Mama Shujaa

When preparing for a ten-day sojourn to my home country two weeks ago, I packed the correct garb for summery days, the perfect shoes for my bridesmaid outfit, and contentment steeped in the marrow of my bones. It was my second return back home in one year, a rarity.  The first had occurred in July, when I was more orthodox in my packing, as I joined a constellation of relatives to lay our beloved Uncle Job to rest.  December 17, 2011 was the excellent occasion of my older brother’s reaffirmation ceremony after twenty-three years of marriage. That day, I smiled at everyone, so as not to offend relatives who had slipped my memory. Now, as circadian rhythms reset to my American time zone, cheerless admin-and-litigation hours at work have taken the place of the happy-go-lucky days in Nairobi. I revisit photographs. I scrutinize faces, bodies, locations; they are adequate restoratives that stave off the evaporation of recent excitement, when family and friend...

I learned the meaning of “déjà vu” when I was thirteen years old, thanks to Uncle James. With striking clarity and detail, before his car appeared, tires rolling on the jacaranda-strewn gravel driveway, I knew that he was coming to visit: every, single, time. My father would have picked him as brother, if we could choose relatives. He settled for Best Friend: and their souls married into the spiritual and intellectual strivings of their day. One fed the other in endless conversations driven by an intense urge to survive stagnating aspects of neo-colonial Kenya. They were concerned about culture and life in Africa, about reviving indigenous forms of East African art. My father Elimo Njau, an educator-artist, Uncle James Kangwana, a communications guru who began his career with the British Broadcasting Corporation in the 1960s. The two were co-founders of Paa Ya Paa in 1965, along with Sarah Kangwana, Rebeka Njau, Terry Hirst, Jonathan Kariara, Pheroze Nowjoree, Primila Lewi...

There are people that fuel the fire. Trailblazers who keep their focus. I think about them, and I am inspired. I have written about them, and I am sure I began with Just Want To Say Thank You , because I have manners; then I begged my mother to Tell Me .  After that, I shared The Antelope Rising   because my parents envisioned Paa Ya Paa as a spiritual calling and I too promised myself that I would flesh out the hints of the melodies that pulse beneath the surface: in my soul and in yours...Along the way, I have asked whether it was Too Raw , manifesting creative independence, authentically, without worry. And of course, life being what it is, I am learning to live Beyond The Ashes . So when Paa Ya Paa is recognized, once again in the African media, most recently, on March 15, 2010, in The East African Magazine and we read about my father "Elimo Njau's living art is testimony of the present and past" I have to share the fuel that fires me. "The spirit of art sho...

This improvisation reminds me of my feelings, the goosebumps that traversed the lengths of both arms when my baby brother played piano for me when I visited home and our resuscitated gallery in Nairobi, Kenya, after being gone for so long.  The energy and honesty, the way he trusted himself and his fingers as they roamed the keys, allowing me a glimpse into his inner feelings.  On that day he played melodies created on the spot, that captured so beautifully what we were all feeling. Have a good weekend. Mama Shujaa.

I keep revisiting a photo album containing pictures of the Paa Ya Paa ruins after the fire in 1998. Maybe it's because I was thousands of miles away, on the receiving end of an international call alerting me of El Nina and her wrath, when it happened. The phone call that put my fears to rest; the news that Baba na Mama were okay, that Baba had been hospitalized for smoke inhalation because he kept running back to retrieve some of the gallery's permanent collection of over 500 works of art, produced in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Zambia, Mozambique, Ethiopia and Sudan. The record of contemporary East African art from pre-independence to the present. Do I wander through remembrances path perhaps because I need (here's the tired word) closure? Or is it simply because I have been slow to recognize the unquestionable life-force embedded in the photographs? Look at the strong facial features that survived. They intrude upon the darkest places of the heart. Baba's lifesong st...

I met Todd from Santa Fe today. We were introduced by just another young poet walking the broken road to freedom . I invite you to follow the links to each of their spaces. The Peace Tile above is one of Todd's creations and his creative medium of finding peace through pottery resonates deeply with me; a soothing balm for my wounded soul as I slowly summon the courage to revisit memories of our kiln, destroyed in a ferocious fire that consumed the gallery where I grew up... ...now I can look at the lone surviving figure above. A small but monumental sculpture bearing the personification of life force beyond the anguish, a gateway to the history of Africa where slash and burn agriculture cultivates seeds of creativity which, when practiced purposefully breaks the boundaries as we reach the unseen, a more compelling future. Mama Shujaa. Copyright © Hana Njau-Okolo 2009. All Rights Reserved.

As a child I often wished I could climb the Ma u Mau Freedo m Fighter behind our home. If Samwel Wanjau had carved a flight of steps up the back of a leg, I would have ascended the twelve feet to the fierce dreadlocks, and settled a few scores. " I'm the king of the castle, You're the dirty rascal. I'm the king of the castle, Get down, you dirty rascal !" The taunt, directed at my older brother, would have penetrated the canopy of eucalyptus trees and instilled the fear of god into the bullies of Ridgeways Estate. Instead, I climbed the Jacaranda tree in front of the house and daydreamed amidst clusters of fragrant, purple, trumpet-shaped blooms... If Wanjau had carved an aesthetically "palatable" symbol of Kenya's fight for independence, as he was commissioned, the Mau Mau Freedom Fighter would be standing in front of the Kenya Parliament building today, celebrating forty-five years of independence from British colonial rule. Instead, Wanjau conv...

Salaams of the New Year! As we bear witness to the creative hopes, challenges and joys of the New Year, I am thankful for the generosity of spirit I have encountered here, a dynamic meeting point of diverse minds and collective voices. A place where we find inspiration, we string together ideas and comments as we dedicate ourselves to a wholesome new way of tackling maisha [life]. Suffice it to say that this apprentice blogger is hooked. And as the year begins, I am consciously aware of the source of my inspiration, my Utu, an intangible source of strength. I grew up in an art gallery in Nairobi , Kenya . My trailblazing parents founded Paa Ya Paa Art Gallery in 1965, just two years after Kenya ’s independence from British colonial rule. The rest of their graduating class became doctors, veterinarians, politicians, you know, the usual safe occupations. Today, Paa Ya Paa is Kenya ’s oldest African-owned art gallery and holds a unique place in the preservation and promotion of a...