12 June 2009 This is Africa

T.I.A.
As I write this thunder is booming making the ground shake, wind is blowing leaves and dust around and lightening flashes illuminating the compound and sky. Something strange has happened, which someone may be able to explain to me but everything seems to be yellow, the light right now is an orangey yellow… not like sunset orangy yellow….like I don’t know really… like AFRICA orangey yellow! Something you cant explain and something no picture could show
I feel so alive, its been a month and I finally feel like I'm in Africa. I had an amazing rehearsal today with the drama group. As usual lots of people turned up hours late or not at all and after a short rehearsal of the scene we have been working on we sang songs, danced and shared stories. In a way I feel you couldn’t do back home. It was stripped back of any embracement or fear of standing in front of people. Group members completely committed themselves to their stories and characters and put themselves out there! One member spoke of a story involving the struggle a mother had bringing up her children and everything she had to do and what a miracle it was she carried on, another told a funny story that had a running joke a bout how things in two were good or bad and how each thing had two options good or bad. I shared a mix of a personal story and the story of rhinoceros by Eugiene Ionesco but instead of using rhino I used squares and circles.
After this amazing afternoon playing, singing and sharing I jumped on my bike to cycle up through nyalenda and home. (have I mentioned I now have a bycicle, it has no breaks and the gears don’t work but I love it) As soon as the sun begins to set the atmosphere of this neighbourhood/slumb area completely changes, I just cant describe.
After cycling over the mud and rubbish and stagnant water that lines the road (if you can call it that) that leads through the houses and huts, I got to the main road. The wind all this time had been blowing, thunder rattling the ground and when I got to the main road that runs next to the sports ground dust was flying in the air. Orange dust like I've never seen…. Its felt like…you know that Michael Jackosn video for earth song where the world is ending and dust is flying and he is holding on to trees to stop himself from being swept into the abyss…well it looked just like that. Complete sensory overload, every sense was taking in. Even though I was completely exhausted I just cycled and cycled. Alive with this feeling of being in a complete different world. Now, for the first time I think the phrase:
THIS IS AFRICA
Can be used. I can try and explain what my senses felt and took in, but what I cant do is explain the atmosphere or just feeling of life that I took in just a moment ago.
As I've been writing this the orangeness has faded to blackness as the sun has rapidly set, the rain beats down hard and lightning like you have never seen in the UK lights up the sky… Mosquitos have started eating me so I better move inside….
…. I know this sounds all deep and smushy, but I don’t get to be like that often so I'm going to relish the opportunity and hey if I don’t write it down I cant look back and laugh...

10th June Need to catch up

[photo to be added here]

Need to catch up, left tonnes of stuff out...
Okay so I haven't been blogging to much so I will fill you in on what's happening.

Workshops have been going really well and we are preparing for this saturdays which will be on math for early childhood development.

In the youth centre in Nyalenda we have started selling sodas and popcorn and I'm planning to work a little on sales technique and spreading the word that the centre is a place to come for drinks and chillout space for young people.

I had a nice time at the Nakuru national park on the weekend although it was a very expensive day! I must say though it was not seeing the animals that I enjoyed most it was the views from the top of hills and cliffs down onto the grasslands and the lake. I saw buffalo and millions (literally) of flamingos, there was so many making noise that the ground shook, I also saw giraffes, rhinos, wart hogs millions of monkeys and baboons (one of which i got in a fight with) and a load of other animals...it was nice but a bit too touristy. Although I thought we did it in a much more kenyan way as we drove through the safari in an old toyota corrola instead of a 4x4 with an open top and silly safari hats.

I've been spending lots of time doing business type things here which is great, the farm project (which is its own company rather than a part of the NGO) is loosing money so I'm doing my best to try and help turn it round. Its pretty cool, I feel like one of the dragons from dragons den trying to turn a failing business into a profitable one. In a few weeks I will be moving to the farm for some time so I can understand every inch of the process from planting seeds, shovelling shit and selling veg at the market. More recently Nick, the farm manager, has got an order for 500 tree saplings from one of the Kenyans banks so we are working towards getting that done which will hopefully bring a hansom profit. I promised to take him out for Chicken, Oogali and sukumawiki if he manages to pull it off. Also due to a lack of chicken feed in the area I had the idea to start transporting it in from where it is more available and charging a good price for it. Nicks done a good job of selling it and I think we have a big order for 20 sacks which would be awesome.

