Paa ya Paa celebrates 50 years amid trials and triumphs
Elimo Njau on Paa ya Paa Art Centre stands in front of an illegal mabati fence put up by land grabbers. PHOTO | MARGARETTA WA GACHERU
Celebrating its 50th anniversary this year has brought Paa ya Paa Art Centre both trials and triumphs throughout 2015.
One of the most touching triumphs took place last Sunday afternoon when the PYP Music Makers Studio (run by professional pianist Phillda Njau) teamed up with children from King’s Kids Village (KKV) and the Ahadi Boys Home to stage A Piano Adventure: Jack and the Beanstalk.
The musicians, narrator, actors and chorus which performed in the abridged musical version of the classic fairy tale were either orphans from the KKV or former street children from the Ahadi Home, 10 of whom study piano with Mrs Njau who also wrote the script and directed the children.
Mrs Njau opened her music studio soon after the 1997 fire that destroyed much of PYP’s precious African art and book collections. But she only began ‘‘group teaching’’ in 2012 which she’s been doing for free.
Last Sunday was the children’s first public performance. It was also the day the Free Masons from the Mount Longonot Lodge donated two keyboards to the KKV orphanage.
Current exhibition
“It was a suggestion made by Louis Dupry, one of our members,” said the Lodge’s Master Eddie Quraishy, referring to one of the directors of the Academy of Graphic Technologies who collaborates with Paa ya Paa on various art and design projects including the current exhibition of Dupry’s oil paintings at PYP’s open air gallery.
The triumphs enjoyed by PYP during its 50th anniversary celebrations haven’t been overwhelmed by the trials.
Elimo Njau, the 84-year-old East African veteran artist and executive director of Paa ya Paa, cited land grabbers plaguing the property as he opened the Piano Adventure programme on Sunday.
Evidence is all around one portion of PYP’s three-acre compound where vandals have had the audacity to put up a long mabati (corrugated iron) fence right down the middle of the property. It’s not the first time the same bunch of land grabbers has tried to erect such a fence.
Mr Njau explained that an earlier attempt was stopped by members of the Baptist Church who reside nearby.
But the thieves subsequently returned since PYP doesn’t have funds to hire professional security services.
Nonetheless, what the facility does have is Kenyan artists’ support and it was they who managed to tear the first fence down.
Mr Njau retains those mabati sheets as evidence of his ‘‘anniversary trials’’.
But the shamelessly greedy gang went back on October 1 and put up a fence again as Mr Njau looked on helplessly.
He prefers not to name the culprits but willingly shares an affidavit from one of the co-founders of Paa ya Paa — the late James Kangwana — which confirmed that Maurice Wolfe, Mr Njau’s high school British art teacher, had bought and donated the land to PYP explicitly for it to be used as an art centre.
Mr Njau says he took the issue to the local police but nothing was done to the culprits who he said “had words” with the police.
It would be a pity to lose Kenya’s oldest art centre, especially at a time when it is branching out into new artistic initiatives.
The most exciting one is architectural, involving a sustainable housing project being developed at PYP in collaboration with sustainable housing specialist Branislav Cika who’s constructing an ‘‘earth bag’’ house at the premises which will showcase what low-cost sustainable housing can look like.
The year isn’t over so the 50th anniversary celebrations haven’t come to an end, but the paradox of Paa ya Paa’s year-long party is the fact that while one group eyeing the art centre aims to tear the place down, the other is actively involved in building a whole new phase of the centre’s programme design.
