Climate, FGM main topics in drama festival
By George Onyango, April 28, 2023For sustainable food security, Kenyans must stop wanton destruction of trees but reinvigorate efforts to increase forest cover not only for current but future generations.
This was the tacit message in Eldoret National Polytechnic’s cultural creative dance choreographed by veteran director Paul Kisali at the ongoing Kenya Schools and Colleges Drama and Film Festival at Sheikh Khalifa Secondary School in Mombasa.
The dance Uvulindi was a live reflection of the current flooding in certain parts of the country caused partly due to lost forest cover at trees.
Delivered in the isikuti and kamavega dance styles, the dance decries the loss of trees and other vegetation that has caused serious climate change, desertification, soil erosion, fewer crops, flooding, increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and a host of other problems.
It lays emphasis on environmental awareness and protection which are part of the UN sustainable development goals on climate action.
The dance urges Government to encourage its people to plant more trees and provide security for the same against perennial illegal loggers.
The villagers led by Soloist Lydia Muhati are displaced by tycoons led by Soloist, Xervier Onyango who sell the trees to loggers led by Soloist Yesse Chalwa.
Deforestation effects
The community suffers all the effects of deforestation but is saved from the arrogance and destruction of the tycoons by the Government who supplies seedlings to community.
It seeks to create awareness on what goes wrong when greed and profiteering from logging is placed ahead of people’s well-being.
It depicts how livelihoods of the natural inhabitants of an ecosystem including humans, animals, water bodies, plants and vegetation get destroyed when human beings resort to cutting trees for local and international cartels for profit.
Some behaviour change intervention is put in place and at the end of the dance we see a happy community living in a harmonious co- existence with other animals in an environment that supports their wellbeing in terms of food, water, rainfall and adequate forest cover.
M.M Shah Primary School took the message of care further in their play ‘My story’ that depicts parents who due to pressures of looking for financial sustenance, leave their children unwittingly in the hands of a farmhand and a house guard.
Produced by Michael Oriedi the play shows how adults take advantage of the children as the children also get to internet and get exposed to cyberspace dangers.
PCEA Kangema Public school presented the Dream that articulated the plight of Sanaipei whose dreams of a good education are jeopardised by the threats of Female Genital Mutilation and consequent early marriage.
Produced by Rosemary Waceke Kago the colourful choral verse urges for protection of the girl child against such backward cultural practices oftentimes derived by moneys accrued to traditional circumcisers and the avarice to have many cattle for the father.
Sigalagala National polytechnic wowed with a creative cultural dance Rita that delved on theme of enhancing through technology.
In the dance, Rita is a young student from a humble background, who sees hunger almost ravaging entire neighbourhoods due to prolonged drought.
She is admitted into a technology college and whist there, invents an irrigation machine for the national Science Congress.
The project is an instant success and through some start-up funding that makes it an economically viable venture as she starts irrigation programmes in her village.
Choreographed by Spencer Stimili, James Opiyo and Evans Bosire, the plot climaxes with better food production especially maize and settling the food problem once and for all.