Drama as usual has huge ups and huge downs. Today I finally gave in and snapped a little at the director. I probably was completely enforcing western convention of theatre and drama practice but I don’t care. The director always shows people "how it should be done" which is sooo bad as the actor just copies the director the next time rather than the director explaining what he wants so the actor can make his own decisions and be true to his character. Okay I am not saying I want the actors to all be pretentiously be asking "But director, what's my motivation in the scene" BUT I think that the actors should not be impersonating the director especially as his physicality, proxemics and vocal qualities are the same in most scenes or scenarios.

I'm looking forward to the weekend, possibly going to Nairobi on Sunday to sort out some stuff for registering the school. Also I shall be going to volunteer in an orphanage near Homa bay which will be a nice change for 5 days or so.

3rd June Finally Forum Theatre!!

Finally forum theatre!
Its taken a hell of a lot of rehearsal, explaining, battling with a director who has a very different opinion of what directing is, but finally we are working on a piece of drama that fits the forum theatre model!!
I have many notes in my book from rehearsals studying the group dynamics, peoples interactions and the development of drama and ideas. It would bore most people to death so it shall remain in my notebook and not make it to this blog.
After some dicussion of the other two plays that have been developed in the last rehearsal a conclusion was made that a third should be put togeather. I stressed that I personally would like to us the forum theatre model that the orginal drama group was setup to use (before sort of being hijacked ). Here is where an interesting thing happened. One of the group had to clarify what I said to the "director", when he asked the director if he knew about forum theatre, the director said yes which I think was a lie but he said that he did because of the challenge of status from the this group member and myself. This is intresting because all along he has resisted the forum theatre model bus as soon as his status was challenged he gave into using it….I'm not really bothered if that’s what it takes to use it, the whole group wants a interactive piece and that’s what forum theatre will give.
So the play entitled "Innocent's story" which uses the forum theatre model was developed. The story of a girl in school who is pushed into having sex at an early age due to peer pressure, then as a result gets pregnant. I know it sounds a cliché but the group said this really is a big issue, it happens a lot and they want the issue addressed. Isn't forum theatre perfect for triggering such debate!!

2nd June Jamming in Nyalenda

Amongst other things today, I chilled out with a friend I have made in Nyalenda. We had an awesome time as I taught him some guitar chords and he sang while I strummed. We had some great renditions of no woman no cry, redemption song and Let it be…all of which sound cheezy but when he sang them he really made it sound like his own song and had such spirit and feeling to his voice.
I was amazed that he lived in his own house (made of mud and stone with a tin roof) as someone his age, early twenties, usually lives with his parents. His father died when he was young and had lost many siblings to sickle sell anemia and he told me that he supported his mother and remaining siblings through his enterprise. His story was so inspiring and we shared a great afternoon together.
The mix of mud, rotting rood and plastic bags that make up most of the roads and pathways in Nyalenda just seems normal now the small mud huts, children playing in stagnant water and millions of children shouting "Mzungu how are you" all seems just part of day to day life.

