Re-Membering | Juapaahouse

Re-membering the Sun

Re-membering the Sun is a long-term project that gathers dispersed traces of Yony, of Jua Paa House, and of Lamu culture itself. Rather than containing a life within a single biography, it brings together fragments that continue to illuminate those who encountered her presence.

To re-member is to gather what has been scattered, assembling not only the memory of one extraordinary life, but also the way that life became interwoven with a place, a community, and a deeper sense of what it means to live.

This work is drawn from a much larger archive of interviews, recollections, and stories. From this growing body of material, we have selected ten pieces as an initial offering for this website. They are not a beginning in themselves, but a first selection chosen to open the collection and to give a sense of the wider archive that continues to unfold.

Many more stories remain to be shared, forming an expanding body of work that preserves the memories, myths, and histories radiating from Yony’s enduring light.

We dedicate this collection to Carol Arnold, Yony’s sister. Your love for your sister, for Jua Paa House, and for our organic market in Karen, where we once commissioned Yony to create large-scale works, has helped keep her spirit present in countless ways. Carol, this is for you, to re-member and to discover her anew.

Every conversation in this collection unfolded with care and in its own time. We are deeply grateful to all who offered their time, memories and spirit. As photographer Jerry Riley simply put it, “Indeed, this is something special.”

Re-membering the Sun
Evolving stories from our archives
A selection from 2025 and 2026

Kahindi: Keeper of Worlds

Jua Paa is the kind of house people remember years after leaving it. Not because it is grand or reveals its character immediately, but because, much like its architecture, reinvented over the years with an artist’s instinct, it seems to rearrange something in the inner worlds of those who stay there. For nearly three decades, Kahindi has watched this happen. Jua Paa holds the hush of brushstrokes at first light, the rustle of pages turned long after midnight, the scent of paint mingling with sea air. It remembers artists and writers, conversations carried up staircases, the warmth of shared meals and the presence of Samson Kahindi Kahaso. Kahindi. Kahindi arrived in Lamu in 1997, a young Giriama man from Malindi, fresh out of school and visiting his brother. One afternoon, wandering through the winding alleys of the old town, he passed a door that seemed, in retrospect, to have been waiting for him. Behind it was a woman with something wonderfully untamed about her, a little eccentric yet very warm. Her name was Yony. Kahindi asked whether she needed help around the house. As it happened, she did. She needed someone who could prepare a few simple Swahili dishes. There was only one problem. Kahindi couldn’t cook. But he was willing to learn. The job was meant to last two weeks. What began as a small arrangement gradually became a life. Yony taught him to cook, and he learned from friends around the island too. Over time, Kahindi became an accomplished cook in his own right, known especially for his Swahili fish curry and steamed ginger crab. What he learned at Jua Paa went far beyond food. From Yony and the stream of artists, writers and wanderers passing through the house, Kahindi learned to look at art with new eyes, and to meet life with openness and a willingness to see beyond the familiar. And the exchange went both ways. Kahindi brought his own knowledge and experience into Yony’s life. Together, it seems, they found a way of living beyond some of the dogma and rigidity that life can impose. So many different kinds of people passed through Jua Paa, and perhaps living among them taught both Yony and Kahindi something about allowing people to be as they were. They travelled often together. To Nairobi, to Athi River, and across Lamu to Shela and Manda. At Yony’s other home and studio in Athi River, set among the open savannah, Kahindi encountered wildebeest, gazelles and other wildlife moving across the plains. He watched Yony sketch them beneath the sun and conjure them again in paint by moonlight. “We even went to Zanzibar in Tanzania. I will remember that trip forever.” They dreamed, too, of travelling to the Seychelles. They never made it, but the dream remained between them, returned to often and with fondness. “We lived like mother and son,” Kahindi says. There were seasons when everything flowed, money, guests, laughter. And there were times when things were tight. “She would sell a painting just to pay our salaries,” he remembers. “I know her work travelled far, collected all over the world.” Somewhere along the way, art began to seep into Kahindi too. He developed an instinct for where a painting belonged, not simply where it looked good, but where it would speak. Perhaps that instinct came from years spent inside a house that resisted convention. Jua Paa’s staircases twist upwards, leading everywhere and seemingly nowhere. At the very top is a room with almost nothing separating it from the world outside. Simple mats roll down as blinds, while Lamu drifts freely through, the call to prayer, neighbours beginning their day, voices in the street, the island waking. Kahindi has watched new guests encounter the house for years. At first, many are bewildered. They get lost on the staircases, struggle with its openness, sometimes even announce that they want to leave. Then something changes. Within a few days, they begin to understand its strange logic. What first felt unfamiliar becomes part of the pleasure of being there. They fall in love with the place, and when they return to Lamu years later, many find their way back to Jua Paa. Kahindi understands this transformation well. Jua Paa does not promise utter privacy. It offers presence. It asks for a certain surrender, a willingness to encounter difference, share space and remain open to other ways of living. Over the years, painters, writers and seekers found their way there. Some came through the artist workshops and exhibitions once held next door at Wildebeeste. Others arrived through friendship, word of mouth, or simply by fate. And through all of it, Kahindi was there. He cooked. He welcomed. He watched. He listened. He knew when to appear and when to leave someone alone. He held the practical tasks of the house together while the people inside it painted, wrote, argued, dreamed, unravelled and began again. In a house built around creative freedom, Kahindi became its constant. His stories of Yony reveal how deeply she became part of Lamu. She was unmistakably Yony, an artist with her own eccentricities and her own way of moving through the world. Yet there was nothing studied about her place in Lamu. She wore her black dresses and buibuis naturally, including two made especially for her, with an ease that came from years of living within the island rather than simply passing through it. Her belonging had grown through friendship, familiarity and shared experience, grounded above all in love for the place and its people. The life she and Kahindi shared at Jua Paa carried that same ease. Among the many people whose lives crossed theirs was Cynthia Salvadori, the British anthropologist and writer who made Jua Paa her home for more than a decade. Salvadori devoted much of her life to documenting communities and histories that were often overlooked, including Kenya’s Asian communities and peoples of the north. In her later years, Cynthia’s health declined and she lived with severe pain. Kahindi cared for her with compassion. He remembers her as deeply focused, rigorous and committed to her work, and over the years he grew to respect her greatly. Her final chapter at Jua Paa was a deeply sad one. In 2011, aged seventy six, Cynthia died, leaving behind a letter and an extraordinary body of work. There were other stories. When Yony travelled to the United States, Kahindi remained at Jua Paa, its guardian in her absence. He kept the house safe through the unpredictable turns of life in Lamu, becoming not simply someone who worked there, but someone entrusted with the world Yony had created. There are many tales from those years. Some funny, some strange, some perhaps better heard from Kahindi himself. If you are lucky, he might share one with you. Today, Kahindi’s wife and children live in Malindi, and he returns to see them a few times each year. His Giriama roots and his family are part of the life he moves between, while Jua Paa remains his base, the place he has watched change and endure. Artists came and went. Guests became friends. Paintings left for distant homes. Rooms changed. Lamu changed. Yony grew older. Lives unfolded. Perhaps no one carries the memory of Jua Paa more intimately. He remembers who sat where, what was cooked, which painting once hung on which wall, the people who stayed for years and those who passed through for an afternoon. He remembers the moods of the house, and the woman with whom he shared so much of its life. For Jua Paa does not simply remember events. It remembers sensation. And Kahindi has been there for almost all of it. The keeper of stories. The keeper of the house. The keeper of worlds.

