In 1990, as American warships pounded Iraq, dropping bombs that would leave death and devastation in their wake, an American woman reported to the Kenyan immigration office and exposed a plot that would undermine American image abroad.

"'I want to renounce my American citizenship," said the incensed woman.

Today, Jony Waite is a Kenyan citizen; Kenya is the place that she has made her home, 35 years since she first setting foot.

"I am called a renounciant,"she says defiantly.

Everything about Jony is ordinary, save for the miniature images of trees that dot her body "We are like trees," she says. 'We start small and grow big. We get rooted and when the wind blows, we want to stretch out like branches."

Building on that persona, Jony is a tree whose roots extends to various continents, with the branches spreading about. These, in turn, whisper against the wind, sending messages whose resonance can be heard far and wide.

It is from this top perch that -Jony watches the world.

Understandably, Jony's recent work, currently on exhibition at the Japanese Cultural Centre, is titled Roots and Branches.

The exhibition is devoted to the late Sanshiro lkedasan, Jony's teacher who facilitated her first solo exhibition in Mingei Kaikan gallery in Matsumoto, Japan almost four decades ago.

"He was my master," Jony says in a reverent tone. "He was my
mentor."

It is from Ikedasan that Jony learnt some life truths that would liberate her forever, while Japan's rich culture would sizzle her soul "like coming from a hot room to a big, open desert with
desert trees."

Jony first left home at 12 to travel to the Guam Island in the Pacific.

" I wanted to travel the world," says the woman who recalls that before her 10th birthday she was already trotting on horseback "without a saddle," a thing that would in future seem the best demonstration of freedom.

Her brief return to Hollywood, California, where she grew up with her two sisters, would stir a restlessness that not even her schooling, first at the University of California, and later at the University of Hawaii, would quell.

Unknown to her, it is Japan that would settle these stirrings. So she travelled to Japan by yacht "to find the soul of Zen" (Bhuddism).

Jony lived on a rice farm as she continued with her search, painting and getting immersed in Japanese culture.

She finally found the soul of Zen.

"Life is a paradox," Jony says thoughtfully. 'The journey is the destination. It's a circle of life and death.

"Like the supernova in the sky, tiny stars. like fructose, are born and dying every minute."

Jony says this was somewhat disappointing: 'We had two typhoons," she reminisces of her sail to Japan. "Several weeks later, we met a Japanese sailboat. We expected to see wonderful flash shining in their eyes because they (the Japanese sailors) knew the truth. Instead. they, just asked us for a cigarette."

Jony is silent for a brief moment, then adds, 'Your expectation of something can be very different from what you get," she says.

Nonetheless, Jony found a crucial truth that had eluded many. 'That's when I realised that the planet earth is so small, a little beautiful blue ball in the cosmos."

With that realisation, Jony carried on with the journey of her life. Soon she was to visit Somalia to see her father, then an engineer with the United States Aid for International Development (Usaid).

"I was invited to visit him," Jony relates, "Just for one summer."

But unknown to Jony, that journey would inevitably alter her life.

"We used to come to Nairobi for shopping by air. As we flew over we would see herds of elephants," she quips, then hastens to add, !Of course, Nairobi then was a nice, clean city."

But it was a trip to Lamu that really altered her destiny.

"I was staggered by what I saw," Jony says with a tinge of nostalgia, "I didn't know there was such an incredible place in the world."

The beauty of Lamu, the inviting sea breezes, spiced by its ancient culture, served to sway Jony to live there, which she finally did, setting Wildebeest Workshops that to date offers residency programmes for artists.

But before settling on the workshop, Jony did what she likes best - travelling.

"I drove from Europe, through, West Africa, down to South Africa," she explains.

Another trip would take her from South Africa (briefly living in Cape Town), before driving on to Ethiopia, Sudan, right through to North Africa.

Jony would later sail from Mombasa to Djibouti and take a steamer through the Nile. Another sail would transcend continents, sailing from Mombasa to Japan.

"I'm the roving sheep in the family, "smiles the second girl in a family of three, who mother died at 91 two years ago, while her father is 93 and well.

But through all her trips, Jony would find time to paint murals (like she did at Uganda's Sheraton Hotel), and also at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport's Simba Restaurant.

In 1969, Jony joined hands with David Hart and Robin Anderson to establish Gallery Watatu.

"It wasn't a business really," she says of the venture that would give a boost to local artists, while opening new horizons those that were already in the business.

"We never made any money, just got enough to pay the rent and cover the costs. After 15 years, we sold the gallery to Ruth Schaffner and concentrated on doing my art.'

Roots and Branches presents Jony's favourite topic: nature and its beauty, wildlife.

" I live in Athi River on a game ranch," Jony points out. "It's part of the daily life," she says of the wildlife that she captures on her canvas.

Roots and Branches depict Kenya's fading natural resource, a heritage that's getting depleted as years go by.

Particularly, Roots and Branches pays tribute to the people who influenced Jony along her life's journey, and the sight and sounds that she now considers her own, since abandoning her country of birth.

Her works, which are mainly paintings, with a sprinkling of tapestries from the Wildebeest Workshops, have a gentle feel with soothing colours.

But their depth, which is so subtle one could easily miss it, reveal Jony's own immersion in the lands she has traversed, and her immediate environment that she's now part of.

In fact, it is her concern for the environment, and America's foreign policies that have pitted her against her motherland.

Jony is particularly opposed to nuclear weapons.

"America is not the only one using nuclear weapons, but it is the main one. It (the US) tries to be the boss of the world, and the boss takes the blame when things go wrong.

"What will happen when everybody has nuclear weapons?" she poses. "If it's a balance of terror, then there are sure to be accidents."

Does Jony consider herself as unpatriotic?

'Nationalism is Old-fashioned," she says swiftly, "It's a colonial concept."

Instead, Jony says she prefers regional respect, and that she considers herself to be a citizen of the world.

"Africa is all we all come from. My roots may be in Japan, but Africa is my original home. Everyone started here, even the Mzungu (European).