The newly late Dr Wasambo Were, a doyen of Theatre Arts in Kenya, did his PhD for many years in slow motion. He completed it at the age of 70 years. It focussed on the didactic ingredients of drama in traditional rite du passage. He called it Edurama. At the graduation ceremony of 2014, he was the oldest of the graduands.
He received a standing ovation when he refused to stand and be hatted by the VC and the Chancellor at the podium. They wanted him to stand because of his age and due respect for both were his younger by age and educational experience. He painstakingly in slow motion went down inch by inch until he was in a kneeling formation. A thunderous accolade rent the air.
He repeated the same painful manoeuvre getting up with his PhD hat on his grey-haired head. A cacophony subletted the graduation skies. His knees and joints had become low on oil and walking had started to become a delicate affair to this former star sprinter and footballer of the University of Nairobi of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Among the UoN short distance athletes then, only the former Kibaki-era minister Musikari Kombo could beat him on the tracks.
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As the villagers and the country at large gathered to bury Wasambo this week, it swiftly turned into an occasion to celebrate his life. The firstborn child of an old colonial-era railways worker called Erasto of Yala in Siaya county, Wasambo had the privilege of formal education. Most people in Kenya born in the 1940s never had this chance. It was a different Kenya back then.
His mother Clementina was the spiritual and moral beacon of the family. She brought Wasambo and his seven siblings into the Anglican faith. Although Mwalimu would later drop his Christian name of Luke, it was not as a castigation of his faith in the church but rather a foregrounding of his intellectual flowering.
Wasambo joined the University of Nairobi in the late 1960s to study English and Education. He was in the first class that Ngugi wa Thiong'o taught after being hired as a lecturer in the Department of Literature. Ngugi, together with Henry Anyumba and Taban Lo Liyong, had by then initiated the curriculum changes that would lead to the Africanisation of the Literature curriculum at the UoN and later in Kenyan schools.
This was a time of great ferment. The then Dean of the Faculty of Arts who oversaw the said changes was the prominent doyen of Kenyan history, Prof emeritus Bethwell Ogot. Ogot is credited for initiating the writing of Kenyan history from the perspective of community archives and folk knowledges. He worked himself with the likes of G Kariuki, G Were and W Ochieng' to achieve this nationalist historiography in the 60s and 70s as a younger Kenya tried to find its postcolonial pivot.
It is Ogot who, around that time Wasambo joined UoN, headed the East African Publishing House. He used this space to publish the English version of Song of Lawino in 1966. This is a famous book of poetry by Okot p' Bitek, the most famous postcolonial poet from East Africa. He hailed from Uganda but taught for years at the UoN into the turbulent years before the reign of Museveni. The book had first appeared in Acholi, a Luo language from Northern Uganda.
Wasambo thus entered the varsity education arena in this time of great ferment and intellectual debates around Africanisation and Decolonisation from Kinshasa to Kampala and from Nairobi to Accra, Africa was changing. Ngugi had sensationally dropped his name James and Okot had given his first name Zechariah a backseat. It was the trend that saw Luke or Luka relegated to the penumbra of onomastics as Mwalimu settled for Wasambo Were as his primary proper nouns. These names had been dormant throughout his earlier educational journey at Onjiko, Nyawara and Sawagongo schools in Luo Nyanza as Luka took the lead.
However, after O-level at Maseno and A-level education at Kisii High, Wasambo was ripe for the radical aesthetics and Marxist ideologies he encountered at Nairobi University. He graduated in 1971, having interacted with visiting Panafricanists like the poet Edward Braithwaite from Barbados, who dropped the name Edward for Kamau. It is said that Ngugi's mother donated the name to the Caribbean scribe when Ngugi took him to Kamiriithu for sugarless tea.
The famous colloquium on Black Aesthetics convened by the UoN in 1971 afforded Wasambo a chance to mingle with champions of Decolonisation like the late Pio Zirimu, who coined the term Orature for our verbal arts as Africans, together with Prof Austin Bukenya. Bukenya would later teach side by side with Wasambo in Kenyatta University of the 1990s. Both shaped the vision of Culture Week as successive directors of the Centre of Performing Arts. Their exploits as directors, actors and drama teachers minted a plethora of thespians, who straddle the sector even today as behemoths.
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After graduating as an English teacher in 1971, Wasambo headed to Kabarnet High School, where he rose to the position of principal in a short time. He would then switch to Nairobi School as an English teacher at A-Levels. He then proceeded to Thogoto Teachers Training College. All this time, he emphasised the ideals of Black aesthetics, Decolonisation and performing arts. He remained in close contact with his mentor Ngugi and together, they did several trainings, workshops and conferences for teachers of English and Literature in English. It is during these years that Wasambo started exploring with ideas on merging performing arts with pedagogy.
