Curtain falls on a kindred spirit

A FULL LIFE: Anne Wanjugu in the Kikuyu epic, 'Wangu wa

Makeri', where she played the lead role. At right; with the children
she loved at Shangilia
By KWAMCHETSI MAKOKHA

A street child, according to Anne Wangui Wanjugu, is an actor who does not know when to
stop acting.

For the 57 years she lived, until 2 pm last Sunday when she first felt chest pains and died two
hours later in a hospital lobby, Wanjugu had learnt when to stop acting. She had spent a good
part of 40 years living in many people's skins, but she always learnt to keep her real self alive,
nourishing it with a good dose of pragmatism and spirituality.

The fine line she drew between her stage lives and her own often confused those who knew
her, and theatre leader Catherine Kariuki confesses that despite their closeness, she did not
understand Wanjugu.

Acting in Kenya has always been a pauper's profession, yet there have been times when
Kariuki sought out Wanjugu to offer her a lucrative part in a radio or television commercial and
was turned away. Once Wanjugu made up her mind to leave acting and concentrate on
passing her skills to her children at the Shangilia Mtoto wa Afrika (Rejoice Child of Africa)
Home in Nairobi's Kangemi slums, there was no looking back.

Edyth Luseno recalls once when she offered Wanjugu an opportunity to earn Sh150,000 for
reading a voice-over on an advertisement and was turned down. She was that sort of person.

She kept faith with herself, her past and her promises. For a while, Wanjugu could not go
back to her house on Kipande Road because of the guilt she felt about a pledge she could
not keep. While auditioning for the movie, Kitchen Toto, the staunch Catholic had promised
her patron saint that if she got a role in the movie, she would dedicate a part of her earnings
to helping the less fortunate. It was a debt she was to later repay by working for Shangilia.

No children of her own

This week, with her life's work done, and the children at Shangilia playing with skip rope and
marbles, she could not have had a tinge of guilt about that promise. Although Wanjugu did not

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have any children of her own, more than 170 children were orphaned when she died. Their
pain is expressed in the scrawling infantile handwritings in the condolences book at Shangilia.

She spent a good part of her life mothering people because she developed the instinct early.
Like her brother David Muriithi, now distraught at her sudden death. When he was born, the
eleventh and the last child in their family, his old mother dedicated him to Wanjugu. She loved
him as a parent would, educated him, and taught him not to feel inferior despite their humble
background. She taught him not to think small, and took these lessons to heart herself.

Muriithi was not the only person Wanjugu mothered. As co-founder and director of Shangilia,
she smothered the 170 straplings under her charge with love, gave them her time and taught
them everything she had learnt about theatre craft.

She had survived a difficult childhood in Nairobi's Shauri Yako (now Makadara) Estate,
domestic service for a white couple in her teenage, and small-time acting career when she
joined the City Highlife Performers Club (later Tausi). Her acting talent was forged on the
rough anvil of Nairobi's Eastlands nightclubs, but it had sufficient brilliance to attract a critic
who enrolled her at the Kenya National Theatre for training. It was here that she honed her
performing skills and was rewarded when in 1972, she became a full-time member of staff at
the theatre after returning from a six-month training in the United Kingdom. She taught theatre
in city primary schools and adjudicated in national school drama competitions.

Theatre director Tirus Gathwe, who met her that early, says he doubts that he shall meet an
actress with Wanjugu's brilliance, intelligence and talent in his remaining years.

For someone who never went past Standard Five for lack of school fees, it was a curious
irony that Wanjugu would rely so heavily on the tongue learned from her English employers to
make her livelihood and a mark in the world. If you ask television producer Emoytte Opotti, he
will tell you that anyone who wanted to cast someone for an English-speaking grandmother's
role would need not look further than her.

Joshua Teyie, who teaches theatre at the University of Nairobi, casts his mind back into the
1970s when he first met Wanjugu, and there is no one he thinks can hold a candle to her art.
She was a pioneer artist, not just because she was among the first women to go into theatre
full time, but because she pioneered children's theatre with the Shangilia project.

She had stumbled on the idea of setting up a mobile theatre for street children when acting in
the film, Usilie Mtoto wa Afrika. She goes to the grave still believing that given the necessary
guidance and training, the acting talents of street children can be honed and used as a way of
helping them appreciate themselves and the society in which they live.

She may not have always kept time or got her lines until curtains-up – when she would have
everything: character, stage presence, lines and inflection.

Getting to be the most respected actress in Kenya was, however, not easy. She worked long
and hard at stereotype roles – playing the jilted lover, the weeping mother, and such other
weak characters, until Gathwe gave her her first break in The Lion and the Jewel, as Sadiku.
She was later to play in Robert Serumaga's Majangwa and then, perhaps most memorably,
some more in the title role of Wangu wa Makeri.

There are those who feel Kenya's Whoopi Goldberg was never truly appreciated for her
talent. That she left theatre all together because she was disillusioned about giving her whole
life to it and never crossing the poverty line. Once, she told culture writer Wahome Mutahi in
an interview: "I wish I had chosen something else."

But Gathwe says her decision to work with children was also a part of her growth. Even with
just theatre, she left an indelible mark on the lives of many people, young and old.

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When her body leaves Lee Funeral Home on Tuesday morning for the Holy Family Basillica,
the place she loved to pray, and then on to Langata Cemetery for the final journey, that is
about when those she touched will begin to feel her loss.

Her memory will live on in a thousand little ways. In the films that immortalised her, and in the
plays she wrote.

Perhaps the cruelest irony of her life is that such a fine actress as she was never honoured by
her peers. It took the Germans to give her the Elisabeth Norgall Award in 2001 for her
commitment to serving women and youth. The theatre and her friends will miss her but her
enduring legacy to Kenya will be Shangilia and the belief that something can be done about
destitute children.