“Seven days, a workshop, new friendships, missed wedding meals, ferry crossings, music, live art, laughter, and stories. Likoni may have only hosted me for a week, but for those seven days, it felt like home.”
The email of acceptance to participate in Cohort 6 of the NBO Producing Workshop lingered in my inbox sometime in early July. It was unprecedented, coming after six months of hiatus from art.
Yet timely, for two reasons.
PamoJani Arts Collective had selected two of my plays, Jack & His Goons and Under Twenty Seven , to be staged on September 26, and I had the honor of being the co-producer of the two plays.
Second, after damning myself to a 9-to-5 — six days a week of corporate work — the workshop presented an avenue for detoxing from the walls of office purgatory and returning to the world of artistry. I also wanted to imbibe the nudeness of the Old Town.
when the whim to leave beckons, it is the light at the end that we seek.
Finding a place to stay was another task.
I met Levy Zia for the first time at the ferry, a short, bouncy young man with a bandana wrapped around his locs, ever smiling.
I landed in Mombasa at about 9:00 a.m. and navigated my way to the ferry. Which, by the way, if you are a Gardener of sorts and look the part, expect to be flagged.
As I was by two young security guards with tattered collars and make-believe stern faces.
One of them was a Jasondu, with whom I spoke in his mother tongue.
They let me pass after I handed them a 500-shilling note.
Some of the buildings reminded me of my fascination with Brutalist architecture: its boldness, its concrete, the firmness of its shadows, the way its facades seem less constructed than summoned from the earth — absorbing the late evening light slowly giving life to the sunsets, like low-hanging mangoes.
The evening walks after the workshops became a kind of detox.
To Support the production of my two Theatre Plays: both one handers.
Jack and His Goons, Purchase your Tickets Here At Mookh Tickets go for $5
purchase your tickets for Under Twenty Seven Here at Mookh
Tickets at $5
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