1 June Romance in the Rehearsal

1 June
I spent the morning going through all my quotes for the lockers, chairs and tables and inputting them into a spreadsheet. Okay, so its not the most exciting of things in the world but I do quite enjoy the fact that if you know how you can let excel do all the hard work for you!
After seeing Bart off (who was leaving for home, USA) we chilled for a bit and I completely forgot about today's drama rehearsal in Nyalenda. I hopped on the back of a bike and headed over, the usual guy that takes me was waiting for me, he knows the times I go to Nyalenda and always looks out for me.
Nyalenda is a strange place, a mix of mud and concrete huts with garbage and some sewedge leaking out to the mud track road that leads deeper into the "slumb" neighbourhood.
Literally hundreds of kids shout "mzungu how are you". I'm starting to know more people in the area and feel more comfortable. Occasionally I see a very intimidating person looking at me strangely, I usually say ask "Habari", how are you and they reply that they are well in kiswahili and smile. The same crazy lady shouts at me from in front of her house everyday which always amuses me. As long as its still light I feel quite safe, as soon as its Dark I get out of there as soon as I can. It just doesn’t feel right
After arriving at the centre and chilling for a few minutes we played some warm up games like Zip Zap Boing and Tubo Tubo. Together we then ran the scene we had been working on a few times. We then ran the second scene which evolves a wife trying to convince her husband to go to the hospital as they cannot conceive (the husband assumes it’s the woman's problem). This scene had currently been an argument but one of the group made the suggestion that the scene is to be played at a lower level. I straight away thought this was a great Idea as most of our work tends to be high tension arguments and raised voices. I'm not being judgemental but a lot of Louel (the tribe from Kisumus language) does seem to sound like that. The word for respect and fear are the same, I think that does show a lot.
So, the scene was played at this new "level" and it was fantastic. I really began to see sincerity and truth in the characters, the two actors did an amazing job. They spoke softly and held a lot of eye contact. It almost felt Brechtian, like they were no longer characters on stage but just actors speaking to each other. The first time watching this I not only felt a warm feeling of excitement, not only real empathy for the situation but I also really felt like I was looking into someone's life. I've always heard directors and books talk of "breaking the fourth wall" well I think if anything was an example of breaking the fourth wall, this was! I almost felt like I was intruding on someone's life, truly amazing.
We worked on how to create a little more subtle intimate physicality between the pair, looking at the wife wresting a hand on the husbands. Watching the actor do this was really effective, its just one simple movement but it was so emotive and powerful. To me it sort of symbolised the wife reaching out to support the husband. It felt like with this hand movement she was saying "I know its not me that’s baron, but I am here for you, lets work through this."
I then asked for the two actors to sit on chairs centre stage looking directly at each other. (I say centre stage, we are in a derelict classroom with a concrete floor and old asbestos ceilings) I wanted them to try a little rehearsal technique my group has used when we devised a version of 'Our countries good' at college. The two actors looked straight at each other and one would give a compliment e.g. "I love your brown hair" the other would then say "I love you" and they would swap round. This exchange would keep swapping while they looked into each others eyes. The first time or two, the actor playing the husband began to laugh . I also was very much got the impression he was acting what he thought it looked like to be in love. I said to him, "don’t act, just be" possibly one of the most pretentious thing a director can say. "Don't think about acting just think about love and this girl in front of you, almost be yourself" was my instruction to him. The action that followed was truly incredible. I asked the wrest of the group what they thought and they were just blown over, as was I. I thought the scene earlier had shown truth and sincerity, this was ten times more than before. It honestly felt like you were witnessing love or a real couple. I think it was the subtle and softness of the way they spoke, the strong eye contact and dropping any sense of acting. They were just purely in the moment fixated on each other.
At the end of the session after the usual warm down and prayer I expressed my excitement of the work we did today. Who knows what the next rehearsal will bring...

30 May Storytelling

Workshop day again and I made sure to grab a cup of chai which has fresh milk from the cow, its tastes nothing like tea but is amazing and just so fresh.
In this weeks ECD workshop we began by going over the participatory learning approach and the thematic learning method which were the two main areas that teachers were struggling with as well as being the two main areas that the syllabus for ECD teachers stresses most.
Marcello spoke for some time and went through the approaches to these topics, we then had some feedback from the teachers asking about their experiences of using these methods in the last week. We had some great feedback and I was happy to have captured a lot of it on my video camera. We had some group activities where groups of teachers planned a hypothetical week plan where they choose the theme, sub theme and fill in all the subject areas for a week using the participatory learning approach and the thematic learning method.
Story telling was the next part of the workshop and the storyteller I had planned to attend had not turned up but I had planned a backup in the form of a story I found on the net called high and lifted up. I said that my theme was nature and sub theme was leaves, so every time I say the word leaf I want the participants to all say "leaf" and every time I say a colour they repeat the colour back to me. My idea behind that was that it fits in well with the aproach and methods we were discussing and also adds elements of comedy (like a running gag) and keeps the interest of all the participants. I enjoyed delivering the story and having the group participation, having somebody I respected to be a great teacher highlight the story on the evaluation sheet at the end of the session meant a lot to me.
In the evening I went to Nyalenda for a rehearsal and meeting with the drama group and centre. As I left what was a somewhat difficult meeting I realised that it was getting dark and felt quite uncomfortable walking through Nyalenda at that time. It was very much a sensory overload and being alone in unfamiliar circumstances. I do know people around the area so I guess if it was that bad I would go to them to see me off. It was partly down to the tiredness and uneasy atmosphere that was in the air at the meeting that was prior to walking back, but the neighbourhood seemed a totally different place in the dark. People hanging around corners, fires in the street and inside peoples houses, a few drunken people and just a feeling of uneasiness. Now I know to get out of the area before its dark or at least know what to expect if I am in the area. I don't feel at risk there however, otherwise I would steer clear.