retriever and bearer of indigenous Afrikan lifeways and practices
When we wrote our open letter to the department of African Studies, hoping to document our collective grievances and open a conversation about how to change and improve the course for future students, we titled it “Searching for the ‘Africa’ in African Studies”. Getting through that course and being able to truly say that one had learnt somethings in African Studies, one had to search. Search beyond the shock of…
“It must do something to you to know that you are only a throughway to a thing, body or place more desired.” The editor asked “how are you breathing in this increasingly airless space?” in which State corruption/misappropriation of huge amounts of money just keeps increasing and increasing – name them, the scandals which come one after the other unstoppable, name them: Kenya Power, Maize, Dams, Lamu Coal, NYS,…
I was recently again in London for a brief moment for my graduation. It’s summer and sunny and warm – the best time to be in London because you can be outside for longer periods of time. And yes indeed, summer means picnics, walks in parks, swims in ponds, lunches in parks, games in neighbourhood greens, full outdoors enjoyment of life. So much so that I thought visitors to London…
“After seven years of being on the journey I can say that I have arrived at several shores of knowing and understanding that I would like to share for anyone else who might be undertaking a similar exploration. Even more however, I have begun to wonder about the silence around African spirituality, and its persistent labelling as sorcery or devilish, an inheritance of missionary colonialism. As a researcher of the…
After a hiatus while I travelled to study, African and diaspora African dance workshops with Wangũi are back!! I have been dancing since I was about 5 years old, and have learnt, taught, and performed in various places including Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, U.S.A., South Africa, Tanzania, U.K. and Kenya. My dance workshops are aimed at bringing culturally rooted pan-African dances to the present to hold space for healing, transformation, creativity…
This is a post in which I gush about stories and storytelling. Reading my about page you know one of the things I am about is narratives so buckle up. What’s your favourite story, podcaster Lilly Bekele-Piper asked me in an interview a couple of days before the Reimagined Storytelling Festival. I went with a poem. One of my all time favourite poems, and one I like to perform: “Where…
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…
Are traditions simply a thing of old that are interesting but not relevant to the world we live in today? In my last blogpost for Transition Network I sat down with Simon Mitambo to hear more about how he is using traditional governance structures from his Tharaka community to revive cultural and biological biodiversity, and connecting with other communities doing similar work across Africa. With the organisation he set up,…
I had a conversation with my good friend and inspiration, Wanjiku Mwangi about her path to caring for nature and the environment (she doesn’t like this word though, see below). In particular we spoke about the spirituality of nature which is what drives her work with communities to recover their heritage and ecological mores. What is nature to you? When we talk about nature there’s two main parts, the seen…
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…