21st September 2011
"Me I know."
I love people. Particularly when they are not bothering me. For example, at the StoryMoja Hay Festival.
Now what happened over the course of the past weekend is what everyone wrote home about. Rather, tweeted home about. Where "home" is a loose reference to all on our timelines unfortunate enough to bear with our rumbustious rants. And I feel no compulsion to write an article penning the very events as happened in the name of writing a review.
However.
I love us. I love people. I love Kenyans. But si you know that already?
Seated in a tent every couple of hours were folks gathered together, talking about story-telling and poetry and mates (of the same gender)... And all this made for thrilling entertainment.
For instance, a story-telling workshop. Group of about twenty adults, chairs arranged in a concave manner, the focus on this one fellow. The fellow moderating the workshop. A Caucasian fellow. Or, to put it in a less PC manner: A white man.
And this poor sunburnt chap is forced to endure 2 hours of his typical Kenyan audience turning the tables on him and taking over his session.
2 hours of listening to folks gather every expression they were ever taught in English class since primary school, lumping them together into one paragraph and yapping.
2 hours of "Me I know".
"I believe a story comes from the depths of one's persona, it must be from an experience they went through, seeing how experience is the best teacher; and it must be put in a manner such that the coherence of the story is not subdued by the relatability of a story - after all, why tell a story about hares to a group of tortoises? - and at the end of the day, it all boils down to the content of the story - it's not without reason that advertisers say content is king; a story without content is like a head without a body, like Humptey-Dumptey..."
Yes, in case you were wondering: That's how you came off.
"Me I know."
Replicate that in just a few of the other tents and workshops conducted at the good festival, and we have a party. Which by the way, was complete with all manner of food and drink - and salad for the health-conscious.
If anything, the entire Hay Festival was, in the most part, an extrapolated case of word salad.
What, si me I know what word salad is? Leave me.
Maybe me I'm being spiteful. Maybe me I'm just hating because I didn't know what was going on because me I hardly ever reads those deep book. Me I accept that I'm not as widely read as many project themselves to be - and me I freely admit it.
That's why me I made it free and open information that Story Moja was a chance for me to shut up, to watch, to learn.
And that seems to be something us we need to heed a lot, no? I mean, when you have a country of people such as Mr. Man-on-Crutches, his sidekick Mr. Right-Shoulder Parrot and their League on Gentlemen in tow, with a stubborn instistence to use the wrong gate at an international airport...
"Me I know."
Who knows? Maybe in this log entry, I just had a case of word salad.
Capn's Bonus: Was it worth sh 4 million? Yes? No? Me I don't know. However, I like how at 2:07 the random guy to the left of the screen has his hat knocked off and for the briefest moment, he looks frozen in fear: "I hope teacher Clarence didn't see that. Let's pretend that never happened..."
Just watched 2:07. Oh Tr. Clarence! Hey Marcus, can you please inform me on how to get 'post photos' on the blog? My tries, sigh! In case you did not get that, let me rephrase. "How to get a facebook or twitter post like how you've done with the Soko Ugali-Crazy Nairobian tweet post". :)
Posted by: Girlincitybus | 12/12/2011 at 09:15 PM