One of the great achievements by a Ugandan artist of any generation, Chupa na Ndebe hangs in a Catholic parish in Nairobi, and has been the subject of attempts to steal it. It is the portrait of Njoroge, a homeless man in Nairobi who used to collect discarded bottles from dustbins and resell them. The scavenging work is known as ‘chupa na ndebe’ in Kiswahili, and Kateete had always wanted to paint such a person. The pair collaborated for two weeks to create this masterpiece, one in which all of Kateete’s powers are on display. This version of the larger oil-on-canvas painting was printed on canvas and signed by the artist, who was born in Uganda but made his career in Kenya. (Njoroge, who disappeared from Nairobi in 1997, is believed to have been killed in a flooding event.)