He saw that the missing link was policy and policymakers. For one to make substantial changes that sustainable are, one needed to be at the heart of where policies are made. Wasambo shifted gears and joined the Ministry of Education as a senior education inspector. Naturally, he was put in charge of his strongholds of English and theatre arts. Here, he made a number of strategic manoeuvres that entrenched drama festivals as a vital co-curricular component on the calendar of our learning institutions. He was the one who led the curriculum panel for English teaching in the eighties.
When 8-4-4 was introduced, it is Wasambo who oversaw the new-era textbooks, syllabus content and pedagogical approaches for language teaching, not any different from what we saw his village-mate from Yala, the late Prof George Magoha do as Education minister overseeing transitions between two Kenyan curriculums. This was now in the mid eighties.
In 1981, Wasambo had obtained a scholarship to study abroad at the Birmingham University in the UK in the areas he adores: drama education and drama in education. It is the 80s that oversaw the internationalisation of Wasambo. His flowering would see him tour the UK and the US extensively. All the while, he interacted with the cultural institutions on both sides of the Atlantic. He gained experience on how to run performing arts structures and facilities. For example, in 1989, under the then United States Information Service (USIS) of the American Embassy here, he toured Washington and New York to observe how they archived their cultures and ran their culture institutions.
In the same year, Wasambo returned and resigned from the Education ministry. For the next three years, he worked at the British Council as Cultural Affairs Officer. He managed all the cultural and arts exchange programmes between Britain and Kenya. He devised theatre workshops for local artistes. His name became a household one in Kenyan theatre scenes.
At the Kenya National Theatre, the likes of Wakanyota, Anne Wanjugu, Adagala, Steenie Njoroge and many other veterans of Kenyan theatres became his associates as they all steered theatre to greater heights in Kenya. He facilitated for scholarships for Kenyan thespians to go to Britain and negotiated for British troupes, such as Beat International, to visit Kenya. Film and Fine Arts fell under him as well. He worked closely with Howard Davis, the then director of the National Theatre, London, a man who had worked closely with the then fresh and pioneer Nobel Laureate for Literature from Black Africa: Wole Soyinka of Nigeria, a mighty playwright.
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In 1992, the then VC of Kenyatta University and CEO of the Kenya National Examination Council, Prof George Eshiwani, poached Wasambo for Kenyatta University from his senior Education docket. He tasked the intelligent don with the onus of vibrating the varsity with the performing arts. Working with others, Wasambo used his vast experience and knowledge mentioned above to set up a culture village and restaurant where the Central Administration Complex stands in KU today. I took Meru porridge there in my undergrad years with the likes of Nick Nyabiage, Brian Masika, Kajairo Omondi Otieno, KJ, Nyambane and other agemates.
Culture Week was inaugurated in the 1990s as a manger for birthing youth talents in the Creative, Fine and Performing Arts. Wasambo worked with other giants of theatre here at KU, such as the playwrights Francis Imbuga, Alamin Mazrui and David Mulwa. Poets Kisa Amateshe and Austin Bukenya were on stage with Were, too, both as directors and regularly as actors with their own mentees. Culture Week is the birthplace of Reddykyulass, Sleepy and other contemporary artistes of Kenya's vibrant laughter industry. Indeed, if laughter is the best medicine, Wasambo was one doctor who served it in generous dosages.
He engineered a fieldwork-oriented unit called Drama in Education. The university supported it fully. He would take students of the unit to Malindi. There, he partnered with the Malindi District Cultural Association (MADCA) and the Kaya elders of the Mijikenda for years. They would host the students at Bungale, where Mekatilili wa Menza is buried. Here in the Chakama-Shakahola area, before it gained it's necropolitical ambience, Wasambo and the elders would initiate the learners to the nature and function of traditional theatre. He saw indigenous knowledge forms as the aesthetic dam for irrigating modern drama.
Ten years ago, as the Mijikenda nation was celebrating 100 years since the Giriama Uprisings of 1913 led by Mekatilili, Wasambo was honoured as an elder of the Kayas. Kondo ya Chembe is the local name for those old wars of self-determination that inspired our nation. In 2021, Wasambo was honoured by an association dealing with theatre awards nationally in Kenya. His lifelong achievements and exploits in theatre indeed read as an allegory of the development of theatre arts in Kenya between 1970s and 2020. A half a century of our drama and dramaturgy is what he embodied.
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On Wednesday, in the afternoon, in Nyawara, Gem, Yala, Siaya county, the body of old Luka Wasambo Were was laid to rest by hundreds of family, friends, colleagues, students and artistes in the native soils, where this epic journey, majestic life, heroic service to Kenya commenced three quarters of a century ago.
A wise man once said bury his bones please do, but never forget his deeds and words. This is what we shall do with Luke. Luka. Wasambo wuod Were. Long live the teachings of this unsung hero of drama in education.
He has left footprints for us to follow and to greater heights, hoist the flag of Kenyan drama at the very peak of excellence. He left us a legacy so clear, it is our dear duty to expand it and bequeath the future generations. Amen.