Field Note: Kahindi is, in fact, Samson Kahindi Kahaso, but on the coast, nicknames have a way of becoming the names that matter. Kahindi suits him, and somehow, it fits right in.

The Sun, Remembered in Pieces: Monika Fauth's Story

Before any ordinary exchange, before words could fade into small talk, the story arrived. As if it had been waiting just out of frame, needing only a moment of receptivity between the two of us to come into view. At a gathering for International Women’s Day at Banana House, I had only just begun to tell Monika Fauth about the quilt of stories I was stitching together for Jua Paa House, fragments of the late artist Yony Waite’s life reappearing through people and place, when she said, “Yony’s house was one of the first places I stayed in Lamu. It is where my life on the island began.” Unexpectedly beautiful, it was a moment of surreal clarity. Feeling a current of exhilaration, something in me sharpened, as if I had stepped directly into what I had been searching for without knowing it. There again was the house, a catalyst for what would emerge. By that stage of the project, it was already clear that the writing would not take the form of a conventional biography. What was most alive in Yony would be lost in the sequencing of dates and detail. I was drawn instead to moments where one life unlocked unexpectedly into another, encountered rather than arranged. We agreed to meet soon. A few days later, we sat beneath the canopy of flowering vines at Banana House. The green of the garden gathered around us, creepers leaning inward as if listening, blurring the boundary between where we sat and what surrounded us. The bean-shaped pool opened to the afternoon sun, its surface holding that warm yellow glow that we miss so much when we are away from Lamu. There, Monika’s story began to come into focus. It started where something in her life was beginning to shift. She had been living in Amsterdam, working in the fashion industry as a buyer. Her life took its pace from the industry, yet within it she sensed that something else was possible. Monika’s first trip to Kenya came during the Christmas season of 1996, when she visited her sister, who was working as a doctor in western Kenya. There, she stayed in a manyatta for the first time, travelling by Land Rover through landscapes newly encountered. After returning to Holland, something became clear. She no longer wanted a life centred around that world. She didn’t want “a life focused on black clothes.” And so, she sold her apartment, left her job, and travelled back to Kenya, where her sister was preparing to get married. After spending six weeks with her, she began travelling again, eventually making her way to Lamu, arriving in the rainy season. The island, at that time, was far less built, less defined. She stayed first in a small guesthouse by the waterfront. How she came to Wildebeeste House after is not entirely clear, only that it emerged through a series of connections. The details have since dissolved, as they often do. What is most important is that she arrived. At some point during her stay in Lamu town, Monika walked toward Shela carrying a small backpack, and then further still, onto the long empty beach stretching beyond the village. At that time there was almost nothing there, only sand, sea and wind moving across nearly twelve kilometres of open shoreline. The channel opened beside her, Manda Island resting across the water. She paused, took out a mandazi for lunch, and almost without thinking offered it to a man with a cheery face and long dreadlocks passing by. She surprised herself, then laughed at the ease of it. He smiled and accepted. He was a dhow captain. They spoke easily, then continued on their separate ways. It was a small exchange, but something in it stayed. Monika continued to explore the island and the house alongside one another. When she moved to Wildebeeste House, her sense of time began to alter. She had stepped into another register of living, something strange and half-remembered. She described the space as a weathered palace from One Thousand and One Nights, and even before meeting Yony, her presence could already be felt in the way the house had been shaped. Its structure followed the traditional framework of a Lamu home, but had already begun to shift under Yony’s hand. Somewhere between myth and the everyday, there were recesses and corners where you least expected them. Staircases moved in and out of obscurity, doubling back, opening outward. Yony had three properties in Lamu, and over time she lived in each of them, though Wildebeeste became especially known as a place of gathering. It was here that she held artist residencies and workshops, and where her gallery space brought together many artists over the years. Monika found herself living alone in the house, the walls dulled into tones of grey and earth. Plants climbed upward through the structure. “It felt as if time had paused.” She cooked simple meals, wrote in her diary, and let her days unfold without insistence. “It felt like a safe haven,” she says. “In a way I hadn’t experienced before.” The unfamiliar did not feel distant, but strangely intimate, as if something long known had come into view. Only later did Monika finally meet Yony herself. She realised immediately that the space and the person were inseparable. Yony’s presence was memorable, moving between life and work without distinction, painting without pause. Monika remembers meeting her in one of her familiar buibuis edged with blue. She describes her as a bird of paradise, but what stayed with Monika most was the way Yony lived. Yony’s engagement with the women she worked with, particularly through craft and weaving, grew from a genuine interest in the practices themselves and in what they might become artistically. It emerged through working closely with the women through dyeing, weaving and textile experimentation, learning from the traditions already present there. Within this process, Monika began to understand creativity less as profession than as a way of living. The spaces Yony created did not remain contained within her houses themselves. They carried forward through the lives that passed through them. There was also something in the island’s way of drawing people together. Among them was Dennis, a black British traveller she walked around with sometimes. She had also met Satan by then, one of those people everyone on the island seems to know, involved in music and abundant creative pursuits. There were long evenings at the disco at the police canteen, where the music carried everyone together in a way that belongs only to the night sea. On one such night, after hours of dancing, she returned to Wildebeeste House to find Banana there. Not waiting in any fixed sense, but already present. He had come some weeks after they first met, simply to say hello. And so it began. It was there, in Yony’s Wildebeeste House, that they began spending their first nights together. When Monika returned to Lamu, she and Banana moved further into one another’s lives. And so, what began at Wildebeeste did not remain there. It continued to take shape. Banana spoke of building a small house above his family home, imagining a place where they might live together. Around that same time, As Monika’s sister prepared to leave Kenya, she found herself unable to take certain savings out of the country. Monika decided the money could instead be put towards building a house, with Banana taking on the task of bringing it to life. Monika continued travelling alone, moving through India, Nepal and Pakistan. Looking back, she remembers that time with Banana as an especially romantic period in her life. Almost a year later, she returned to Lamu, where Banana had built a charming house for them, simple and beautiful. It was on her third return to Lamu, arriving on crutches after injuring her knee, that something more permanent began to take shape. The island was no longer simply somewhere she returned to, but somewhere she was beginning to make a life. In 1998, she and Banana married at the DO’s office, celebrating afterwards between Petley’s Inn and Bush Gardens. In time, they had children, who grew up between cultures, shaped by the island and by the wider worlds beyond it. It was only later, around 2000, that they had the opportunity to buy land beyond the edge of Shela village, in what was then still mostly open sand stretching toward the long empty beach. This was where Banana House itself began. It began slowly. One room, then another space, then a courtyard, a pool, a rooftop, a yoga studio. Over the years, Banana House continued to grow alongside everything gathering around it. If Yony’s houses folded inward through hidden passages and layered intimacies, Banana House moved toward openness, toward air, light, and spaciousness. Monika and Banana designed and built it themselves over time, without architects or fixed plans, working alongside local fundis and shaping each space as they lived within it. Like Wildebeeste, it grew organically. But where Wildebeeste held a kind of beautiful enclosure, Banana House came to embody the feeling of being both inside and outside at once, something Monika still traces back to the expansiveness of Yony’s rooftops. Between 1998 and 2004, Monika worked across several guesthouses while also working as a local travel agent at a time when the island still moved at a much slower pace. She worked across places such as Pwani and Stop Over, shaping interiors and attending to the feeling of spaces as much as their appearance. The work was never especially formalised. It came gradually through trust and word of mouth. At the same time, Banana House was slowly taking shape. The building process stretched over several years, and Monika moved there in 2004. Her life was rooted in Lamu and in time, their sons grew into that space between cultures, moving with ease across them, holding both without needing to choose. By around 2000, Monika had become more fully involved in tourism, though even then it carried a very different texture from what it has become today. It was a time when there was still a functioning telephone booth on the island, when fax machines remained in use. The island itself seemed suspended between what had been and what was still forming. Today, their eldest son, Jamil, manages Banana House. In him, that in-between space has taken on a grounded and natural form. He moves easily between worlds, helping not only with the business but with broader issues connected to the island community. In 2003, the birth of her second son, who now lives in Holland, brought another kind of experience. His condition asked of her a deeper presence, shaped by patience, care, and a more extensive understanding of what it means to hold another life fully. Monika and Banana’s life together did not settle into a single shape. It moved between closeness and distance, as relationships do. It held moments of tenderness, and others less easily understood. What remained was what they had endured together, something intimate, held in a way only the two of them could know. Over time, what began as a place to build and live grew into something more. Banana House became not only somewhere to stay, but somewhere people came to restore themselves. What had slowly taken shape in Monika’s own way of living began extending outward through yoga and other holistic practices. Her work moved gradually toward wellbeing, emerging from how she had come to understand the island and herself within it. When she speaks about what she offers, she does so simply. “Listen to your intuition. Trust your gut. Be open to receiving.” After a pause, “Creativity is already within us. It comes out when we give it time.” In 2014, the first Lamu Yoga Festival was held, bringing together 108 participants including practitioners, “a number widely recognised across yoga traditions as symbolic of wholeness and continuity.” Over time, it grew, drawing people from across the world and contributing to Lamu’s growing recognition as a place of wellbeing. Today, Banana House and the Lamu Yoga Festival are well known on the island. For Monika, the work remains grounded in a way of living shaped by open-heartedness. Seen this way, Monika’s work did not emerge in isolation, but in relation to the lives around her. Yony remained part of this same current, not as author, but in the way a space, once lived in deeply, continues shaping what comes after it. Sitting there at Banana House years later, it became possible to sense how one life had opened into another through place, chance encounters, and return. Each story dissolved into the next until memory and place became difficult to separate, as though all of it had been happening at once, somewhere just beyond the ordinary arrangement of time.

