Jak Katarikawe

I read Sidney Kasfir's essay "Katarikawe Dreaming: Notes on a Retrospective" (African Arts, Winter 2002, pp. 74-77, 96) with interest and disappointment, interest to find your journal carried a story about an old friend with whom I had long lost contact and disappointment that the review conveyed so very little about Jak Katarikawe's actual works. I knew Katarikawe briefly in 1963 and then longer in 1968, when I taught at Makerere University. As Kasfir remarks, Katarikawe's work is infused with great sensuality. He was one of the most sensual persons I ever met and was incapable of having any long conversation without coloring it with sexuality. Kasfir also writes about her puzzlement regarding the facts of Katarikawe's life. I doubt that the supposed facts of his life win ever be known. In 1968 I visited and spent the night at Katarikawe's home in Kigezi and met his family, but never could be sure exactly who was related to whom (and I am an anthropologist who tries to find out such things) I also spent considerable time visiting with Katarikawe and his cousin, Evaristo, in Kampala. It was never ever clear what their relations welt with Makerere or those attached to it, though they seemed remarkably familiar with some faculty and students.

Katarikawe also appeared familiar with much of the sleazier side of Kampala's low-life, a side of his character that appealed to me but about which, of course, he was far from forthcoming. When I knew Katarikawe he spoke almost no English and we conversed entirely in Swahili. That was not very common for many Ugandans, but Katarikawe did not explain how or where he had picked that language up, though he did seem to know something about the Swahili-speaking smugglers from the Congo who operated on the Kigezi borders. Nothing Katarikawe ever told me about his life or motives seemed entirely clear, though even then he was obviously a very gifted artist. For example, he told me about his ties to some faculty at Makerere, though I never met him with any of them. He told me he preferred to do pictures in crayon on cardboard because he disliked oils, though I suspected that this was because he could not afford oils or canvas and/or that oil technique was at that time too difficult for him.

I acquired six of his pictures and, as was his fashion, he recounted stories about each of them. Some of the pictures seemed ordinary deseriptions, such as a young man's portrait or a young man talking to someone inside a Volkswagen, but the stories attached even to those turned out to be very erotic. I never, however, was sure whether these stories actually reflected Katarikawe's true motives behind the pictures or whether they were constructed simply to amuse me. Katarikawe allowed me to take color slides of most of the pictures which he presently had in his possession. He related all of them to erotic stories, and some were actually pornographic. I tried to purchase the most spectacular of these, one of a nude man performing cunnilingus on a nude woman, but Katarikawe refused to sell it, even though at the time he seemed strapped for cash. He refused to give me any reason why he would not sell it.

Every day for the past thirty-five years I have derived immense pleasure from looking at Katarikawe's pictures, so I am disappointed that Kasfir has written so little and so unperceptively about the actual art itself. Katarikawe may no longer remember me, but I recall him and his cousin vividly as charming but at times mysterious figures from my years in East Africa. I keep their photographs in my living room. I am amused and even reassured that Katarikawe is still telling stories, some perhaps true, many undoubtedly not, about both his pictures and his life. His person and work are too fascinating to be entirely deconstructed. I hope he never gives himself entirely away.

T.O. Beidelman

Professor of Anthropology

New York University

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