Advertise

Advertise

Poet: This is how our grandmothers happily dressed in miniskirts

Sitawa Nawale,
By ELVIS ONDIEKI
More by this Author
One of the ways Betty Wamalwa Muraguri thought she could argue her case against men who strip women for dressing “scantily” was to show them how ladies dressed up back in the day.
Better known as Sitawa Namwalie in the artistic circles, she reasoned that the high-handed men would take a mental flight back a few decades to see the dressing styles of those times.
Sitawa then thought of gathering photographs of Kenyan women taken from the 1970s or earlier, then have them exhibited, and the conversation on what defines “skimpy” would  take a different dimension.
SOCIAL HISTORY
“The idea came to me when women were being stripped in Nairobi. I happened to be working on a project with the World Bank in Rwanda and the Rwandans were asking me, ‘What’s wrong with your Kenyan men?” Sitawa said in an interview.
“The way people, particularly men, were responding on social media was as if it was a wonderful event, a picnic,” she added.
A seasoned woman in the field of advocacy, she figured out that through art, she could pass a message without having to talk much.
“I thought that particularly in the 60s and 70s, women used to wear extremely short clothes,” she said. “And the grandfathers of some of these men who were stripping the women did not do the same thing.”
Also, through this project, Sitawa imagined, a hitherto untold social history of Kenyans would be told.
She would later discuss the plan with Hivos, a 51-year-old non-governmental organisation that tries to counter forces of “discrimination, inequality, abuse of power and the unsustainable use of our planet’s resources” as it states on its website.
“I shared the idea with Hivos and they were very excited about it,” she said, adding that it took a while for the idea to take off “because sometimes these ideas take some time”.
In May, Hivos – which is funding the project – put up an announcement calling for people whose mothers or grandmothers wore stylishly from the 1960s to the 1980s to submit their photos.
EXHIBITION
The public was then told to submit photos of those women putting their best foot forward, alongside a short description.
Once the photos were gathered, the announcement said, they would be used for an exhibition called “Our Grandmothers’ Miniskirts” that would take place in Nairobi, Mombasa, Kisumu, Naivasha, Nanyuki and Bungoma.
Sitawa wants the photos to be part of a physical exhibition, an online archive then a book.
By the time Sitawa spoke to the Sunday Nation on August 27, she had received “probably a hundred photographs”.
“But we need many more,” she noted. “Some of the photographs are showing young women wearing clothes much shorter than the ones we wear today.”
Among those received is a photo taken in 1945 of a Tharaka woman who was attending a dance festival for the governor of the then British protectorate of Kenya.
Called Gatoro Ndugi M’Chabari, the woman sports filed teeth, which were considered a beauty enhancement then. There is little covering of her body, especially her thighs. Gatoro’s photo was submitted by her nephew Simon Mitambo.
“In her youth, she was one of the beauty pageant winners,” Mr Mitambo wrote in the text that accompanied the photo.
FRENZIED SEARCH
Another photo received is that of Rosalie Kere, who was once an advertising model. It was submitted by Rosalie’s daughter Caroline, who attached a story of how her parents met.
“After my father saw her on the Nakasero and Lux adverts, he called the advertising agency where she worked, seeking an introduction to my mother. But the agency refused to comply,” she wrote.
The man, known as Hudson Kere, was a traffic officer based in Nairobi’s Makongeni. After the setback from the advertising agency, he went a step further in his frenzied search for Rosalie.
He got information that Rosalie was working in Industrial Area and in his craze, he would stop cars coming from there to see if he could spot her. It was all in vain.
“My father was persistent and eventually, someone told him the name of my mother’s village and her father’s name. He rode his motorbike from Nairobi all the way to my mum’s village, Aboloi, past Malakisi in western Kenya,” writes Caroline. He located the family and their relationship started. Rosalie turned 75 on June 22.
The two are among the many stories she has received.
“People are writing the most amazing, most charming things that really reveal who we are and what their mothers and grandmothers mean to them,” said Sitawa.
On July 25, some of the photos were shown at a trial exhibition at the Nairobi Garage.
“We had about 40 people come and see the photos. We also had a panel discussion,” said Sitawa.
FUTURE GEN
When she is done receiving submissions with the help of Hivos, Sitawa says she will come up with a historical presentation that puts the common person at the centre. This, she says, will provide a point of reference for future generations.
For every photo received, the person sending it is required to fill a form detailing his or her relationship with the person photographed and also granting publishing rights to the project.
“This is an opportunity for Kenyans to showcase themselves and to show Kenya in a very interesting light,” Sitawa said as she pleaded for more submissions.
A scientist, athlete and artist, Sitawa studied botany and zoology at the University of Nairobi between 1978 and 1981 then later got a master’s in Environment, Society and Technology from Clark University in the US State of Massachusetts. She has also represented Kenya in tennis and hockey.
For years, Sitawa has been working as a consultant with various organisations in different capacities. In 2007, she discovered her gift in literature, after which she became a regular writer of poems and plays.
In 2008, she staged her first dramatised poetry show, Cut Off My Tongue. A book of the same title was published in 2009.
Her other poetry performances include Homecoming and Silence is a woman.

No comments

Translate