KEVIN CRAIG

Lamu Town

(Originally appeared as PART THREE in a THREE PART SERIES in the WORDWEAVER.)

As our plane landed at the Manda Island airstrip, I was crazy with anticipation. Out the window, I had glimpses of the Indian Ocean and the tiny Arabic/Swahili island of Lamu!

Our first dhow (a traditional Arab sailing vessel) ride took us to Lamu Island. I didn’t know then that I would spend much of the upcoming week aboard these beautiful boats. We climbed from the dhow onto cement stairs that ascended right up out of the water. Lamu Town!

We arrived on a very special day: Islamic New Year, 1430—a day of festivities: donkey races, dhow races, dancing in the streets and vibrant reverent prayer. I was enamoured with everything I saw. Fellow traveller Venus Thrash was
offered a donkey ride upon our arrival. We followed her through the narrow streets of Lamu Town as she was escorted, like visiting royalty, to Lamu Fort and the town square. We were swept up and fully embraced in their celebration!

I woke the next morning at 4 a.m. to the gorgeous sound of Muslim prayer. It was so beautiful, I didn’t care about the early hour. I had too much to take in to waste time sleeping. The weekend was free time and only half of our group had arrived in Lamu. Eight of us had arranged for a special day trip with one of the dhow captains.

The dhow crew took us to Manda Beach, where we swam in the ocean while they made us a meal of fresh fish, coconut rice and tantalizing curry. After the meal, which was served under the shade of an acacia tree on beach sand-raked smooth by the crew, we lazed around while the crew cleaned up. Later, we piled into the dhow and made our way through an intricate mangrove forest waterway. As the path narrowed, we had to step out into the black waters and walk among the ancient mangroves to the entrance of the 15th-century Swahili trading town of Takwa. We walked the ruins with mouths agape. Crumbling walls of an ancient mosque, dinosaur baobab trees, wells, homes, a withering school and the burial site of a revered Imam…it all fascinated us. The air of Takwa was alive, abuzz—either with the voices of long dead ghosts or a mass of unseen insects. We didn’t know which. We only knew the peace of being there…the sacredness of the island.

Unfortunately, we only had half an hour in Takwa. Any longer and the waterway leading to the island would vanish. We’d be forced to spend the night within the island’s sacred hum. As much as we loved the ruins, we didn’t have to be told twice when it was time to leave.

One last surprise for the day… we emerged from the mangrove forest at the precise moment the sun touched the horizon and melted into the Indian Ocean. Perfect timing! We watched the sun melt into the ocean as we ate freshly cut fruit served to us by the crew.

That was just the first full day on Lamu. Every day was the same: perfection. We had our writing classes on the rooftop terrace of a hotel in the centre of town—a terrace with a 360 degree view of Lamu Town and the ocean surrounding it. We had sun, donkeys, dhows, sharks, weddings, Masai dancers, poetry readings on the beach, Imams, absolute joy in the face of abject poverty, a dancing/singing festive Kiswahili Christmas Eve mass in a tiny Catholic church, Rastafarians, children playing soccer, hennaed hands and so much more.

What a perfect place to end our Kenyan trip. I will never forget the people of Lamu. Their joy has changed me. Their remarkable radiance is something we could all aspire to. And writing. Ah, yes. I was there for the love of writing. My passion for words has never been stronger. The beauty of the world classroom…what a perfect place to dance with one’s muse!

Why I’m Freaking Out About Upcoming Play, But in a Good Way…

There’s a reason I’m a little bit of a wreck this week. I always freak out for about a week prior to these play festivals that I get myself into! Always! It’s a healthy freak-out, though. I don’t think it would be healthy to go into these things calmly and cocky. It’s a serious thing to write, rehearse and produce a play in a day. The audience must be entertained, right. You can’t go into these things thinking, “Whatever. It’ll be great.” You have to be panicking…you have to be at the point where paper bags are needed. Hyperventilating, in this case, is a healthy reaction.

So why am I even MORE freaked-out this time?

Here’s the difference.

I wrote plays for the last two Trafalgar24 Play Creation Festivals. The 10 writers get locked into Trafalgar Castle, in Whitby, Ontario, and we each have 8 hours to write our plays. 10 playwrights in 8 hours = 10 plays. We are each given the ‘words’ or ‘prompts’ we must use in our play, along with headshots of our actors…and then we are sent into the rooms in which our plays must take place. We actually sit in/on our stages while writing.

trafalgar1 — Trafalgar Castle – Whitby, Ontario – Piano Room

trafalgar4 — The Piano Room – Where I wrote my last Trafalgar24 Play.

trafalgar3 — The Entrance to the Piano Room

I was amazed by how alive I felt being able to sit within the stage while writing. The play wrote itself. I just stared around at the room imaging the play coming to life. As freaked out as I was when I drove to the castle, it all fell away the minute I walked into that piano room and knew I had 8 hours to luxuriate within its walls while I did the thing I loved to do more than anything else. I sat back and let the play write itself.

When we walk away in the early morning hours, the actors and directors storm the castle. They rehearse for the next 8 hours…and then, the festival. The doors are opened to a barrage of eager theatre goers.

This coming Friday, I will be writing a play for the 25-Hour Masterpiece Festival in Uxbridge, Ontario. They are celebrating 25 years of their extremely vibrant Arts involvement. On Friday, I won’t be going into a castle. I won’t be sitting in my stage to write my play. The play won’t even be performed the next day inside an amazing room, inside an amazing castle. It will be performed on stage at the Uxbridge Music Hall…a regular (but I must add BEAUTIFUL) stage.