Field Note: Jua Paa House, Yony’s last home in Lamu and a place where many artists have stayed in residence, lies very close to the Wildebeeste. The Wildebeeste remains as fabulous as ever and is now in the hands of friends. Anyone visiting Lamu is warmly encouraged to seek it out, experience this mythical place for themselves.

The Fort and the Forgotten:
Mwenje's Story

I climbed the last stone steps to the rooftop of the Old Lamu Fort, not knowing there was an office up there. The thick yellow walls stood around me, humming in the afternoon heat. I hadn’t come to reconstruct a life or chase down every fact. I came to Lamu hoping to gather a few conversations, a sweet collection of stories. I had hoped for quirky and whimsical tales, charming fragments, anything still whispered about Yony Waite and her Jua Paa house. Instead, I left with stories that stayed in the body. They settled somewhere beneath words, reshaping what I thought I knew. Not just names and dates, but living histories. Stories of old families and the vanishing languages of craft. Of a painter who wandered barefoot through sun-split alleyways. Of those who carry memory not as nostalgia, but as a form of craftsmanship. On the rooftop of the fort, I met Mohammed Ali Mwenje, the curator entrusted with guarding Lamu’s cultural legacy. His office opened in to a seating area furnished with baraza benches, low and woven, a design unchanged by time. Mwenje carried the clarity of someone who understands the weight of memory and the cost when it is lost. He told me he wasn’t an artist himself but had grown to admire them. “I can’t always understand the abstract,” he admitted, “but I do love the work of Micheltorres Costa, a Brazilian artist who uses nuts and bolts and different discarded materials.” Mwenje appreciates when artists repurpose found objects like “mabati”, the corrugated iron sheets for building in Kenya. In that act of transformation, he recognized something of his own work, rescuing what risks being discarded and giving it another life. But Mwenje’s real passion lies in built heritage. He is most at home among stone and lime, carved lintels and plaster motifs, in the architectural story of Lamu. “Until twenty years ago,” he said, “we knew about Lamu masonry and carving. We were proud of our traditions. Now urban life is taking over and those trades are rapidly disappearing.” To help reverse that drift, Mwenje founded Amu Fakhri Yangu, “Amu, My Pride,” in 2018. The initiative documents Lamu’s heritage, “from dhow-building to dress-making,” often through youth-led photography and video. From it emerged Kijumwa, a hands-on program where master artisans teach calligraphy, wood carving, musical composition and even digital storytelling. The name means something both handmade and slightly magical. “A hand-embroidered kofia,” he noted, referring to the traditional Muslim caps sewn by a women’s collective, “can sell for up to ten thousand shillings. Mwenje tell us that the Kijumwa Youth Heritage Hub operates within the fort under the Go Blue initiative, a collaboration between the European Union and the Kenyan government to promote the blue economy through sustainable tourism and cultural heritage. With support from the Portuguese agency Camões, Kijumwa now mentors youth in heritage and STEAM education (science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics), while creating a community of world heritage and cultural exchange. We seemed to talk for hours and Mwenje spoke with deep familiarity about Lamu’s social eras, tracing its transitions across centuries. From the Jahadhmi of Pate and Siu to the El-Bakri and El-Maahri families of Mutamwini, once the heart of noble life in the seventeenth century. Mutamwini is where Yony Waite’s home and Wildebeest Studios stood. “You can tell by the scale of buildings that it was an opulent area,” he explains. But it seems Yony’s influence stretched beyond Mutamwini. Mwenje said she had also built homes along the seafront, stories I hadn’t heard before but now hope to uncover. He described her as unlike other wazungu. She walked barefoot, had wild unkempt hair, and painted in the square in front of the fort. “You would think she was the poorest lady in Lamu,” he laughed, recalling her unconventional spirit. “She had a mind of her own.” One story lingered in my mind long after Mwenje and I spoke. He had told me that Yony had become fascinated with ancient tombs marked by Chinese-style lettering and made a determined journey to Ishakani, a remote coastal village north of Kiunga. It must have reminded her of the sumi brushstrokes in the Japanese paintings she admired and studied. Apparently, she braved rough seas and wild coastlines few outsiders dared to visit, drawn by her deep curiosity and respect for forgotten histories. As we spoke, I realized Mwenje had also met the writer, Cynthia Salvadori. He spoke about her time at Jua Paa and the lasting impact of her book Through Open Doors. To him, her work was vital, an essential guide to understanding the Indian merchant history of Lamu, a subject close to his heart. He described how Salvadori’s research brought to life the Ismaili and Bohra communities, revealing their roles not only as traders but as influential figures in Lamu’s social and economic fabric. Mwenje’s pride in sharing this story reflected his respect for those who preserve Lamu’s layered heritage. Our conversation slipped further into Lamu’s past. Mwenje spoke of Mwana Kupona binti Msham, the revered nineteenth century Swahili poet whose Utendi wa Mwana Kupona remains one of the foundational works of Swahili literature. Written as a mother’s final words to her daughter before her death, the poem has travelled across generations as both a blessing and a remarkable portrait of life on the Swahili coast. “She also lived at Jua Paa,” he told me. The legendary poet was married to Bwana Mataka, the ruler of Siyu. They had two children, including Muhammad bin Shee Mataka, who later became ruler himself before being imprisoned by the Omanis at Fort Jesus in Mombasa, where he died in 1868. I remembered whispers from Yony, once telling me about a secret underground passage beneath the house where the lady of Jua Paa would receive her lover, or perhaps only his letters. I’ll have to ask around and see what others remember, though part of me wonders if the stories lose something in the untangling. It is true, I do prefer to live in the abstract, with the mist and myths. It feels a better place to run and roam. As we talked, I began to understand why Kijumwa, the word, the man and the heritage space, felt so central to everything in Lamu. Mwenje told more about him. He was the historical figure Muhammad bin Abubakr bin Omar Kijumwa, a Swahili polymath born in Lamu. He was a poet, calligrapher, tailor, musician and carver who developed his own style of Swahili doors, including those at the German Post Office in town. He is sometimes called the Leonardo da Vinci of Lamu, a cultural bridge across eras. “Lamu is the story of change you see,” Mwenje philosophized out loud. “Layers of history and transformation. And as much as we may not like change, we must accept the new layers.” Mwenje spoke of this in relation to the families that came and went, each adding their own texture to the town’s evolving identity. “Our unique food, dressing, and our way of life are all things we sometimes take for granted,” he added. It was clear that his vision was to share these trades and talents with the world at large. At the end of our conversation, I sat quietly, full. I had come to Lamu for a handful of light, cheeky stories. I left with a quiet ache and an overflowing mind, carrying stories that insisted on being remembered. In the end, it came to me that it is not only the histories we inherit that are important, but the ones we choose to write, to tell and to pass on. It is our efforts, quietly made and fiercely kept, that will carry them forward.

