An Audience of Veiled Woman Watching Hip-Hop

This was “Lamu Day”. We had decided to spend a day in town, offering some performances to the locals, and also encouraging the local artists to join us to perform. It was a process full of blind alleyways and complications, but our terrific Lab Fellow, Alumbe Hellen, lead the way as she knew this community. After many Dhow trips into town and back, meeting with officials and with young people, we had a plan. Our women participants were required to dress very conservatively and even to wear head scarves and to cover their shoulders. They all looked quite gorgeous, I must say, piling into the Boat into town. We had rented a “sound system” if you can call it that, and even paid the Town Crier to go around announcing the free event. As I passed around town through the winding streets, I even knew a few locals by this time, and we greeted each other warmly. We had a lunch meeting with Errol Trzebinsky, a lovely older woman who had written the Biography of the character Bob Redford played in OUT OF AFRICA. She’s quite a charming person and was eager to know how we found our work on Lamu. At 4pm sharp, the show began. Our own Grace Ibanda emceed the show along with a local lad, and it alternated between snippets of the work we had done here and local talent – acrobats, actors doing skits, hip hop, singing, dance etc. For two hours it seemed the entire town had gathered on the square – children, men and women, totally veiled women, imams, the religious and the secular, babies – I stood in the center amid the crowd and watched this crazy ‘event’ unfold. And thought: how great that Sundance rented this funky sound system and acknowledged the people who live here, and acknowledged the homegrown talent and shared the space with them. Everyone had a great time. Lots of laughter from the crowd (often to my bewilderment) and hearty applause. By 6:15pm, the show was over as it was time for prayers and as quickly as they had arrived, the crowd dispersed. It was only then I recognized how exhausted I was (we all were), and yet, happy we had extended ourselves this way.

The ride home on the Dhow was special. The boat was packed. I perched on the edge up front and looked back at this crowd of Sundance artists, friends, the boat guys, and as darkness fell around us, and they sang and sang and sang, I was filled again with unspeakable wonder about how this came to be, where I was in this world, and how fortunate to have met these new friends, as we sailed and sailed home to Manda.

Rachael’s 30th birthday party was that night. A huge blow out for nearly 150 guests. I only stayed until Midnight, but got to see our own artists give Rachel the gift she will never forget – the Rwandans sang and danced, Mirsho recited in Swahili, and Sitawa read a poem she wrote. It was so joyous. I retired at midnight, though some of our crew stayed up all night to watch the sunrise.