retriever & bearer of indigenous Afrikan lifeways
According to the Macmillan Dictionary, a kitchen is a room where you prepare and cook food, and wash dishes. The role and meaning of kitchens around the world is more varied and complex than this definition would have one believe, however. Ordering space through design is a key way in which diverse meanings are ascribed to nominally similar space. Design defines what a space is and isn’t, and who is…
Besides eating, I also got to reconnect with old friends in Mexico. One of these friends is Manuel Labra who I interviewed for the article on the Mejoramiento Barrial programme that was featured on Polis. He took me to visit another community centre in Coyoacan in Mexico City that caters to and is majorly run by senior citizens. It’s called the Casa del Adulto Mayor y su Familia or Centre…
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…
“Urban areas concentrate not only economic and social production, but also waste production. Waste that is often addressed at the end of a long chain of actors- manufacturers, retailers, consumers, disposers, municipal councils, collectors, recyclers. And thus waste’s final destination and the impacts of the same are made invisible. The problem of what to do with waste is externalised by actors along the chain of waste production, an externalisation aided…
Read the version in Portuguese here Issa lives in Granja Viana and is one of the representatives of Transition Granja Viana, an initiative of the worldwide Transition Town movement. According to her, the Swap Fair, also known as the Ecofair, is the biggest success of the Transition GV Group. She told me this while we were driving to her house one Saturday afternoon so we could catch a potluck supper…
What do you do, When you don’t know what to do? Do you write? Do you speak? Do you shout? Do you run? – where to; and will they follow you? What do you do when you get so angry, that you don’t know whether to sit or stand, to cry or to laugh- maniacally? What do you hold on to, when you wonder about your powerlessness- and the power…