Field Note: The tour guides who pass the house each day, identify the house between Wildebeeste and Jua Paa as the home of Mwana Kupona. We are not certain whether the story Yony shared about the letters refers to that house, which was her propery too, or to Jua Paa . We are using this platform to piece the details together for our archives. If you have knowledge that may help clarify this part of the story, or any other where our understanding may be incomplete, we would be grateful to hear from you.

Of Muses, Murals and Mischief : Satan's Story

This isn’t your average tale of good behaviour and tidy timelines. Some lives are too wild for bullet points and bland summaries. These stories are not for the conservative or the chronically unimpressed. They are for those who delight in the messy brilliance of people who live slightly off script. Stories that read more like whispered legends than textbook histories. They are for those who like their truths a little cracked, served with a wink, a laugh and just enough distortion to feel like folklore. And if anyone knows how to sidestep society’s more ridiculous expectations and live by the rules that actually matter, it’s the delightfully offbeat Aswad Uhuru of Lamu Town. Over the years, he’s added a generous dose of colour and curiosity to every nook of island life. Originally from Ruthigiti, a small settlement in Kiambu County’s Kikuyu Constituency in Kenya, Satan arrived in Lamu in 1990 and never really looked back. Tall, lanky and crowned with a full head of dreadlocks, he looked like someone who had just stumbled out of a reggae dream, eyes bright with the thrill of possibility, as though something magical had just begun. His nickname, Satan, is simply the natural outcome of a man who has chosen to think freely, live sharply, and sidestep the world’s more tedious expectations. Since then, Satan has managed to cram into a few decades what most people might spread over several lifetimes. He has taught music and basketball, mentored young artists, curated exhibitions, opened a tiny gallery called Phoenix tucked deep in the labyrinth of Lamu Old Town, instructed windsurfing, taught chess, planted and protected trees, worked on dhow safaris, and currently does PR for Anidan Children’s Home. He’s also a wicked DJ, the kind who spins at the wildest parties. Yes, even for celebrities, but really, he’ll play for anyone with good vibes, loose hips and a willingness to sweat through their linen. Satan’s résumé reads more like an island tale than anything you would hand in to HR. Slightly eccentric, thoroughly original, and like the late Yony Waite, entirely his own person. Take one of the early times Satan and Yony crossed paths. She wasn’t tucked away in a studio. She was out in the world doing what she did best, painting wherever inspiration struck. And one night, it struck her at Petley’s Bar. Wearing her signature black buibui dress, Yony stood quietly by a wall while regulars sipped their drinks, casting long shadows in the flickering bar light. With paintbrush in hand, she began capturing their silhouettes directly onto the wall, turning local drinkers into a moody mural. It was bold, a little wild and unmistakably Yony. The piece even included the outline of Murage, a local jewellery designer and Petley’s regular who still lives in Lamu. The mural stayed up for years until it was eventually painted over when Petley’s changed ownership. That part of the building later became, of all things, an Equity Bank. From legendary night haunt to fluorescent-lit banking hall, such is the ironic twist of progress. As for Satan’s first impression of Yony? “She had great legs,” he says without hesitation. He describes her as sexy too. On impulse, he reached out and cheekily pinched her shoulder, his version of saying hello. She ran. Naturally. But that was just one of many encounters. Lamu’s streets are small, and the two would cross paths again and again. Satan later recalled another moment connected to that same building, long after Yony’s mural had faded. A German man had taken over the bar but didn’t quite understand the delicate choreography of Lamu life. His major faux pas? Advertising ham sandwiches and beer during Ramadan. In a place where most residents are Muslim and both pork and alcohol are deeply taboo, this was the hospitality equivalent of stepping barefoot on a rake. But his troubles didn’t end there. He wasn’t particularly warm to the staff or friendly with the locals. He was the kind of visitor who never really tuned in, never quite adjusted to the rhythm of the place. Unlike those who listen, learn and slowly become woven into the tapestry of Lamu, he remained on the outside. Eventually, he left town. Satan, on the other hand, gets it. He met many of the artists who passed through Yony’s Wildebeeste residency and maintained long friendships with them. He appreciated her rainforest series, her passion for conservation and her delightfully saucy spirit. She was bold, ever present, and like him, refused to fit into anyone else’s idea of how life should be lived. He tells it like it is, speaking his truth without hesitation. And Satan? Well, he’s still out there somewhere in Lamu, probably doing five things at once and making sure none of them look like work.

