‘Tausi’ is now 22 and the shine will not just wear off

The producers of the famed Tausi programme on KBC. They are (from left) Kibwana Onguso, the producer, William Sakwa Nyende a cameraman and Ashina Kibibi, who wrote and acted in it. Nyende and Kibibi have since died. Onguso is now an independent producer and a farmer in Turbo, Uasin Gishu. PHOTO| FILE

What you need to know:

  • For the next five years, their Tausi, greeted hundreds of thousands of television viewers every weekend, earning a cult following that is yet to die, 17 years after the show blipped off the screen.
  • The clips, the few that are still in public, can be found on YouTube — grainy snippets tempered with static, a crack to a distant, more innocent, mid era.

In early 1995, Kibwana Onguso, a scriptwriter and producer then working at KBC TV, began tinkering with notes he had been gathering for a show that he eventually hoped would make it on prime TV. He did not have a name for it yet, but the cement would be the comings and goings of everyday life, and some of the highlife, too — superstition, patriarchy and the pitfalls of youth.

Then he met a talented, equally ambitious young writer named Ashina Kibibi, and for half a decade, the pair co-wrote the script for Tausi, a show that captivated Kenyan TV viewers like no other in its time.

“We thought about a theme song that would be evocative and Fundi Konde’s classic, Tausi was it,” says Onguso. “The lyrics fit into the theme.”

For the next five years, their Tausi, greeted hundreds of thousands of television viewers every weekend, earning a cult following that is yet to die, 17 years after the show blipped off the screen. The clips, the few that are still in public, can be found on YouTube — grainy snippets tempered with static, a crack to a distant, more innocent, mid era.

Once in a while, the clips show up on a Facebook timeline, usually with a follow-up comment: “If you can remember watching this TV show and you are still single, there is a problem.” Never mind that many of the people who publish such posts were mere toddlers when the programme ran on TV. But that might be the whole point — longevity.

“We wanted to bring to the screen everyday events in households,” says Onguso from his home in Turbo, Uasin Gishu County, where he now runs a farm, in between other interests. “And that is perhaps why Tausi resonated with viewers; things that occupy daily life-religion, love, loss, money. Authenticity is what people look for.”

It is within reason to say that the overwhelming fandom the show inspired was a result of viewership mechanics. In the mid-‘90s, the local TV scene bore all the markings of a dictatorship — a measly helping of only two TV stations — KBC and KTN. With a national footprint, KBC was the obvious choice, the seen guest in all conversations in households that owned a television set. KTN was largely a station for the urbane and chic, where hardly any Kiswahili was spoken.

Against this set-up, Tausi was a show like no other. Sure there had been other local shows — Vioja Mahakamani, Vitimbi and an exciting, if brief, show called Tahamaki, but for its fans, the show and cast were family. It was the first reliable local soap.

But even with its sub-plots, the show’s glue and rotation was Mzee Kasiri’s family — a quarrelsome estate, at the centre a volcanic pair of daughters, Rehema and Rukia. Kasiri was a devout Muslim man labouring to walk down the cobblestone of life with his skull cap in place.

“I remember the show so well,” says Catherine Gichuki. “I was in primary school and we would sit around our tiny TV screen. I loved Lindi, loved Baraza, but Rukia was my elder sister on the other side of the screen.”

For her part, Rukia, real name Amina Ramadhani, is still very much Rukia, one of the most loved, and equally despised, character on Tausi. All these years later, people still stop her on the streets to reminisce about the “girl who could never stop talking.”

I encountered part of her appeal. Last May, she was part of a music troupe that accompanied the last train on the Lunatic Express on its farewell tour before the roll out of the Standard Gauge Railway. “Rukia!” someone yelled and she looked up, but only briefly. She was at the moment in a swirl of musical exchanges with an elderly singer. The hapless man would come up with a line, only to receive a knockout hook. Amina, who now works as a musician in between bits of acting, was in her water.

“I am still Rukia to many people,” she told me. “I am not offended. But that was great fun, being in the show. It defined my career.”

A cast of memorable characters was a priority right from the gate, says Onguso, the producer. And the stream that auditioned for parts didn’t lack in talent. There was Ashina, of course, who became Siti, the beguiling achingly unreachable girl next door with the near-almond eyes; Baraza (Ken Ambani), the uncontainable playboy trapped in the sights of an older lover; leader of a street gang, Master Sugu (Derrick Amunga), the unforgettable soothsayer Karumanzira (John Lang’at) and the sweetheart of the fans, Lindi (Morrine Otiya).

The viewing public has now become accustomed to child actors, but at the time that Otiya was picked for the role, she was a novelty; hardly any minor had held any meaningful tenure on the local TV scene. She was in nursery school when she was selected for the role of Lindi, a sudden orphan left in the hands of her cruel aunt Rhoda.

“Her family were my neighbours in Huruma (an estate outside Nairobi city) and I could see talent in her,” remembers Onguso. “With some coaching, she took to the art real quick.” Otiya, now in her late 20s still affectionately addresses Onguso as ‘uncle’. She has blossomed into a lovely young woman although she shuns the limelight (She declined an in-depth interview for this story).

“I hope we can cast her in the future for a show that is in preparation,” Onguso told Weekend.

In the decade after the show folded — a sudden departure precipitated as much by the liberalisation of the airwaves in the age of cable TV as lethargy among the actors and new viewing habits among viewers, there were transitions among key cast members as intriguing as the spots they filled on air.

The most shocking turn was what befell Ashina Kibibi who, following dramatic reports of mental sickness, hanged herself in 2005. A year earlier, Lang’at, the beloved Karumanzira, had died in Bomet after battling illness. That same year claimed the patriarchal Kasiri, real name John Nzau.

In 2015, Derrick Amunga was walking home from a rehearsal when he was hit and killed by a speeding vehicle at Kinoo along the Nairobi-Naivasha highway.

Perhaps the most prominent in her post-Tausi days is Sabina Wanjiru Chege. Wanjiru, who played Rehema, Rukia’s more restrained half-sister, is a second-term Women Representative for Murang’a County. Following Tausi, Wanjiru worked as a radio TV show host on Kameme FM before vying for the newly created women’s post in the 2013 national elections.

But no hyphen linking character to real-life is so unbreakable as Ambani-Baraza. Long after Tausi and successful tenures on other shows, Kenneth Ambani is still referred to by nearly everyone as ‘Baraza of Tausi’. An accountant at Telkom in the company’s Nairobi office Baraza — well, Ambani — still finds time to slip into a role now and then.

The former cast members keep in touch via a private group on WhatsApp, catching up on those long ago days in the sun, filling each other on the spokes of their lives, new additions in the family, occasionally ribbing each other on their foibles on Tausi.

In hindsight, watching reruns of the programme — especially through the prism of colour and plenty that is today’s TV, Tausi may appear drab, even pedestrian. But for fans of the show, it is the memories that matter, nothing holds as much currency as nostalgia, and in Tausi, the longing for a certain earthiness now long lost amidst the endless treacle of reality TV shows and a barrage of news outlets.

They will tell you this: After the 7pm news and the presentation of the weather by the stately Nguatah Francis, the whorls of the KBC logo would appear on the screen, and then the haunting voice of the late Fundi Konde would flood into the room, introducing the programme with his song Tausi. And for the next half hour, in between commercials and the tinkle of dinner ware and a bit of speculative conversation, Tausi would play on, burnishing itself, completely with purchase.