New lease of life for Litondo

On April 3, 1979, a film crew led by American producer Gordon Parks Junior was flying to the Maasai Mara to film a scene with elephants for the movie The Bush Trackers.

The plane crashed upon take-off from Nairobi’s Wilson Airport, killing all passengers on board.

The next day’s newspapers led with the story of this air crash, reporting that Kenyan actor Oliver Litondo, who was to have flown in the same plane, escaped death by minutes.

It turned out that the actor, who was playing the role of a warder called Johnny Kimani in the movie, had turned up late at the Airport due to what he described as “sluggishness” and missed the ill-fated flight.

The Bush Trackers was eventually completed by Gary Strieker, the film’s producer and later to be CNN journalist, with Litondo in the lead role.

By 2001, after a long career in film and broadcasting, Oliver Litondo quit the media and retreated to his farm in Kakamega.

Then one day in September 2009, he got a call from a film agent in Nairobi informing him that he had been identified for a role in a new movie and he was required to send his pictures promptly.

“I travelled to Nairobi shortly after and auditioned for a role, which I later found to be that of Kimani Maruge, the world’s oldest pupil,” Litondo recalls.

“The director thought I was fit to play the part and immediately handed me the script.” The film makers behind The First Grader had dropped the idea of picking Hollywood actor Morgan Freeman, fresh from portraying Nelson Mandela in Invictus, to play the role of Maruge.

Litondo, 62, is in fact, a pioneer in broadcasting and film in Kenya. A product of Kakamega High School (then known as Government African School), he studied for his Bachelor’s degree in Liberal Arts at the University of Iowa.

He undertook a Masters in Mass Communication at the University of Stockholm, Sweden, and eventually returned to the US to study Theatre at Harvard University.

Litondo’s career as a broadcaster included stints as a correspondent with Deutsche Welle in Cologne, Germany, and with the Voice of America in Nairobi.

He also edited an academic journal called The East Africa Journal whose contributors included Bethwell Ogot, David Rubadiri and Tom Mboya. Returning home after a long sojourn abroad, Litondo was recruited at the Voice of Kenya by Stephen Kikumu and James Kangwana.

When Ragbir Singh, a businessman whose parents owned a sugar factory in Muhoroni, produced the first full length film in Kenya called Mlevi, in 1968, Oliver Litondo played a leading role along with other stars of the time like the late Athman Kipanga and singer Sal Davies.

Litondo was to later star with pioneer actress Muthoni Likimani in another Ragbir Singh production called Mrembo.

“Had we understood what these businessmen wanted to do those early days we would be a long way in the film business in Kenya today,” Litondo says of producers like Singh.

Litondo played a part in most of the Hollywood films shot in Kenya in the 1970s and 1980s. These include Search for the Nile, a BBC film shot around Lake Victoria, a Walt Disney production called The Biggest Bongo, filmed in the Aberdares, and The Elephant, filmed at the Ol Pejeta ranch of businessman Adnan Khashoggi.

In 1975 he appeared alongside Michael Caine and Sydney Poitier in the The Wilby Conspiracy. Another big role came in the 1984 Columbia Pictures film Sheena Queen of the Jungle. Initial reports suggested that The First Grader would be shot in South Africa, before it was decided to shoot in Kenya.

Besides Litondo, who plays the lead role, the supporting cast includes renowned Kenyan actors like John Sibi Okumu, Mumbi Kaigwa, Daniel Ndambuki (Churchill) and Michael Oyier.

“It was exciting though the role was challenging. Maruge was complicated,” Litondo says. “He was a freedom fighter, lost his family during the Independence struggle, and at the age of 84 he saw an opportunity to enjoy the education that had been denied to Africans under colonial rule.”

In a twist of fate, Maruge died the day after Litondo was officially offered the role to play him in The First Grader. However, Maruge’s teenage granddaughter, Anne, who stayed with him at the Chesire home for the aged in Nairobi, was present throughout the making of the film.

On the criticism that he does not resemble the real Maruge, Litondo says the director of The First Grader was not looking for a likeness but rather, certain qualities to portray the strength and determination that Maruge possessed.

“When the children who acted as Maruge’s classmates started singing, they did it with the innocence of children. They were convinced this was for real and I, too, got into the same mood.”

The First Grader was shot on location at Kisamis in Kajiado and Litondo credits the children in the cast for the support they lent him.

He recalls with laughter those mornings when these children would come on the set of the movie with teeth-cleaning twigs and they would convince everyone on the cast to use these twigs. “These are my favourite moments off screen as we were all soon chewing on the twigs,” Litondo says.

Maruge’s teacher, Jane Obinchu, is also a central character in the drama as she overcomes her scepticism about his enrolment in school and eventually even uses him to help her teach the class. The role of the teacher is played by Naomie Harris, a 34-year-old British actress who has appeared in Hollywood blockbusters like Pirates of the Caribbean and Ninja Assassin.

The only part where you get to see the real Maruge in the film is on the actual footage of his trip to New York in 2005, where he campaigned for free primary education before the United Nations.

The First Grader did the rounds of the international film festivals with three screenings from September 12 to 17 in Toronto, Canada, at the same event, which introduced the world to the blockbuster Slumdog Millionaire in 2008.

Litondo will also be in the UK from October 24 to 27, 2010, to support the film at the 54th London Film Festival. This year’s Kenya International Film Festival to be held this month will open with a special screening of The First Grader and will also honour Litondo for his contribution to the creative arts as a broadcaster, actor and writer.

Who would have thought a 62-year-old actor who had retreated to his home in Kakamega would receive a new lease of life in the way that Oliver Litondo has? Since acting in The First Grader, he has landed a role in the MNet production Changes and also been on the cast of an upcoming film, The Rogue Priest.

The latter, directed by Kenyan filmmaker Bob Nyanja, revolves around American Catholic priest John Anthony Kaiser who was murdered by unknown assailants in 2000.