OUT&ABOUT: The soul of Africa

Stone soap sculture by Elkana Ongesa at Nairobi Gallery. PHOTO | RUPI MANGAT

What you need to know:

  • I stop by the Joseph and Sheila Murumbi Pan African Stamp collection. There’s half a million stamps here, and it is reputed to be the biggest, most comprehensive collection of pan African stamps.
  • The history of Africa can be pieced together from these postage stamps.
  • Along the corridor, I’m enchanted by a silver bas-relief from West Africa that depicts the legends of the Yoruba.

After a stress-filled morning at Nyayo House to renew a passport, I needed an energising boost. The answer lay in the neighbouring Nairobi Gallery, built in 1913 as the PC’s office and dubbed ‘matches, hatches and dispatches’ where all marriages, births and deaths were recorded.

This iconic building is famed as Nairobi’s first stone building in the city centre, with Kipande House across the road (Kenyatta Avenue) built around the same time taking pride of place as Kenya’s tallest building for the next two decades.

The blue-stone building now houses Kenya Commercial Bank, having morphed from a warehouse for the Uganda Railway to becoming the infamous Kipande House where Africans were issued with identity cards during colonial times.

So here I was, enveloped in an awesome world of Africa’s beauty from centuries past. The exhibits here are from the private collection of Joseph Murumbi, Kenya’s second vice-president, between May and September 1966.

After retiring from active politics, he sought out African art, and his wife Sheila became the greatest art collectors of all things African.

The Murumbi Collection on display at the Nairobi Gallery, the National Archives and the Nairobi Museum is largely thanks to the persistence of Alan Donovan of the African Heritage who, in 1972, struck a long-time friendship with the Murumbis.

There’s a hexagonal-shaped chamber in the middle of the building, from which all the galleries fan out. The chamber is dubbed ‘Point Zero’, and it is where all measurements from Nairobi to other cities on earth were made.

Strolling through the galleries, I stop by the Joseph and Sheila Murumbi Pan African Stamp collection. There’s half a million stamps here, and it is reputed to be the biggest, most comprehensive collection of pan African stamps. The history of Africa can be pieced together from these postage stamps. Along the corridor, I’m enchanted by a silver bas-relief from West Africa that depicts the legends of the Yoruba.

I’m mesmerised by the rich jewels of the continent that adorned the people that leads to another gallery featuring ‘Women Pioneers in the Arts’. It’s a current exhibition of visual arts and it’s a burst of vibrant colour.

Rosemary Karuga’s collages depict the everyday people and lifestyle of Kenya. This pioneering woman artist, now 92, was the first Kenyan woman to attend Makerere’s fine art department from 1950 to 1952.

She developed her signature style of collage and even taught the other female maestro, Professor Emerita Magdalene Odundo (OBE), who is now Chancellor of the University of the Creative Arts in Farnham, UK.

Then there’s Theresa Musoke, the Ugandan artist who lived and exhibited in Kenya for 20 years when her country was in turmoil.

Her African landscapes are subdued yet powerful in a technique that’s uniquely Musoke – textile painting and tie and dye.

I could keep writing but you have to see it for yourself. Each of the nine pioneering women artists of East Africa went against all ends to put women’s art on the global platform.

It will do your soul a lot of good looking at all that celebrates the beauty of Africa.

 

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