Field Note: Art Lovers, find Satan and you will find more art

A Friendship Etched in Coral: Christina Aarts' Story

When Christina Aarts, known as Kicki, first arrived on the island in the 1970s, she was a traveller drawn more by instinct than itinerary, carrying little beyond her love of poetry and a longing for something meaningful. She could not have known then that Lamu would claim her heart, or that among the people who would shape her life there would be Yony Waite. Kicki had landed in Kenya with a romantic vision of Africa, beginning on the outskirts of Karen, where she went to visit a friend. “It was still wilderness then,” she remembers. Yet what she encountered there was a strange insulation within the white settler community. It was not what she had come looking for. She took a train to the coast, passed through Malindi’s famous Driftwood Hotel, and eventually caught a bus to Lamu. There, another kind of life revealed itself. In time, Kicki would learn that you needed very little. “All you need is a kanga,” she laughed. She slept on rooftops, learned Swahili one word at a time and began to understand that life asked for less than she had imagined. She marvelled at the carved doors in Shariff Chuma’s shop and the delicacy of Abdul Aziz’s woven baskets. Poetry became not only something she recited, but something she lived. Her fascination with language and culture grew, eventually leading her to pursue a thesis in linguistics at the University of Nairobi. And somewhere within those early years was Yony. The two women would come to live almost side by side in Lamu Town. Kicki was at Subira House behind the fort, and Yony just down the same lane at Jua Paa. One was drawn to language, learning and hospitality, the other a bold and brilliant artist, and their lives found an easy way alongside one another. Their friendship would span decades, becoming inseparable from the lives they made on the island. “It’s been so very good to have her by my side,” Kicki says. “Yony was always there.” Their lives ran parallel, like the alleyways of Lamu Town, distinct but connected. They spent evenings at Petley’s Bar, an old habit, where Yony always sat in the same spot by the window, gazing out at the sea. That image of Yony in observation remains etched in Kicki’s mind. So too does a small detail at Jua Paa. When Yony’s father, Howard, was ailing, the right-hand window was enlarged to almost the size of a door so that he could easily see and greet people passing in the street. It was a simple alteration to the house, but one Kicki remembers as an expression of thoughtfulness and care. Yony’s influence on Kicki was lasting. “I thought, if she could do it, so could I,” Kicki remembers of making a life in Lamu. Yony encouraged her to live with fervour. Both women chose Lamu Town rather than the more manicured Shela nearby. Here, among the old architecture, bustling markets and everyday life of the town, they found the truth and beauty they were looking for. Kicki remembers Yony’s incredible style, the ease with which she could wear a bikini and bandana at the beach and then a full black buibui in town, not as costume, but out of respect for the culture she had embraced. To Kicki, Yony was unlike many of the mzungus who passed through or stayed in Kenya. She was grounded and inclusive, drawing people towards her through sincerity. Her friendships were not defined by nationality or race. She belonged. That sense of belonging was something Kicki understood herself. Her own relationship with Lamu grew through language, poetry and the people who opened its worlds to her. Among the voices that shaped her understanding was Ustadh Mau, Mahmoud Ahmed Abdulkadir, the revered Swahili poet, scholar and imam of Pwani Mosque. Since the 1970s, his Arabic-script poetry has offered spiritual and cultural insight into life on the East African coast. Kicki was drawn to the layered wisdom of his work and the sincerity with which it was offered. His vast library and dedication to preserving Swahili Muslim heritage inspired her own reverence for language, tradition and the spoken word. Kicki and Mau remain friends to this day. Over the years, Kicki and her Dutch husband, Paul, made their own home in the town. Before moving to Subira House, they lived at Beitle Noor House. Since 2008, Subira has been their home, a restored Swahili house and eco-conscious space shaped by care and hospitality. Guests are often welcomed with lovely Swahili coffee, served by some of the friendliest baristas you’ll meet. Around them was a circle of kindred spirits. There was Yony, and Kate Baraka of Baraka Gallery, another long-time Lamu Town resident and friend whose love for the island echoed their own. It was here that they shared moments, conversations, evenings and all the small things that give a place meaning. For Kicki, her friendship with Yony was never something that required ceremony. It was rooted in trust, admiration and joy, a knowing built over years. They laughed, explored and faced the world with wonder and wisdom. It was true. They were two women who genuinely loved what they were doing with their lives, an artist and a poet, both rooted in curiosity, hospitality and care. Their friendship was more than companionship. It was a shared way of being in the world, and a reverence for the beauty of ordinary things. Their last Christmas together was in 2023. Yony passed away a few weeks later, in early 2024. Kicki still shares photographs from that Christmas, tender reminders of their final season together. And still there is Yony at the window at Petley’s, looking out towards the sea. A moment from another time, yet somehow still happening. The lane between their houses remains, the doors open and close, footsteps disappear around corners, the sea rises and falls beyond the town. Years fold into one another in Lamu, and people become entangled with the places that held them, until it is difficult to know where memory ends and place begins. There are lives that continue beyond themselves, dispersed into everything they once touched. A gesture survives in someone else’s hands. A sentence returns in another voice. A window holds the shape of someone who once stood in front of it. The island keeps none of this in order. It folds people into houses, houses into stories, stories into the sea.

Field Note: Edit in progress. To be revisited early 2027

A Comment from Corrie Wingate from Anidan

Yony gave us full use of the Wildebeest Studios, offering it to any artist who came through Lamu on The African Arts Trust (TAAT) residency at Anidan. She would hand them the keys, and they could come and go as they pleased. She liked nothing more than sharing that space and the etching press, which the kids and artists used regularly. Her generosity in sharing what she had and the artistry at her fingertips was contagious. She was often found at night in a black bui bui, sketching in Mikinguni Square, capturing the play of light and shadow with her Japanese sumi inks. I hear she once painted a mural on the old Petley’s wall (now Equity Bank), using only the play of shadows as her guide.

Field Note: We accept comments, grins and glimpses. Please feel free to send an email, however short or long.