My stages have always been castle rooms. This is my first THEATRE STAGE play. This is ONE of the reasons I’m freaking out. The other reason. As I began to say, but got sidetracked in the saying, I will be getting a phone call at 6pm Friday night. I will be sitting at home. I will get my prompt over the phone. And then I will write my play AT HOME. I will not be on the stage looking out and imagining the audience. I won’t be walking around a deserted castle room acting out the play and feeling just a little bit crazy for doing so. I will be sitting at home, writing. Man…that’s going to be weird.

I’m going to LOVE this experience. I’m going to love it like crazy…because I’ll be doing something I love almost more than I love breathing. I am so blessed to be given these writing opportunities. I don’t know how I possibly deserve them…they just keep HAPPENING to me. Yes…I am so blessed! I love what I do!

I’m freaked out, though. I’m facing this new experience and I’m ready to run headfirst into it…but it’s going to be weird writing this play at home. Part of the adventure in writing the Trafalgar24 plays is in being there, locked into that castle in the middle of the night!

But I’ll make do. I’ll just pretend I’m sitting cross-legged in the middle of that vast Uxbridge Music Hall stage while I’m writing. And. I. Will. Write. My. Play!

6pm this coming Friday, I get my prompt and begin writing. 11pm this coming Friday, I send a finished play to the cast and director. 7:30pm this coming Saturday, the play is performed at the Uxbridge Music Hall in front of a full house.

I love this ride, man! This thing called writing!

(Uxbridge Celebration of the Arts 25-Hour Masterpiece Festival – click on 25 Hour Masterpiece in the left-hand menu.)

Finding Focus in Nairobi

(The following piece originally appeared in WORD WEAVER.)

FINDING FOCUS IN NAIROBI – Part II of III

Polepole (rhymes with—and means—slowly, slowly). This is the method by which Kenya moves. I first experienced this when I boarded the 12‐seater for my return to Nairobi. The pilot promised a non‐stop flight. Ten minutes in, however, he announced a change of plans. He said those three words no airsick mini‐aircraft; neophyte passenger wants to hear: “We’re going down!”

It was Independence Day in Kenya. The celebratory air show at the Nairobi airport meant “no fly zone” for us. We had to land at Siana Airstrip and stay grounded for an hour. As we touched down, I saw a herd of gazelle leaping across the runway, mere feet from the plane’s nose! It was a horrifying, heartbreakingly beautiful sight. After narrowly avoiding the herd, our pilot assured us we could have safely crash‐landed to the side, if need be.

As a peppering of Masai emerged from the surrounding trees, I forgave the air show that kept us from our destiny. We were having a moment! Every day in Kenya carries with it a magical moment. To see it, all you have to do is surrender to the beat. Pole, pole.

After an hour of sharing stories with the generous Masai, it was almost painful re-boarding the plane. But we said our goodbyes and took to the air once again.

Navigating the country on my own was wonderful, but I was excited to be back in Nairobi. It was time to meet my fellow writers and begin the SLS fiction program.

My instructor, Catherine Bush, made me realize the importance of focus in storyline, something I never contemplated while writing. She broke down the process and explained how the writer should consider the reader’s expectations. If you give them one strong thread to follow, they see that thread as your storyline…throw in too many and confusion ensues.

Catherine assured me I could do this and carry on writing in the freefall style that I love. I was afraid I would have to sacrifice my “NO OUTLINING” rule but all was good. With her guidance, specific to my own manuscript, I was able to retackle my story, find the strongest thread—the story’s essence—and run with it. Catherine equipped me with the tools to help me do this. It was as though she came into my windowless house, created windows and then helped me to fling them wide open.

Our classes were held on the outside patio of a hotel in the heart of Nairobi…with fragrant breezes swishing our pages and intoxicating our lungs. If Nirvana is a place, it’s filled with writers, acacias and yes, even shouting taxi drivers. The outdoor classroom had its limitations, but they only added to the vibrant atmosphere.

You can live concurrent lives in Kenya. We were steeped in words but we also inexplicably saw everything in and around Nairobi. We took in the Rift Valley, the Ngong Hills, the Giraffe Centre (complete with sloppy giraffe kisses), an elephant orphanage, a reading by some of Kenya’s top literati, a chaotic downtown Nairobi Masai market, museums, parties and barnyards.

I cried while our bus travelled the Uhuru Highway en route to the nearby Ngong Hills, as I watched a shanty-town blur by. Children played in the dirt, inches from our tires as we whizzed by at 100km per hour; goats bleated; vegetables collected poisons from black exhaust bursting from every vehicle; thousands of rusted tin shacks—strung with uncountable lines of miraculously pristine laundry—crowded together like rotten teeth in a mouth too small to hold them.

My sadness at seeing the crumbling shantytown was double-edged, though. Every face held a smile, every life a beat you could feel. My heart ached during the entire trip…but with what? I couldn’t quite place it. The melancholy I felt…was it for the people of Kenya or for myself and the people back home? People who have not yet surrendered to the comfort of a time no clock could hold. Polepole…slowly, slowly.

After a long week of writing craft and exploration, we were ready for the last leg of our journey…Lamu Island. I couldn’t imagine it topping Nairobi…but I was about to discover there were no limits in Kenya.