retriever and bearer of indigenous Afrikan lifeways and practices
Development is a word and a world, A word from a certain kind of world Building. In an ecosystem of other words (progress, growth, sustainable development, adjustment, reforms, good governance, democracy) That makes a certain kind of world, Built for certain kinds of people Possible. What world? A world of scarcity, Of not enough Lower – on a ladder Behind – in a queue, Slow – in movement, Least –…
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…
When I see the houses in different states of completeness: exposed brick, half-painted brick, putting up the first floor, It reminds me that life is process, and we’re constantly making it, like these houses, what we want, from wherever we begin.
‘Where are those songs’ is a poem by Micere Githae Mugo (1972) that I like and find inspirational especially in light of a quest for memory and recovery of once remembered things. It starts off a bit despondent, the narrator is seeking songs and memories only to find them lost- unremembered. But it ends on an inspirational note, that one must begin singing and fashioning songs of life in the…
“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…
What is Brasilândia? A many layered thing- literally.A mix of textures, colours, sounds, “lá tudo nublado, aqui tudo colorido” as my host sister put it, The day she took me on a walk Through her colourful neighbourhood.A slice of life all in one short street.Where the church and local pub vie for customers, And airspace- And the tousle keeps you up on a Saturday night-It’s a many flavoured thing: here…
It has recently been making itself known to me that it is a year since I finished my travels on my fellowship. Perhaps it’s because it’s now getting warmer in Nairobi- and it had been a while since I was in one place long enough to see all the changes in weather over a period of time. The year after the fellowship has not been one where I have come…
This cold that takes residence in, chills, and sets your bones. You’re seated inside but you might as well have been walking outside in a Wellesley winter. Seated in these stone houses: borrowed, gifted, stolen, forced- they were not meant for the unwarmed cold. They come with chimneys, diligently built into every sitting room. And as diligently used to prop wooden flowerpots, store old newspapers, and confound the odd bat…
“Why make one when you can buy one? Why bother with all this wood-hammer business, Wouldn’t it be easier to go to the shop and buy one?!” My host brother in Brazil, Dimas, and I made a shoe rack from pieces of discarded wood he found at a dump on his way home. While we sand-papered the wood by fast dimming evening light, pulled out and straightened nails, figured out…
I’ve been back home for the past few months, and between applying for school, looking for a job, managing family pressures and expectations, as well as finding ways to share all I have learnt with the world, I have had to learn patience. A friend from IHP used to quote me a line from the poem below by Antonio Machado whenever I got too anxious about the future: ‘se hace…