A House of Memory and Moss: Kureishi's Story

We began at the bottom floor of Jua Paa House, where Kureishi stood beneath a broken lintel and told me of his vision, how he would open up the space while preserving the soul of what used to be Yony’s house. The past was heavy in the air. It lingered in the coral stone, in the scent of mold and memory. I settled beneath the elegant madaka, the large, decorative wall niche holding echoes of bygone prayers. Kureishi gently rocked on Yony’s old swing, its wood swollen with years of salt air. It was the right-hand side of the house, shaded, green with foliage and the soft creak of water damage. Mosquitoes circled around us in the dim and damp space. The place felt like a dream, something between a ruin and a shrine. I admired again the mossy wall around the semi-circle vent above the washroom. There, the clammy green spectrum of moss bloomed in a hundred shades. Jade, bottle-green olive, lime and emerald. It’s one of my favourite abstract images in the world, more alive than paint. It spoke of the undercurrent of Lamu, where every corner carries its own story. The house was a labyrinth. Yony had crafted staircases that led to little pockets of mystery, nooks of shadow and surprise. Her vision invited exploration rather than straightforward paths. It felt like wandering through someone’s dream, disjointed yet intentional, where you might turn a corner to find a cat reading a book or a window that opened into another world. Kureishi, real name Ahmed Abdala, was born of this place, with its many twists and contradictions. His family had shaped it for generations, carving beauty out of coral rag. The name Kureishi is known across Lamu for restoration, and he carries it like a compass. He had once been a carpenter before becoming a builder, a wood craftsman. With pride, he showed me a door he had engraved, his very last piece. It was teak, carved in the classic Lamu style with elegant curves, floral and geometric motifs that caught the light. His smile deepened the folds in his face when he touched the carving. He had been very good. We wandered through the back of Lamu Town, the alleyways tighter than in the front. As we walked, he spoke of the sea and the gifts it carried. He pointed to a stone tucked into the corner of an old house. “That,” he said, “is a Persian stone, brought here a thousand years ago. You see Zihan, the architecture here has had so many influences, not all from here.” Lamu, he reminded me, was never just one thing. African in its entirety but also Persian, Chinese, Indian and Arab. Its coral stones held all those histories like layers of silt. The traditional coral rag, mawe ya korali, was porous and breathing, soaked in centuries. Walls were built with it and covered in johari or neru plaster which is lime-rich, earthy and capable of those soft, luminous whites and buttery yellows that I have always been in love with. As we walked, he pointed out houses with open courtyards, misbaah windows and mashrabiyas, the wooden lattice screens that filtered light like lace. One house, restored for a Swedish couple, had an atrium dining space, half in, half out, as Lamu prefers. Another had a fountain of sorts, a single ylang-ylang tree planted in the centre, meant to perfume the whole home with its sweet scent. Kureishi told me this was a common feature in Lamu homes. There are rules to building in Lamu, I learned. No more than three stories, and the top floor must have a makuti roof made of woven palm fronds. No cement. Only coral, lime plaster and wood. The palette is natural, ivory, cream, ash and pale gold. The walls seem to glow at dusk, as if lit from within. I had heard that Kureishi is a genius with lighting, creating soft illumination in inset coves and elsewhere. I couldn’t wait to see what he might do t highlight the sculpture at Jua Paa. Kureishi opened the door of a one-bedroom house he was restoring. It had once been as dark and decayed as Jua Paa, but now it breathed. He’d opened it without stripping its soul. There were no doors inside, just space and flow, privacy held in trust by high outer walls. He would never use paint, only lime plaster in varying tones, each wall a canvas of coral tones. We sat on a bench across the alley, talking for an hour about the old Ismaili Mosque, Indian merchant families, and the complex layers of Lamu’s history. His face, a golden-brown hue with peach undertones and kind eyes, carried traces of those very histories. It was powerful to hear these stories from someone who had lived them. I knew I was lucky to be with him. Our features shared the subtle marks of this place, and the history of the island seemed to live in us both. It reminded me how much I had missed this ease of conversation at the coast. Before we parted ways, he stood in an alley and said, “Wait here two minutes.” He returned with a cloth bundle, mangoes and limes from his shamba. A small but kind gesture. As we walked back, he pointed out his own homes, streets named after his ancestors. He showed me Kwa Bafufu, the three-story Swahili house where his family had lived for over 200 years. It was clear that the tradition of restoration, care and building runs deep in Kureishi’s family. It is a legacy quietly carried forward by his son, who now tends to these stones and stories. The work is certainly more than craft. It is a living heritage. When I finally reached the mossy wall again, I felt fuller, more rooted. I had come to see a house, but what I left with was the architecture of memory, etched not in stone but in the living lines of someone who belongs to the island.

Field Note: Throughout this story we refer to the green growth on the walls as moss, as that is what most people know it as, and for a little literary play. In reality, it is mostly algae, with traces of moss and lichen, thriving on the porous coral stone and lime plaster in Lamu’s humid coastal climate. We leave it untouched because it is part of the living fabric of these old houses, a gentle patina that belongs to their age and place.

