Ukimya, Ling’, Gũkiragĩra, Nyaa
Ukimya, Ling’, Gũkiragĩra, Nyaa1
(A dimly lit room, illuminated only by the soft glow of a projector casting videos of wananchi speaking onto the wall. Each video is a short clip recorded in different Kenyan languages: Kiswahili, Sheng, Kikuyu, Luo, and more. Each is captioned in its respective language.
Six figures move through the room, creating placards, leaflets, and painting signs for the rally. The Translator watches the videos, she is listening for errors and making sure that the videos are providing the correct messaging, occasionally murmuring to herself as the protesters speak.)
Translators note: Wananchi is too often simplified to mean citizens. It’s more than citizens. It literally means the people of the country. You cannot separate people from land. You must not separate people from their land.
Protester 1: (Looking at the projected screen) They’ll scroll past it in seconds. All those eyes on all those screens, and still— (pauses, searching for words) all they’ll see is a crowd. Just noise.
Protester 2: They can call it noise. They can call us anything. But these videos—they’re the truth, aren’t they? The truth in every language they’ve never bothered to learn.
Translators note: kelele resonates much more than noise – the onomatopoeia of lele can turn in into ululation or lament. We celebrate our protesters we lament those who were killed. lelelelelelelelelelele
Translator: (Softly) That’s what they’ll resist the most, you know. Not our signs or our shouts, but the moment we make our voices plain. One language they can look away from. Over eighty? What then?
Translators note: How does one translate the sound of many voices speaking at once? Languages intermingling, blending, and rising together to create a shared harmony. Languages once used to divide now weaving bonds of connection. Words that unify, exclamations that illuminate. Vielezi that give form to the unsayable—how does one translate a gesture?
Protester 3: (Hands a leaflet to another protester) Make sure it gets out tomorrow. Even if they only read the first line. Even if they toss it aside. Nguvu za watu. They’ll know what it means soon enough.
(They all look up as a new video starts on the projector—a young woman speaks in Sheng, her eyes fierce, her words quick and clipped. The captions echo her plea, urgent but calm.)
Protester 4: (Studying the video) Look at her. She’s showing it all with her face, every inch of what she’s saying. Words barely matter. (Pauses, looking around) You think they’ll know what they’re seeing? Or will they still translate it into rage, into a threat?
Translator: They’ve always chosen violence as their language. They think it’s the answer to anything that doesn’t fall in line. But violence can’t answer everything.
Protester 5: (Laughing bitterly) You’d think they’d have learned that by now.
Protester 6: (Turning toward the Translator) Why even bother with the signs then? Or the leaflets? Half of them will hit the ground before they’re read. Maybe even before they’re handed out.
Translator: Because it’s for us, too. Because we need to know we’re saying it—if only so we’re certain we haven’t stayed silent.2
(The video changes again: now it’s a young boy in Kikuyu, speaking slowly, clearly. The room falls quiet as they watch, each one struck by the quiet resolve in the child’s face.)
Protester 1: (Watching intently) He knows, doesn’t he? Just a kid, and he already sees it. The weight of it, I mean.
Protester 3: He sees, all right. You can’t fake that. Can’t mistranslate it, either.
Translator: (Under her breath) Maybe that’s the power of it—the quiet, that refusal to perform what they expect. Just truth, sharp and clear.
Protester 2: (Nods) If only they’ll stop long enough to watch. To listen.
Protester 4: Maybe they don’t need to. Maybe the world just needs to see us, really see us, in all the languages they ignore. That’s why we’re recording. That’s why we’re out there tomorrow.
(The video shifts again—a group of elders, speaking in Kiswahili, stoic but intense. The protestors listen, captivated.)
Protester 5: (Softly) And still, they’ll send the police.
Protester 6: They’ll translate our words into bullets and teargas. That’s the only language they know.
Translator: Then we give them something they can’t control. We write the story ourselves. If we carry this truth, in every language, every dialect, we make it harder for them to erase.
Protester 1: (Holding a placard up, examining it) I think that’s what they fear most—that we might make sense. That we might have something to say they can’t twist or bury. So they drown it in silence or smoke, hoping we’ll forget. Or that we’ll break.
Protester 2: But we don’t break. That’s the point. We keep talking, in all our languages, so they can never say we didn’t speak.
(The projector screen goes dark as the last video ends. A silence settles, thick with the weight of what’s just been shared. The protesters begin to gather the placards and leaflets.)
Protester 4: (Turning to the Translator) Tomorrow, they’ll see us. They’ll see all of us, won’t they? Maybe for once, we’re too many for them to ignore.
Translator: (Pauses) Tomorrow, we don’t just speak. We show them who we are. With every placard, every leaflet, every word they tried to silence.3
Protester 3: And if they don’t listen?
Protester 5: (With conviction) Then we’ll still know we said it. In every voice, every accent.
Translator: (Quietly resolute) For now, yes. Tomorrow, the world watches. And we’ll give them something worth watching.
(The protesters head toward the door, carrying the placards and leaflets, the faint hum of chants outside drawing them on. Their movements are sharp, deliberate, and as they step into the light, their voices rise together in quiet strength.)
All Protesters: Nguvu za watu. The strength of the people.
(The stage darkens as the door opens. The words echo, lingering long after they’ve left.)
Endnotes:
- The title(s) of this play are translations of the English word “silence.” Inspired by Kenyan writer Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor’s observation in her book Dust—“After Mboya, Kenya’s official languages: English, Kiswahili, and Silence”—this piece explores the elusive and multifaceted nature of silence. Translating “silence” reveals its complexity, as is often the case with translation: there is rarely a direct equivalent.In the languages of Kenya, silence is not passive—it is active, imposed. It manifests in words designed to suppress sound and speech. For example, in Sheng, “silence” is expressed as Nyaa, a contraction of the Swahili word Nyamaza, meaning “shut up.” This silence is far from serene; it is an act of silencing, a deprivation of the means to communicate. What remains in its wake is not peace, but a deliberate void.
- Knowing that silence is imposed, choosing not to stay silent—especially in connection with one another—is an act of resistance.
- In Kenya, and across the world, it is painfully clear who must remain silent. Detailed rules dictate who is permitted to speak, what they are allowed to say, and on whose behalf. The landscape is fraught with tension—we are constantly reminded that we cannot and must not speak for others. How dare we presume to represent?Yet translators defy this silence; we are intrinsic resistors. We speak for, and with. We dare to carry words from elsewhere, grappling with them, hesitantly shaping them, and striving to weave feathers into those words—so they may rise and take flight
JC Niala is an award-winning, multilingual theatre maker based in Oxford, England. Her ‘Shakespeare in Swahili’ project, funded by Arts Council England, includes a translation of ‘Macbeth’. She is a 2024-2025 Foreign Affairs Theatre Translator Mentee translating ‘A Wave of Change’ (Wimbi la Mabadiliko) by Dennis Shonko from Swahi