Multan Production presents Catherine Kamau (Shiko), Mumbi Maina (Aisha), Alfred Munyua (Sebastian), Alex Muakideu (Clarence), Monique Angelyn Bett (Mercy), Alex Khayo (Biko), Raymond Ofula (Athumani), Director, Reuben Odanga; Screenwriter, Reuben Odanga; Producers, Jacqueline Kalekye, Dina Mwende; Cinematography, Shuria Abdi. © 2021
Remarkable story I watched and reviewed yet. It is a Kenyan literary millet, soaked, boiled, fermented, and brewed for evening family entertainment. Children are welcome; its more underlines their essence to our happiness. Let me cut short the bullshit. Nafsi is a beautiful story. One of those conditions that afflict most African families––childlessness.
The visit to the doctor and his diagnosis in medias res sends the dramatic chain in motion and get viewers grounded and introduced to the unfolding of this melodrama. Now we are ready (viewers), and at the same time anxious to learn where Aisha and Sebastian will go from here. I rushed in the john to ease up, ‘cause I won’t want to miss a scene. Sebastian refuses breakfast. Aisha complains, “We can’t live like this. We live in the same house, in the same bed, and we barely talk.” “I just need time to myself,” Sebastian replied tartly. “Listen, I know you feel disappointed. I let you down.”––the pregnancy. “You’re fine with o.”
Nafsi starts in medias res. Aisha (Mumbi Maina) has an ectopic pregnancy. “The fertilization ovum plants itself in the wrong place. It is a life-threatening condition…I have to terminate it as soon as possible,” the doctor assures both Sebastian (Alfred Munyua) the possible father of the child, and Aisha.
As they leave the doctor’s office the title card “Nafsi” is displayed on the screen.
Aisha opens door to her friend, Shiko (Catherine Kamau). She entered the living room and demurely greets the beleaguered Aisha and Sebastian. The room is thick with tension. She drags her luggage with her into the living room and gets a hug from Aisha as she breaks into a cry on Shiko’s shoulder. Shiko had left Clarence (Alex Muakideu), seemingly for good, after she found he had a sick wife in the village. In this household, Sebastian isn’t warming up to her for the fact that she’s a big influence over Aisha.
Shiko’s presence in the household, however, becomes therapy for Aisha as she takes her out for fresh air, to a nightclub and later arranges for both of them to take a short weekend trip to the beach for a weekend. But this is all to Sebastian’s disgust. The weekend however yields rewarding results: Shiko, having come to notice how miserable Aisha is without a child and so adores Sebastian, volunteers to carry both Aisha’s and Sebastian’s sperm in her womb so she can conceive for them.
Shiko, “I’m going to end your pain. What you want is what I want. I’m going to give you a baby.” Aisha couldn’t believe what she heard Shiko says. “What?” “Yeah, you and Sebastian will make the baby and I am going to carry it to term.” The procedure is carried out shortly after Shiko and Aisha return from the beach. Sebastian didn’t readily accept this unorthodox method of a surrogate mother. Matter of fact, he believes Aisha was rushing ahead of nature. Sebastian is thinking about what the neighbors will think, or maybe he wasn’t man enough to pregnant with a woman.
Just as Sebastian thought, Shiko goes back to Clarence, and they hug. But Shiko refuses to have sex with Clarence, and when she gave reason for not giving in to his sexual advances, he beats her, throws her down the stairs, and rapes her. In the hospital, she is told the unborn child survives the fall but has a likelihood of mild Down Syndrome. Again she moves in with Aisha and Sebastian, and to her surprise, Aisha is pregnant with a girl child.
Shiko is disappointed when Sebastian and Aisha tell her about their refusal and withdrawal from the agreement to accept her unborn child. Shiko goes into labor and had a bouncing baby girl. But the dam breaks between Aisha and Sebastian when she discovers that the strange man to whom Sebastian forcibly introduced her, is her husband’s homosexual partner. Right there she has a miscarriage. Sebastian moves out of the house and joins Biko.
After learning that Sebastian is no longer coming home, Aisha fights to reclaim Shiko’s baby, by hiring men dressed as law officers to get the baby from Shiko’s friend’s house. She takes the baby home to her father, in the village. Not long however she’s arrested for impersonating and robbery of a child by the state police and handcuffed back to Nairobi, leaving the baby in the arms of her father.
Reuben Odanga’s presentation of the project here is a well-rounded melodrama with all the perks. His characters are drawn from the everyday lives and neighbors; the acting is exaggerated like characters of every melodrama strive to do. And talk about tickling our emotions to a degree that in my emotional hysteria, I partly lose faith in humanity. Rueben stresses the moral theme of good versus evil. For that reason, his characters are placed in a stereotypical hole that they never got out of. Shiko in the story is the victim; Sebastian is the villain, and Aisha is the heroine.
All three major leads by character analysis, Shiko, Aisha, and Sebastian represent the structural elements of a melodrama. Shiko, the godliest character in the story, volunteers to carry Sebastian’s and Aisha’s baby in her womb, for free and with no strings attached. When Clarence beats her and throws her down the stairwell, and goes down on her in a rape, she still takes the phone to call and apologize to him. And when Aisha wants to stop her she is forthright with her: “Aisha, no relationship is perfect.
Sebastian, “That baby will make us miserable for our entire life!” Sebastian is in denial to accept Shiko’s baby.
Shiko, “That is for God to decide,” she retorts.
Aisha, “That is our baby, you don’t have the right to decide…”
Shiko, (beat) “So what do you want me to do?”
Sebastian, “It’s your baby. That baby is sick….
Aisha, “So…we decide for you to get rid of it.”
Sebastian, “We want you to get rid of it.”
Shiko, (yells), “I will not. You will not tell me what to do… Aisha, so this is what I get? ”
Shiko, “That is for God to decide,” she retorts.
Aisha, “That is our baby, you don’t have the right to decide…”
Aisha’s character is the motor that keeps the story alive. All characters’ behavior and roles emanate from her presence in the story. Her relationship with Shiko forces her to come alive in the story. Aisha loves Sebastian to a fault. Even though she is the financier in the household, has no control over determining their lives as a partner. We see Sebastian asking her for the keys to the car which she gladly does. She adores him. And when Sebastian kicks against taking Shiko’s unborn child, he kicks against it. And Warns Aisha to “stick with the script” meaning not go back upon their decision to take Shiko’s baby. Aisha only felt liberated when she found that Sebastian isn’t coming home again, the reason he stole the baby.
Sebastian is the worst kind of man marked for the life of Aisha. Just as he lives a lie in the relationship with her, so he was lying to Biko (Alex Khayo). He lied to his male partner he was living alone and got in a pickle when Biko, in the heat of romance, walked up on him at home, and meet Aisha. And he forcefully introduced her to him. All this time he didn’t have a job but lived on a monthly stipend Biko gives him. He is the dishonest character in the story.
The riddle of this depressing melodrama must be hidden in its title––Nafsi. The etymology of the word ‘Nafsi’ is used in the Swahili language today but it is an Arabic word for “love thy self.” In essence, the word is one’s love of oneself, or me, and me, and me. This is where the puzzle comes in. Which character can we squarely attribute the title to? Sebastian, Shika, or Aisha? Clarence or Biko! Or shall we debate this in MFA class?