The Creative Power of Place: Artist Maggie Otieno

Some places breathe differently. They loosen the grip of ordinary thought and rearrange the way we see. Wildebeeste Studios in Lamu was one of those places. Its maze of staircases and unexpected rooms unsettled your sense of direction just enough to open another way of thinking. It was a house that asked you to surrender all logic before offering inspiration. In 2006, the house became home to one of Kuona Trust’s annual Wasanii Workshops, a programme that travelled across Kenya bringing artists together in places capable of reshaping both practice and perspective. That year, a group of Kenya-based artists arrived in Lamu to create site-specific installations and allow the island to shape their artwork. Among them was sculptor Maggie Otieno, already moving within a circle of artists who would come to define contemporary Kenyan art alongside names such as Peterson Kamwathi, Thom Ogonga and Richard Onyango. Living and working together in Yony Waite’s home and studio, the artists experimented with materials gathered from the island. Maggie created her installation from coconut stems, coconut shells and madafu husks she collected around Lamu, transforming them into sculpture. Days dissolved into conversations beneath the Lamu moon before culminating in a modest exhibition at Lamu Fort. “Lamu was so special to us,” Maggie recalled. “It was so different from what we were used to in Nairobi.” The place carried a different spirit, and like the reshaped interiors of Yony’s houses, Lamu unsettled familiar ways of thinking and invited something new to emerge. It was also Maggie’s first experience of Yony Waite at her own home. Throughout the workshop, Yony moved effortlessly between artist and host, making space for ideas as naturally as she welcomed people into her home. Maggie found herself watching closely, absorbing not only Yony’s creative process but the way she inhabited her own life. “She was completely herself,” Maggie said. “Was it artistic awareness or simply who she was? Even the way she dressed. She was a walking statement.” She paused before laughing a little. “When I grow up, I want to be like that.” It was not admiration for style alone, though Yony’s unmistakable sense of fashion certainly made an impression. Maggie had recognised something rarer, a woman entirely at ease with herself, whose creativity extended beyond the work she made into the way she lived. Years later, sitting together in the morning sun at Peponi Hotel in Shela, I found myself thinking that Maggie had become the kind of artist she had once admired. With a genuine elegance about her, her beauty was undeniable, and it radiated from somewhere deeper than appearance. She spoke thoughtfully, her words carrying the calm assurance of someone who had earned them through experience. She smiled as she remembered another encounter with Yony. They had crossed paths many times at exhibitions in Nairobi, but one moment remained especially vivid. During Kuona Trust’s twentieth anniversary celebration, Maggie watched Yony chatting with Sane Wadu. “Her energy lit up the space,” she said. “They were laughing like schoolchildren. It was so heartwarming.” It was a simple memory. A moment of pure harmony between two wonderful artists. Yony had a way of making those around her feel lighter. The path that brought Maggie to the present moment was one of perseverance. In 2015, she found herself facing one of life’s more difficult seasons where she and her son moved in with her sister after a period that left her questioning everything. “I remember standing at the matatu stage on Langata Road waiting for her to pick me up,” she said. “That was my lowest point.” There were moments when it felt as though the future had disappeared from view. But slowly, almost imperceptibly, something shifted. She began sketching again. She volunteered at a centre for children with special needs. She leaned into her faith and gradually rebuilt not only her artistic practice but her sense of self. “You have to imagine the things you desire,” she reflected. “Then work towards them. Life is a spirit that leads you based on the energy you give it.” What followed was nothing short of extraordinary. The stillness of 2020 and 2021 gave rise to Sojourners, a body of work created during the long months of the pandemic. The sculptures carried a deep intensity, speaking of isolation, endurance and the slow, determined journey towards hope. When they were finally exhibited in 2023, they resonated deeply, selling out almost immediately. The years that followed marked a special chapter in Maggie’s career. In 2024, she exhibited at Efie Gallery in Dubai during Art Dubai before returning for Solace in Soil, a duo exhibition with Emirati sculptor Dr Mohamed Yousif. The exhibition explored how materials hold memory, and Maggie’s sculptures, carved from reclaimed railway sleepers, spoke of movement, migration and repair. Her work also featured in The Echo of Absence at the International Festival of Contemporary Art in Algeria. Earlier that year, she presented her solo exhibition, Anecdote of Soundness, at Alliance Française in Nairobi. Then came the magazine cover. Seeing Maggie on the cover of Vogue felt like one of those rare moments that belongs to everyone who has believed in an artist long before the wider world catches up. The news travelled through Kenya’s art community with genuine delight. It was the kind of achievement that made people smile instinctively, not because it seemed impossible, but because it felt so right, When we met in Shela, Maggie was preparing for yet another milestone. She was about to leave for an eight-week residency in Ghana with El Anatsui, the legendary sculptor revered around the world for his monumental bottle-cap tapestries and poetic transformation of discarded materials. El-Anatsui, yes! Maggie possesses an extraordinary ability to uncover poetry in overlooked materials. Working primarily with reclaimed railway sleepers, she coaxes stories from timber scarred by Kenya’s colonial history. Her sculptures do more than preserve memory. They ask difficult questions about movement, labour, inheritance and repair. She does not simply carve wood. She listens to it, allowing each piece to reveal the histories embedded within its grain. Today, Maggie works from a calm, sunlit studio in Karen, Nairobi, moving between commissions and more intimate works. Sometimes she is surrounded by the sound of power tools. At other times there is only silence and concentration. Since 2023, she has also devoted time to supporting single mothers in distress while mentoring younger artists entering the profession. And just as Yony once opened her home, her studio and her imagination to others, Maggie now opens hers. She places tools into the hands of interns, teaching them how to carve, sand, shape and, above all, pay attention. There is something profoundly moving about women who love both their work and one another with such generosity. Not for recognition, but because they understand that knowledge grows when it is shared. As the morning sun drifted across the veranda at Peponi, our conversation returned to Lamu and to the influence certain places hold over us. “Spaces have different spirits,” Maggie said. “They bring out different things in us and in our art.” Her words carried me back to Yony’s homes and to the artists who had wandered their staircases nearly two decades earlier. The space had offered more than shelter. It had created the conditions for curiosity, friendship and creative risk. Maggie and I sat in agreement about the concept that we do not simply pass through places. We decided that they pass through us, leaving traces that continue to shape the work we make long after we have left them. Perhaps that is what Wildebeeste Studios and Jua Paa House are always teaching those who climb their winding staircases and wander their impossible rooms, that spaces hold power enough to influence form.

Field Note: This interview took place at Peponi Hotel in March of 2025. So much has happened in Maggie's career since.

Of Worlds Re-membered: A Sketch by Baba Lee of Shela

Lee and I have known each other for some time. We have spent a few late afternoons at Peponi, sitting by the wall closest to the shore, looking out across the channel. Our conversations drift with the tide. They are never really finished, only paused until another day. This is one of them. We had hoped to meet in Shela while I was gathering memories of Yony Waite. Instead, we found ourselves in the food court at The Hub in Nairobi. He was in the city for a friend’s wedding. I was eager to get back to the mountain, so what should have been an afternoon became little more than an hour. Lee is an older American who has lived in Shela for many years. He is one of those rare people who makes every conversation feel as though you have arrived halfway through an extraordinary novel, revealing just enough to leave you wanting the next chapter. Most evenings you will find him aboard a dhow drifting across the channel as the sun slips behind the dunes. His rooftop gatherings beneath the Lamu moon are the sort of evenings people remember long after they have ended. I have been fortunate enough to attend a couple over the years. His fried chicken is legendary. So is his sense of style. Expressive, deliberate, and tasty twist on Lamu attire, he has a small fashion line that mirrors the way he dresses. Dressed in a belted robe, walking cane in hand, scarf carefully matched to his turban, often in vivid colour, he has a way of making an ordinary walk through Shela feel marvellous. Add a good cigar and a seat at Peponi overlooking the sea, and before long strangers become companions. Beneath the clothes and easy conversation is someone who has witnessed extraordinary chapters of Yony’s life. His own life has travelled remarkable distances. He spoke only briefly of Harlem, of a past marked by violence and survival. There had been a gang, a fatal incident, and books, he told me, are now being written about that life. It belongs to another world. Today he is a Muslim and has no desire to return to the United States. “I’ve found my peace here,” he said. He and Yony, he told me, became “automatic friends.” They bonded over smoking joints and conversations that wandered wherever curiosity led them. He remembered house-sitting for her in Athi River, where her home and studio were a kind of organised chaos, full of invention. He visited her often at Jua Paa in Lamu Town too, where they would sit and talk for hours. He remembered the Nairobi art world when Gallery Watatu was at its height, when Ruth Schaffner and those around her were helping shape a new chapter in East African art. He knew those people. He was there. Then there was Tucumcari, New Mexico, just off Route 66. Yony had bought a cantina there in the 1990s, and Lee went to visit. He remembered the delight she found in that improbable place and her wonderful ability to make almost anywhere feel warm, alive and welcoming. In Lamu, he watched her work closely with women through local workshops, creating space for others to discover their own creative voices. “Giving back was definitely her thing,” he said. “She was the most amazing woman.” Almost in passing, he mentioned Yony’s Japanese boyfriend from many years ago, the first person in these conversations to bring him up. It was another thread, another doorway into a story I had not yet known. I still know very little about him, but I hope one day to learn more. By the time we stood to leave, I realised that Lee had not simply known Yony. He had moved through the worlds she inhabited. He had known the people who shaped her life, witnessed places I had only heard about, and carried memories that stretched far beyond the fragments we managed to gather that afternoon. Our interview ended almost as soon as it had begun. I suppose some stories refuse to be told in a single sitting.

