Meetings have consequences

Steve Gitau (centre), Red Brenda as Faoulata, and Ndaiga Gibson in the play Meetings at Grans by Prevail Presents on August 20, 2023. PHOTO | POOL

Meetings have consequences. That’s the first takeaway from watching John Sibi Okumu’s play entitled Meetings, which was staged twice last Sunday at Alliance Francaise in Nairobi.

Directed masterfully by Prevail Arts’ founder and award-winning actor, producer, director, and scriptwriter himself, Martin Kigondu, the play was a refreshing way to look at some of Kenya’s darkest days during its recent past.

Embedded in the post-coup event of the early 1980s and into the ‘90s, it was an apocalyptic era when Daniel arap Moi gave a green light to goon squads going out to collect anyone breathing a hint of criticism of him or his autocratic regime.

Marrianne Nungo (right) as Gran and Hanna Wangare as Esther in the play Meetings at Grans by Prevail Presents on August 20, 2023. PHOTO | POOL

That meant spies, moles, and traitors to ordinary Kenyans, like Ben Teke’s character, Meshack were everywhere such that no one knew who they could trust since your neighbour might be a spy for Moi.

And then the next thing you knew, you were picked up overnight like Samora’s and Faoulata’s father, Augustus (Gibson Ndaiga) who had to flee the country before he was tortured in the basement of Nyayo House.

No one dared speak their mind, let alone the bitterness they felt for the loss of freedom of speech which had befallen both the country and on families like the ones shattered during those traumatic times.

Meetings is an intimate portrayal of one family’s matriarch, Gran (Marrianne Nungo) and her efforts to bring her children together after their ties had been shattered, both by politics and also by delicate sensitivities that might not have been as easy to see when Meetings was first staged in 2012.

It’s those latent and nuanced subtleties that Kigondu’s directing brought out in his outstanding cast that made this performance so important, and hopefully, it will be restaged during the Kenya International Theatre Festival in October.

The first unravelling of this dysfunctional family’s past comes as Augustus (Gibson Ndaiga) and his African-American son, Samora (Cosmos Kirui) return home after Gus’s 26 years of exile in the States and his son’s introduction, first to his jovial Uncle Julius (Emmanuel Mulili) and then to the sister Faoulata (Red Brenda) who he had never known about until Julius tells him she exists.

This is just one of the stunning secrets revealed during the play’s multiple meetings.

Julius is one of those who was embittered towards his older brother Gus even before Moi came into power. But his internal wounds only festered while his bro was away and sending much-needed cash to their mother, Gran. It only spills out at their final meeting in the play and is left unresolved.

Esther (Hannah Wanjiru), Gus’s girlfriend before he fled the country, had never told him before he left that she was pregnant; nor did she tell him about Faoulata’s birth.

Consequently, Esther suffered as a single mother who blamed Gus for going but was conflicted since she knew she’d never spilled the beans before he left. So she too has tender feelings when he comes to see his child and the siblings get to meet.

Cast of Meetings at Grans by Prevail Presents on August 20, 2023. PHOTO | POOL

Faoulata also had to ensure her boyfriend Zeke (Steve Gitau) meets her Gran since she and her grandmother are close. Gran is approving of the lad, irrespective of his being the son of the traitor Meshack whom Gran had known at Makerere University where she had been the first woman from her village to attend university.

In fact, the play starts off the first of a series of meetings, with Gran regaling her granddaughter with tales of her past life, being a hot chick who followed trendy fashions and drove the men wild with her flirtatious figure and matching intellect.

But she is a widow now and wants nothing more than to bring her family together and heal the wounds in the process.

But what we see from this bird’s eye view of the one-on-one meetings is that they all are individual and have consequences that are not necessarily resolved in single sessions as seen in the play.

Fruits of Uhuru

One other reason Gran wanted that last meeting is for Samora to see how complicated his extended family is. He has the role of embodying hope in the youth of the present and the future.

Hope is also reflected by the anticipated wedding of Faoulata and Zeke, she being the child of a freedom fighter before he fled and Zeke, son to a post-colonial Home Guard who now enjoys the fruits of so-called Uhuru that only those who compromised with the colonisers who remain in Kenya to this day.

→ [email protected]