retriever & bearer of indigenous Afrikan lifeways
What is the relationship between grief and honesty, grief and truth? I see grief as a braided rope with strands of anger, sadness, fear, disgust, all those most knotted of reactions to what we have lost, in a word, to our pain. Is grief truth because it names our most humbling truth: we of the humus, we have lost We lose, daily, in each moment, big and small Is this…
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 –…
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…
I never posted about this but better late than never. A short story I wrote called ‘The Giraffes of the Desert’ was selected as one of the finalists for the inaugural Re-imagined Folk Tales Contest in 2016. Here’s the background to the story. I used to manage communications and social media for a heritage nonprofit called the Trust for African Rock Art in Nairobi. What I loved most about…
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.