Kaiso is a fishing town on the SE edge of Lake Mwitanzige. The lake is currently known as Lake Albert maintaining its British colonial name. The original name means killer of locusts in Runyoro, the main language of the Banyoro people who are the indigenous folks of this area. The south-eastern edge of the lake has been termed the “Albertine Graben” by oil prospectors, denoting a region of the lake with an…
Category: stories and histories
my afrikanness is embodied and alive
When did you realise you were Afrikan? What does it mean to you? If you’re like me and grew up in an Afrikan country, you may not have realised your Afrikanness early on – you may not have had a reason to. Growing up in my small town outside of Nairobi, Afrika did not have as much salience as my neighbourhood and town. In honesty, even Nairobi was an excessively…
why we should study afrikan history
“Tracing African pasts through the interlinked lenses of agency, possibility and imagination allows us to counter narratives of Africa as a blank slate, to challenge the privileging of whiteness and Europeanness, and to debunk myths about Africans as people who are destructive or unchanging. It allows us to illuminate diverse possibilities of human living to build on, against the hegemony of a present moment that unsees and devalues us. For…
it must do something to you to only be a throughway
“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,…
reclaiming time + space – what pretty hides #2
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…
culturally rooted pan-african movement workshops
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…