Nigerian Playwright Bode Sowande wrote a befitting play that aptly captures the catalytic ethos that propelled the Kenyan youthfull Gen Zee on Tuesday, 25th June, 2024.
Titled “Farewell to Babylon”, I was privileged to produce it with a multi-racial group in Pune, India 1982 (incidentally, the very same year that there was an attempted coup in Kenya).
In 1978, while at the University of Shefiled, Bode Sowande wrote the following as an introduction to the play:
“This is a testimony to the lives who live under dictatorships that grow like they hydra in the Third World.
The play witnesses a trumphant thrust within ‘Babylon” expressing the groans and pains of those who fight to say ‘Farewell to Babylon’, showing the price they pay.
As they succed, their euphoria is muted by their experience, but we recognise the common bond of humanity and realise the urgency of the need to arrive at an alternative Society.”
*-pained and mourning the loss of innocent young lives in the events of Black Tuesday 25th June, 2024-