Maurice Kirya under Malabo’s charm

The Ugandan singer’s travel journal

Malabo 

07/02/2011 - 

The winner of the 2010 RFI Découvertes award, Maurice Kirya, has just commenced the first part of a tour that will take him and his musicians to fourteen countries in Africa with 22 concerts in under two months. The Ugandan singer shared his travelling impressions with RFI Musique.

Malabo? I have to be honest with you and admit that some of the group had never even heard of the place before. We left Kampala late one night under torrential rain and arrived in the capital of Equatorial Guinea to be greeted by sunshine on 1 February.

When we landed, what struck me first as I looked through the plane window was that the vegetation was like in Uganda, just as green. It took us a while to get through the immigration controls, but that gave me time to observe the physical appearance of the people – they have finer features and not such dark skin as Ugandans. And they looked pretty healthy, which shows that they get good nutrition. So there was obviously some good stuff to eat!

 A few minutes later we arrived in the town of Malabo. The architecture is really Spanish, the type of houses that you expect to find in South America. People speak Spanish, English and French. I have to say too that I saw more women than men in the streets. But, hey, don’t start imagining things… Well, OK, it’s true that the girls were gorgeous.

We went to the hotel to check in, and then we went straight out to have lunch, passing by the place we were due to play the day after next. The French cultural centre is a beautiful place, in a very artistic style, all in wood, with a huge space centred by the stage. The place made us think of a church, which is kind of what it is: a genuine temple of culture in this “small” capital with a population of just 60,000.

There we met Ivanne, the wonderful director of the Malabo French cultural centre. She was lovely and the way she spoke English with a French/Spanish accent sounded so exotic! Her colleague, Pauline, was really cool too. While we ate we asked her loads of questions. We learned that it’s illegal to take photos in the street, and that you need special authorisation, but right then we weren’t really bothered about that: all we wanted was to get some sleep at last. We hadn’t slept the previous night and we needed to top up our energy levels.

In the afternoon, we went to a school and two more the next day. The children didn’t know much about my country: I had to tell them where it was, what kind of things we ate, about the music, but what was great was that they really wanted to know about it. They were very open and asked a lot of questions. We sang and taught them some songs.

Malabo concert

On the day of the concert, in the afternoon it absolutely chucked it down and people in the street were literally being swept away. We were a bit worried whether many people would come to listen to us. An hour before the concert was due to start the venue was still almost empty.

But this is Africa, and people show up late. At about half past eight, the house was nearly full and the group was ready to officially kick off the RFI/Institut Français African tour. People sang and danced with us.

The language issue wasn’t much of a barrier because the audience had come for the music, so even though I wasn’t speaking Spanish or French, they could feel what I was saying. And the musicians had fun too. We’ve already played together in Denmark, Croatia, France and the USA, but this tour is different because you change country each day.

It gives me an opportunity to introduce my music to a new audience in francophone countries because up till now they’ve been mainly anglophone. And there’s something “patriotic” about giving concerts in all these countries in Africa and talking about the one I come from. It’s a bit like meeting relations that you haven’t seen for a long time.

We ended the evening in a restaurant run by a Cameroonian and his Ugandan wife. She is in fact the only Ugandan in Malabo and she was so proud that musicians from her homeland were there!

We left Equatorial Guinea in the middle of the night and arrived in Gabon yesterday in the small hours. All day, my eyes kept telling me to sleep but, once again, going to meet kids in the schools gave us energy. 

We’ve just left the TV studio where we had been invited to talk about the concert we’ll be giving tomorrow. Here, in Libreville, even though we haven’t had time to see much yet, I’m really impressed by the infrastructure, the state of the roads, the buildings and the architectural style, which I think is a French influence. It’s a very beautiful town, right by the sea. It’s more attractive than Kampala, but I still prefer Kampala!

Performing with the Institut français at :
8/02 Douala (Blaise Cendrars French Cultural Centre)
10/02 Garoua (Alliance Franco-Camerounaise)
12/02 Yaoundé (Cultural centre)
15/02 Lagos (Alliance Française)
17/02 Cotonou (Cultural centre)
19/02 Accra (Alliance française)
20/02 Kumasi (Alliance française)
24/02 Ouagadougou (Cultural centre)
26/02 Bobo Dioulasso (Cultural centre)

Bertrand  Lavaine

Translation : Anne-Marie  Harper