Field Note: Our stories grow. We want to hear more about New Mexico, about the man selling items from his trunk. For now this is a sketch. The rest is waiting in Lamu, if fate allows.

Vidakas and Verve: Carla Serantoni's Story

To meet Carla Serantoni is to encounter a kind of beautiful mischief, the kind that comes from a life lived artfully, spoken openly and punctuated by frequent, contagious laughter. Told in a voice as melodious as it is expressive, her stories carry the lyrical cadence of her Italian heritage. They brim with feeling and finely drawn detail. Whether she’s recalling far-flung diplomatic postings or peeling back old plaster to uncover hidden treasures in her Shela home, Carla shares what she knows with irresistible flair. I find myself nodding along, amused and in awe of the ease with which she inhabits every story. Her house in Shela is much the same. Layered, surprising and full of character. When she moved in, she stripped away the plaster from its walls, bit by bit, revealing one of the most exquisite mihrabs I have ever seen. The intricately carved coral stone prayer niche had been hidden beneath decades of plaster, waiting patiently to be rediscovered. Carla had uncovered a secret, an act that seemed entirely in keeping with her curious nature. She very often reveals what others have overlooked. Many people have told me the story of Yony tearing up her American passport in protest during the Gulf War. Carla’s version lands differently. The same bold act becomes richer through her wit and sharp observation. “She was a woman of passion and integrity, you see,” she tells me over a beer at Peponi. “She did not want to belong to the US. Kenya inspired her more.” Through Carla’s telling, Yony emerges not simply as an artist but as someone compelled by conviction. Having lived in the United States and Japan before becoming a naturalised Kenyan citizen, she found in Kenya both a home and an enduring source of inspiration. Her paintings, influenced by the fluidity of sumi-e, responded to the landscapes and political climates around her. She co-founded Gallery Watatu in Nairobi, helped establish the Wildebeest Workshops and the Mkonokono women’s group in Lamu Town, and seemed incapable of standing still. “She never stopped,” Carla says with a smile. “It was as if her drawing was her thinking. She just kept going.” Carla first met Yony at Gallery Watatu in the late 1980s while teaching at the Italian School in Nairobi. Before long she had been drawn into the orbit of Nairobi’s remarkable art community, forming friendships that have endured for decades. Over the years she has built a thoughtful collection of works by artists including Charles Sekano, Sane Wadu and Wanyu Brush, whom she once hosted in Lamu. A soapstone sculpture by Brush still occupies a treasured place in her home. She also counts the Sudanese artist Eltayeb Dawelbait among her friends. Listening to Carla, it becomes clear that Yony never believed art belonged only inside galleries. She carried it into everyday life. Carla recalls Yony’s mosaic at Nairobi’s New Stanley Hotel, its acacia trees reflecting a motif that would become one of the artist’s enduring signatures. She remembers murals and installations at the Serena hotels in Nairobi and Amboseli, each celebrating the landscapes Yony had chosen to call home. Carla tells me I should speak to Kamal Shah, another artist and friend of Yony’s who might remember more. I know him. That is the way these stories seem to find me. Never in a straight line, never as a list to be completed, but through friendships, chance encounters and acts of generosity. Each conversation opens another door, each memory introducing the next, until a life begins to reveal itself, so beautifully. Carla also remembers Yony at the organic farmers’ market in Karen, not simply exhibiting work but becoming part of the life of the place itself. She painted two large murals there, one celebrating the work of the KSPCA and another of her quintessential savannah landscapes, which still hangs today at The Artichoke at our Marula Green Market. Like so many of Carla’s stories, the memory reminds me that Yony’s gift was never confined to canvases. It was her ability to weave art into the everyday, into communities, friendships and ordinary encounters. Carla’s own life has travelled extraordinary distances, from Cairo to El Salvador, Barcelona to Tuscany, through a distinguished career with the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Now retired, she divides her time between Shela and tending to her lovely vegetable garden at home in Tuscany. Her curiosity, however, has never retired. It still sends her searching beneath old walls, preserving friendships across continents and recalling people with remarkable clarity and affection. Through Carla, we do not simply remember Yony. We rediscover an entire circle of artists, dreamers and friends whose lives became intertwined. Carla’s exuberant personality makes memory feel gloriously alive, with just enough cheek and delight to keep every story dancing.

Story in Progress: Isiah the Sculptor

Of Re-membering Together

For the site, we have chosen a small selection of stories from Re-membering the Sun, Jua Paa House’s growing collection of memories and conversations.

Some are complete. Others will return to us with new questions. All continue to evolve, just as the house itself does. For those whose stories have a little more to reveal, we will be returning to Lamu to continue what has started.

We will send any additional questions to you first , and then, as always, the rest unfolds together in person, at sea.

We will be back to continue gathering stories and carrying this project forward. If you are moved to share something about Yony Waite or Jua Paa House, please write to our arts writer, Zihan Herr, at zihanherr@gmail.com.

To our story-tellers and readers

Yony Waite 1935 – 2024

Yony Waite was a genuine creative force, an internationally renowned artist, and an ever curious, ever adventurous friend who was a part of our community at OFM.

She was born in Hollywood, California, and spent some of her childhood in Guam of the Pacific Islands. Having studied Fine Art at the University of California, and later Sumi-e brush painting in Japan, she developed a unique style of painting that played with light and movement through dark charcoal strokes, to capture the subtle vibrations of the natural world.

A Kenyan citizen since the 1990s, she jaunted between her art studios in Athi River and Lamu Town, filling sketchbooks, tissues or any loose paper she could find with drawings of daily life at the coast and in the bush. She tackled colossal canvases depicting wildlife in the Kenyan grasslands. From capturing animals in the forest to Lamu Fort and different conservation areas, she produced an impressive portfolio of artwork over her long career, painting and sketching until her very last days.

Yony’s artwork speaks to an audience beyond Kenya, Japan and the USA, and her paintings can be found in private and public collections across the globe. In Kenya, she will be remembered fondly as a co-founder of Gallery Watatu in Nairobi, for her Mkonokono women’s development project, and for hosting professional print-making workshops at the epic Wildebeeste studios in Lamu.

Yony’s personality was a striking combination of playfulness, creativity and kind-heartedness. With her unique sense of fashion, her free spirit, and the eternal twinkle in her eyes, she inspired us, teaching us the freedom to step away from convention.

She was a regular at our Saturday market, shopping, lunching, and always making new friends. We honour the memory our passionate, compassionate artist friend.

Yony, your spirit lives on through the many lives you have touched.