On the final day of Arts Group Haba na Haba’s residency with Washington University, a class of students sat engaged by the soft, yet powerful voice of founder George Ndiritu following a drama class where students and Haba na Haba worked side by side.
As they offered final thoughts and questions, the students sat barefoot in a circle. The vibe was that of an informal village meeting.
Before he opened his mouth, it was extremely difficult to distinguish Ndiritu from the youth members while discussing what they learned about each other’s style of expression from the collaboration.
But from first words, Ndiritu, 32, spoke with the wisdom of a tribal leader who had been directing his people towards understanding for generations.
“You cannot convey a message if you do not understand it,” Ndiritu told his pupils and performers. “It is important to assure your audience that you identify with what you are performing.”
The group visited Wash. U. in a cooperative effort between the students and Haba na Haba to transfer the impact and importance of the arts within a community – even one ravaged by poverty, AIDS, political unrest like the Kenyan homeland of Haba na Haba.
But as their name – which is Swahili for “step by step” – suggests, under Ndiritu’s direction Haba na Haba is looking to use the arts to make a difference in the lives of the people in their country and ultimately the world.
“Our biggest message is to show how theatre and creative arts can be used as a tool for social change,” Ndiritu said. “I feel that art has a role to play in everyday life, and we can use that creativity from theatre to create solutions for what is going wrong in our communities.”
During a two-week stay, Haba na Haba presented its rare brand of activis-tainment to students and the general population, including an extremely supportive immigrant element of the St. Louis community.
For the culmination of the residency, they premiered “Co-Existence,” an original play examining the political violence in Kenya’s 2007 elections.
Members range in age from 7-28, and Ndiritu was barely out of his teens when he founded the group back in 1998.
Since its inception, Haba na Haba has been consistently well received, but stretched thin. Although the group receives grants and funding, the biggest being from the Norwegian government, they rely on patrons who make little more than one dollar a day for financial support. Ndiritu is determined to see Haba na Haba thrive as the artistic saving grace for the citizens it serves. He says they provide “the only creative arts house” for a regional community of nearly 2 million people.
“This is the only place that they can come and where kids and have a place to do arts,” he said.
His hope is to create a franchise so that he can create a new generation of arts facilitators in his homeland and abroad that will saturate and soothe the people and continue his legacy of using the arts for healing and empowerment.
“I see these kids growing and becoming responsible as they use creative arts as a tool for development,” Ndiritu said. “It’s good to share what you have, because when they bury you, you cannot take it with you. You have to teach other people to do the same and in doing that you are building up a community.”
And two weeks ago as they laughed, danced, sang and dramatized their way through painful realities of modern Africa, the audience, actors and Ndiritu were all well aware that it was a necessary step.
“The name of our group means ‘step by step,’ and we are trying to make this world a better place, step by step,” he said. “We are trying to build people’s lives, step by step.”
International Love
International Playground, a group of young people in St. Louis who come from around the globe – Afghanistan, Haiti, Somalia, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Nigeria, and the United States – will share the stage this weekend as they present their original play Love Stories at 7 p.m. on Sat. April 4 at the Mildred E. Bastian Center for Performing Arts on the campus of St. Louis Community College at Forest Park (5600 Oakland Ave.). Love Stories will feature the perspective of their various experiences as refugee teenagers. For more information about Love Stories, call (314) 606-2882.
