keeping focus

["Amadeus W. M." <amadeus84 cablespeed com>]

I have a Gtk::Window and in it a DrawingArea and underneath the Darea
I have several other widgets (spin buttons, text entries, etc.). 

I want the Up and Down arrows to do something to the Darea when pressed 
repeatedly. The Darea has focus upon construction, but when I press e.g.
the Down arrow, it moves the focus from the Darea to the widgets below
it. 

What's the (right) way of keeping the focus onto the Darea? 

As of now, the callback that handle the keyboard events is connected to
the Darea. Should I make the underlying window responsible for those?