi so I want to get a matatu (minibus taxi) to The Mayfair. It’ll be good there now.”

We leave immediately and take turns to avoid injury in the 5pm traffic rush. As we find a little solace behind the Jamia mosque, she puts her arm around my shoulder as we walk and takes the hand of my far arm, swinging it in front of us. Childlike. We can’t fail to draw attention; the ever-present parking attendants and the Muslims heading for prayer watch this young Kenyan model walking with this older white guy. But there’s a familiarity between us that prompts smiles, not frowns.

We reach the terminus for matatus going to upmarket Westlands but she doesn’t stop there. We walk past the terminus and on to the real downtown part of Nairobi. We continue up the road and deep into the danger zone that lies beyond River Road. Just at the end, she slips into an alley adjacent to a minuscule shop that stocks groceries and motor vehicle spares. I follow. Through the alley, we enter the courtyard of a typically dilapidated Nairobi tenement block. The two-storey block is a courtyard of chipped blue enamel, grimy wire mesh burglar proofing and fresh washing hanging everywhere on makeshift lines.

Lynn heads straight for the back of the courtyard, to a small window in the far left corner. There’s a woman sitting at the base of the staircase in the opposite corner with a baby on her lap. She calls “Fatma!” and there’s a grunt from the floor above.

While Lynn stands at the window, she is joined by an anxious-looking Sikh youth with a black turban on his head, and a guy wearing uniformly dirt-brown clothes. The three of them wait, mute and agitated.

It takes five minutes before Fatma appears, stumbling down the stairs. She’s a mess, her forehead and hairline wet from sweat and it looks like she just had a shot of heroin. She looks Somali. She unlocks the steel gate next to the window, enters, locks it again, and then appears at the window within seconds. She serves the Sikh youth and then has to count the coins proffered by the dirt-brown-clothed guy before he too is served. Only then does Lynn get the little packet that she came for.

Lynn rushes out across the courtyard, through the alley, out, and down the road. Her stride is hard to keep up with but I manage. As we cross the street to the terminus, Lynn, in her rush, nearly gets hit by a bus and shouts at the driver, “Haraka niaje!?” In Sheng – Nairobi Swahili slang – that’s like, “What’s up with the rush, dude?”

“Fuuuuuck, where’s he gonna go?” Lynn asks in redundant reference to the wedged-in traffic that the bus nearly smashed into.

As we reach the terminus, she quickly finds a matatu and gets in.

“We’ll talk some other time,” she says through the window. I shrug and leave, understanding the occasional urgency of someone with a heroin habit.

Twenty minutes later, I get a text message from Lynn.

“Relief! And it’s looking very promising here. A table of 12 white guys at the pool gawking at me each time I walk past. Lol. But I only want one. Wish me luck.”

I SMS back to wish her luck.

After another ten minutes, she replies: “How can I be here and we not allowed to approach men. Unless he comes for you or you are sitting next to him. That’s when you can talk to him but not by getting up and walking to him. Imagine! If it was allowed I’d be a very rich woman tonight!”

It’s obvious that management at The Mayfair has laid down the rules about the behaviour required of ‘Nairobi girls’ when male guests are at the pool area.

At midnight, while writing this, I send her a text message.

“You were lucky tonight?”

Minutes later:

“I got this shit idiot who just wanted to pay me $20. I directed him to K-street. I literally showed him on Google Maps.”

K-street, or Koinange Street, is notorious for Nairobi street hookers.

“Fucking cheap ass is staying in a 300 fucking dollar room!” the message continues.

At 1am, this story nearly done, I send an SMS back:

“Lynn, you’re simply the best! Get lucky!”

But the message isn’t delivered until this morning, after I wake. At 8.25am I get a simple reply, an appropriate conclusion to the tale:

“I was born lucky. I got a guy for $100! ;-)”.

Brian Rath was born and raised in Cape Town. He now lives and writes in Kenya, and has a novel due to be published shortly.

