Daraja is a Swahili word meaning bridge. Darajart is a meeting place between artists from all over the world and the vibrant life of Nairobi, in Kenya. An artistic residency that this year will give birth to a carnival in the streets of the city.
I received Darajart on 31 March 2010. It arrived unexpectedly one morning in an email, from Nairobi, in Kenya, to Perdaxius, in the Sulcis.
Marco, Matteo and I had recently brought to life, with Cherimus, in December 2009, the first nativity scene in Perdaxius, involving all the primary school children in the village in our work. After a summer of crisis and second thoughts, caused by the difficulty of building a bridge between the village and art, the idea had emerged of working with children, in the hope that through them, and with them, we might also chip away at the armour of distrust worn by their families. After those two weeks of work, however, we realised that it was above all we ourselves who had been chipped away at, and that our work would never be the same again.
Read all the articles on the Carnival! Nairobi project
The day after the first nativity scene experience in Perdaxius, Marco left for Nairobi as a guest of Amani, leaving me with the reminder: "Remember, I'm only coming back if you call me you you you you." A period rich in ideas and experimentation was opening up for each of us.
On 22 March, just nine days before sending Darajart, and three months after the first nativity scene, Marco wrote: "All good here, by Thursday I should finish and send one of you my contribution for MiArt, which will be a video about the modes of transport here (Matatu connection, ed.). During the week I should start making a scale model of a matatu (these little trucks, as mentioned) with wheels, an airbrushed body, a sound system. Then once it's finished — I think it'll be about one metre by one metre — I'll bring it to Italy. […] From the coming weeks I'd like to experiment with a workshop with some street kids, go through the slum, collect material to build dynamos, manual current generators made from waste materials, and see what comes out of it; then we'll think about the design, then about something else, then something else again."
An unstoppable torrent of ideas, proposals and desires.
I don't think it's a coincidence that Marco chose the word daraja (bridge, in Swahili) to name his project. From the bridge in the Sulcis to the bridge in Nairobi, always through art. An outwardly even more ambitious bridge, feeding the idea of a possible encounter between artists from all over the world and the vibrant life of Kibera in Nairobi. Artists from different disciplines (music, writing, cinema, visual arts) were to be invited to live and work in the largest slum in sub-Saharan Africa.
My reaction to such a grand project was honestly not among my proudest. After reading the pdf — impeccably crafted in its content, choice of images and design — I thought to myself: what a beautiful project, but also what an unrealisable, impossible project.
Everything that our life expresses – thoughts, efforts, glances, smiles, words, sighs – everything tends towards the other shore, as towards a goal, and only through it does it acquire its true meaning. Everything leads us to overcome something, to go beyond: disorder, death or the absurd. Since everything is a crossing, it is a bridge whose ends are lost in the infinite and beside which all the bridges of this earth are mere children's toys, pale symbols. Whilst our hope lies on the other shore.
Ivo Andric
Now it is 2015 and I find myself here, in a different Cherimus, without Marco, who sadly left us in 2011. With us are the friends from Amani and new friends, who have come together to build this bridge. This Darajart will be different from the one Marco envisioned, and yet it is the same. The same desire animates it; different are the people who will bring it to life. And this is without doubt the hardest thing to accept.
25 February 2018. The journey towards Darajart continues. Cherimus has grown further; we have written new projects. And we are back in Nairobi.
The Sardinia Region came to meet us, with its law no. 19 of 1996: Norme in materia di cooperazione con i Paesi in via di sviluppo e di collaborazione internazionale. Thanks to this grant, last year we realised Ciak! Kibera, the first edition of Darajart. On that occasion we worked at Kivuli, one of Amani's centres, with a group of former street children and brought their dreams to life in a month of workshops, which then came together in a music video with the help of musicians, directors and artists. At Kivuli we worked in close collaboration with Chiara Avezzano and Boniface Okada, from Amani and Koinonia. We shared ideas and cooking. And so, from an inspiration of Boniface's, Carnival!Nairobi was born: to continue the project through the streets of the city and invent a carnival — which does not yet exist in Kenya — this time involving the young people who live on the streets. A new carnival, where it is possible to be whoever you want to be.
Could the idea of reinventing oneself through a mask in order to then reveal one's own identity in an imaginative final parade be useful for engaging the young people and convincing them to change their lives, strengthening the work of the street educators? Could witnessing the spectacle of one's own self staged — with the help of artists and musicians, in a procession through the heart of the city, whose most basic grammar we ourselves are the first to be unacquainted with — help to break down the prejudices that compound the condition of marginalisation? Will we manage to get through? Will the young people grant us their time, and grant themselves the chance to start dreaming again?
We don't know yet, but it's possible, and so we must try.