We are on our way to Wales for the final section of the GESA programme (written in August 2018*). I was in two minds about coming for this last part of the programme and strongly considered going back to London. Here’s why. Bird, Why are you stuck in the tree Flapping flapping, Wildly beating your wings Against what holds you back, That which we cannot see. Your flaps are getting…
Tag: activism
we don’t need the lamu coal plant
I got caught out on this post when the Supreme Court annulled the August election results after I had drafted the post and all…. The annulment [and everything that followed it] resulted in an extra-long election period and collective holding of breath accompanied by lots of intrigues (threats, insults, name callings, arrests…. With all that happening I didn’t feel like I could post this…. Ironically, because I start by talking…
african + environment? yes indeed
I am guest blogging at the Transition Network for 6 months and my first blogpost just went up. In the series I want to think about what the environment, environmentalism, nature are and mean to Africans and for Africa. I do this through interviews with some people I know who work within these spaces and I will be inquiring into what they think and how they make their visions of…
life update
It’s been a while since I have done a life update post so here goes. I decided to take a sabbatical this year to focus on healing and skilling myself up in preparation for the work that I believe I am called to do. This to me is to heal and reconnect community relationships, and to heal and reconnect our relationship with the earth. Here’s some of what I’ve been…
a thief is made, they don’t become one by mistake
“A thief does not become one by mistake. A thief is made.” This is one of the conversations I have just had with a youth empowerment and alternatives to crime activist on my first day at a non-violent communication training. Within the past few hours I have met 2 people, including the activist, who are from Ongata Rongai, the town on the outskirts of Nairobi where I was born and…
25 images of transition in brazil
I spent two and a half months working alongside various initiatives that were part of a larger Transition Brasilândia network while in São Paulo, Brazil. Brasilândia is located in the North East of the city, and a 2 hour and multiple bus ride away from the centre of São Paulo. It is also the only Transition Initative located in a low-income neighbourhood. These 25 images exemplify some of the amazing…
freire
“Any attempt to soften the power of the oppressor in deference to the weakness of the oppressed almost always manifests itself in the form of false generosity… In order to have the continued opportunity to express their “generosity” the oppressors must perpeatuate injustice as well. An unjust social order is the permanent fount of this “generosity” which is nourished by death, despair, and poverty. That is why the dispensers of…
decolonising in practice- post on brainstorm
This experiment to me represents knowledge revival in two senses. Reviving my grandmother’s knowledge: she herself couldn’t tell me how she processed maize in this way, being bodily gone from this world; but at least I know that she did. In a second sense, this is knowledge rebirth – using beneficial indigenous knowledge from a different place (Mexico) where I am (Kenya). This is the kind of knowledge rebirth or…
on poetry, and agosín’s ‘i lived on butterfly hill’
“Poetry is a violence from within that protects us from a violence without” Wallace Stevens One evening many years ago, I stood up in a modestly filled room at the Goethe Institut, Nairobi, walked somewhat unsurely to a seat at the front and read some poems from my ‘Pink book’ notebook collection of poetry. The event was a poetry night and they had exhausted the list of people who had…
a bogota kiss
I took this picture on my second-last day in Bogotá. I love that the lovers are portrayed as old. The piece is called El Beso de los Invisibles- the Kiss of the Invisibles. It’s based on a photo by a journalist of 2 homeless lovers, Hernán and Diana, living in Bogotá’s ‘Bronx’. It was painted over 6 days by a team of 5 graffiti artists from Colombia & Peru, including…