Mama Nadi

Mama is the play’s central character and protagonist. She is in her early forties, a hard-edged and angrily practical black African woman determined to survive the civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo at all costs. Several times throughout the play, she refers to her family’s land being taken away from her when she was a child: this, she implies, is the main reason that she is so determined to hold on to what is hers (i.e. the bar). She is intelligent, experienced, and knows how to read both a situation and the people within that situation, a skill that she uses not so much to take advantage of it but instead to work out a way to make sure that the situation in question resolves without affecting her ability to do business.

It often seems like money and keeping her business / land...