12 years ago

War Witch

An Oscar nominee for Best Foreign Language Film in 2012, War Witch is the story of 12-year-old Komona who is abducted by African rebels and forced to fight in a civil war against her government. Her ability to see spirits/visions makes her the favourite of the main rebel leader and she decides to escape them. While war rages, love develops between Komona and her 15-year-old friend Magician. They try to flee to his uncle’s home but fate has other plans for her. Set in sub-Saharan Africa and filmed mainly in the Democratic Republic of Congo, director Kim Nguyen poignantly captures the stories of child soldiers and the horror of war.

12 years ago

Returning to my roots in Balcad

Balcad is the hometown of my father, his father, his father’s father (you can see where I am going with this). It’s about an hour’s ride to Mogadishu depending on what kind of bullshit you have to encounter to get there on that particular day. My dad complained how back in the day the trip took only 30 minutes and provided a great source of daily entertainment, gossip and scandal. Balcad is a farming and agricultural town, where goats compete with humans for control of the road. Men and women wake up at the crack of dawn and spend hours sitting by the main road drinking copious amounts of tea and arguing about absolutely nothing. One of most powerful people in the town is the humble bus driver who we rely on for our movement in and out of Balcad.

I had previously only made quick visits to Balcad (the last time was in 2004-2005) but this time I was staying for a few weeks, in the same house my parents married in and my siblings were born in. There is something quite peculiar about sleeping in the room in which your parents promised to spend the rest of their lives with each other over two decades ago.

I arrived in Balcad in the heat, bothered by dust and sand clouds hitting me in the eye. From the moment I stepped out of the car, I could feel people’s eyes on me. Their stares followed me as I surveyed the main road, the shops, the women who all wore full jalabeebs or burkas. It was as if ‘outsider’ was printed in bold font on my forehead. Thankfully my first visit to Somalia in 2004 had already prepared me for this.

The stares were most intense on the bus rides from Balcad to Mogadishu. The bus never left on time. The driver would sit outside, leisurely drinking his tea, waiting for the bus to fill up with passengers. I’d be sitting in my seat, open to the various curious looks and questions by fellow passengers. It didn’t matter how I dressed, they could always identify me as the outsider. Sometimes they didn’t even ask me anything; they were content to sit and discuss me loudly. During my stay I managed to perfect a blank expression mingled with confusion. It usually saved me from further questioning.

I spent my days in Balcad watching Somali music videos and a lot of badly dubbed Bollywood films. One night the entire road seemed to be in my room: their electricity connection had failed them and the thought of missing their Turkish soap opera was unbearable. Friday soccer games would see half of the town trickle into the green grounds to watch various teams compete against each other. The animosity towards the Mogadishu teams was fantastic!

Some days my dad took me on walking tours, pointing out the ruins of his childhood. I could sense his bewilderment and confusion at times when buildings that used to stand large and proud now appeared before him bullet-ridden. Balcad felt more freeing than Mogadishu, with local residents staying outside till late at night. Residents walked around freely and generally the atmosphere was less anxious than it was during my previous visit.

On other days, my grandfather’s housemaid would chaperone me despite my loud and angry outbursts that I was perfectly capable of roaming around by myself. She was a decade younger than me and refused to leave my side while I explored Balcad. Young children would run and scream at the sight of my camera before cheekily returning and asking to have their photo taken. I’d often spend a good 20 minutes taking personal photographs for people.

In Balcad, my grandpa’s town, I was merely my grandpa’s blood. People referred to and introduced me by his name, wherever I went his reputation and presence followed. It was nice. Even though my grandfather is in his eighties, he still treks by foot to his farm each morning to check on his crops, his animals and to basically get away from it all. I did not know grandparents while growing up. My maternal grandfather died shortly before my arrival in Somalia years ago. My paternal grandmother died decades ago. I’m fully realising how limited my opportunities are to understand my grandparents and their stories. Time is definitely never on our side. Hopefully through the stories and photos of my visit, I will have something of them to hold on to.

This post is part of a series by Samira Farah about her recent visit to Somalia. She is a freelance writer and events organiser based in Sydney, Australia. Visit her blog at brazzavillecreative.com and connect with her on Twitter.