Culture | Daisy Ouya

Chelenge: Kenyan wood sculptor stands strong with people with disabilities

November 2, 2023

“I am Kenya’s first woman sculptress,” Chelenge says, as we step through a low, thatch-roof verandah and into her light-filled home studio— a sprawling bungalow where rooms flow effortlessly into one another, like a river. The walls are an immaculate whitewash and the cement screed floor is painted with red oxide, creating a perfect backdrop for Chelenge Van Rampelberg’s rich collection of paintings, and her own wooden sculptures—some nearly touching the ceiling, others at eye level.

As we meander among the sculptures I am struck by the expressions on the carvings – alive, serene, defiant. Some lips are upturned into small smiles. Many of the figures are missing something… a breast, an arm, both legs …

“What’s up with the disabilities?” I ask Chelenge, and spark off a monologue.

“I believe the ugliest thing in the world is the most beautiful.

“See this cripple here? He’s too, can give a nice, strong hug to this beautiful girl he loves.

Musings on mahamri and coral reefs in Kilifi

September 14, 2020

Chumani village in Kilifi, where my buddy has set up a sustainable mixed farming homestead, is a 10-minute walk from one of the most gorgeous, white sandy beaches on the East African coast. In Chumani the skies are blue, the air is warm, and the moon and stars hold a beauty contest every night.

Plus, Chumani has the most delicious mahamri this side of Pwani, made fresh every morning by Mamake-Anna and her daughter Anna in their low thatch-roof kitchen-cum-restaurant by the side of the short stretch of road that turns off the Mombasa–Kilifi highway into the villlage and straight to Chumani Beach.

Legend has it that this road once had a big chunk of chuma (‘metal’ in Kiswahili), which slowly became a landmark. As time went on the village came to be known as the place with the chuma (Chumani).

Audio: Memories of rural Kenya in the 1930s–50s: My mum and I on national radio

December 3, 2017

Ever wondered how Africans managed in the olden days?

How did women deliver children at home? What did they feed their babies? And when people fell sick who brought them back to health… and with what?

And then when the British colonialists came and tore apart the social structure in Central Kenya, what drove people to nonetheless take up the formal education they brought? (My parents’ families were among the early adopters.)

In May this year, my mum, author of a memoir titled “It’s Never Too Late”, and I were invited to The Books Café, a radio program hosted by Khainga O’Okwemba, on the national broadcaster KBC.

Though I kicked and screamed when Khainga suggested that I should join the program, it turned out OK, and I even enjoyed the chit chat…you have to think on your feet!

Here’s the audio. 1 hour long. And below it the promo clip too – 30 seconds.

Margaret Wakarindi Githinji – author of ‘It’s Never Too Late’, a memoir, Now on Kindle at: https://www.amazon.com/Never-Late-Margaret-Wakarindi-Githinji-ebook/dp/B08TVTSG43/ref=sr_1_1

Kombo Chokwe Burns and his Afro Simba Band blazes the music trail

February 5, 2017

Launching his new album Pandizo, Kombo Chokwe Burns and his band got their lucky audience off their seats in no time flat!

His mastery of the guitar, his own and his singers’ gorgeous voices, a powerful stage presence, and a fun ‘pekeshe’ -style from the Kenyan coast [they call it Mijikenda Fusion], did the trick that balmy evening of 6 November 2016. Besides the guitars, the Chivoti—a traditional bamboo flute— went straight into our souls.

The songs in the album, done in Kiswahili and the Mijikenda languages, have great lyrics – some environmental (e.g. Maji – water).

So happy to see the story of Kombo’s journey of resilience in the face of a major obstacle in the local media – finally!

Go Go Kombo, Go Go Afro Simba! History has its eyes on you!

You can buy the music here: https://afrosimba.bandcamp.com/releases

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Crocheting cartridges: Dinah Cele weaves up one beautiful solution to e-waste

December 19, 2015

Meet Dinah Sibongile Cele, an unassuming Durbanite who is upcycling used printer tape into useful and decorative homewares and accessories.

Dinah never set out to be an eco-warrior. But when she was widowed at age 40, in 1998, she had to find a job—and quick— to sustain her two school-going daughters. She took up the first job she could find, working as a printing assistant at a small printing firm in Durban.

The company, where she still works, was generating a good amount of waste printer cartridges, and one day Dinah looked inside one.

She was intrigued by what she saw: perfect rolls of multicolored tape lay inside. The colours were vibrant; CMYK—cyan, magenta, yellow, and black—and the tape was coiled neatly in an endlessly repetitive pattern. She touched it and tugged at it.

“It could bend like this and like that. This thing is the same as plastic!” thought Dinah.

She asked her employer if she could take some of that tape home, and they were happy to oblige.

Now Dinah’s mother had always woven and crocheted. Basketry is famous among her tribe, the Zulu people of South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal province. Zulu women make their beautiful baskets mostly from the Ilala palm and the bark of ncebe, a wild banana. The baskets’ geometric patterns have meanings, with masculine and feminine symbols that can tell a story to the trained eye. These baskets have a super-tight weave, and besides storing and carrying grain, they are used to carry liquids like umkhomboti, a traditional Zulu beer.

Boaz Otieno, the orutu magician

October 23, 2015

Boaz Otieno Akech’s fingers dance across the orutu’s taut single string. With a simple sisal bow moving deftly along the length of the traditional Kenyan fiddle, he produces a perfectly controlled sound—now lilting, now wailing—that stirs deep into your soul. The orutu is a Luo traditional instrument, used in the fast-paced Ohangla genre of Luo music.

Boaz Otieno Akech, Orutu maestro. Photo by Daisy Ouya

This Ohangla master has been playing since he was 7. It drove his mother to distraction—she would have preferred that her son focus his energies on his studies. To teach him a lesson, one day she took his orutu and smashed it to pieces.

But fate had other plans for the young Boaz.

He tells me—without a hint of irony— that from that day on whenever he went to school, his eyesight would get blurry until after some time he could no longer see what was on the blackboard.

“My eyes would be open but I couldn’t see. I was taken to doctor after doctor to no avail. The family cow was sold to pay for my treatment but my eyes didn’t get any better.

“Then a religious man came with some special water and washed my eyes with it, and prayed for me. After 4 days I could see again. I was sent back to school and the mysterious disease came back. That’s when I decided I was not going back to school—it was my eyesight or an education.”