Female voices rise in Kenya

Cracking jokes and passing around chocolates, a group of Kenyan performers gathers in a Nairobi school to rehearse Eve Ensler’s “The Vagina Monologues.”

One actress takes to the softly lit stage and speaks into the microphone: “Let’s just start with the word ‘vagina.’ It sounds like an infection at best, maybe a medical instrument. It’s a totally ridiculous, completely unsexy word.”

The subject may not crop up in most conversations, but in Kenya the freedom promised by President Mwai Kibaki’s new era of government is encouraging some women to publicly discuss taboo subjects like gender and genitalia.

“People have started speaking out on a number of issues that normally they don’t -- for fear, for example, of being put in jail. We have a voice now,” said actress Lorna Irungu, 29. “The new government has come with a new freedom and a euphoria for change.”

Swept to power in December’s landslide election victory, Kibaki’s success at the polls brought to many a longed-for end to 24 years of rule by Daniel Arap Moi. Although fighting corruption and stamping out crime are top priorities for the new National Rainbow Coalition government, Kibaki has also made a point of addressing gender inequalities.

In a nod to the female half of the electorate, three women have scored top jobs in Kibaki’s cabinet. Two hold the health and water resources portfolios, while the third is a minister of state in the vice president’s office. Improved representation also extends to parliament, where the number of women has more than doubled to 17, although there are 222 seats in total.

“The timing of the play is perfect because the new government has promised to look at women’s issues,” said lawyer and performer Jackie Onsando, who said she hoped some of the issues raised in the monologues would find their way back to the decision-making process.

Despite the new freedom of expression in Kibaki’s Kenya, those involved with the production of “The Vagina Monologues” admit that matters of sex and genitalia in this country of 30 million are usually talked about in private. Based on interviews with hundreds of women including pensioners, prostitutes and refugees, Ensler’s monologues explore themes ranging from rape and childbirth to female genital mutilation.

Director Mumbi Kaigwa met Ensler when she visited Nairobi last year. “She said she heard people were too afraid to do this show,” Kaigwa recalled, adding that, in the past, “subversive” plays have been stopped in mid-performance and shut down in Kenya. “I’ve tried to keep people safe by doing the show at the school [International School of Kenya], where it’s not in the public eye.”

The production has ruffled a few feathers with some Kenyan radio stations and newspapers refusing to run advertisements for it or reducing the name to the “V Monologues.” And by charging 2,000 shillings (about $26) a ticket when well over half the Kenyan population lives on less than a $1 a day, it is clear it was not going to appeal to everyone.

Kaigwa’s staging of the production in a private school suggests that not all Kenyans are ready to be confronted with some of the issues raised by it -- such as female circumcision. The mutilation or removal of the clitoris is a practice that affects about 2 million African girls a year.

“Maybe five to 10 years from now we will be addressing a different mind-set and it will be taken better,” Onsando said.

Newspapers and other media largely ignored the production, with the exception of one brief review that called it “outrageous” and “provocative.”

In spite of these setbacks, there was plenty of optimism among the cast.

“I don’t think anyone in the world was ready for it, but then are we ready to stop opening the newspapers everyday and reading about women being raped or the victims of incest,” Irungu said. “This is theater. If it were to sit and wait for the audience to be ready, then nothing would ever be performed.”