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Showing posts from 2007

Ferry ride to Unguja

The ferry ride to Unguja was long, but peaceful. The ocean was beautiful. For miles on end, there was nothing around but calm skies and a gentle sea. Standing there, I couldn’t help thinking just how small and insignificant I was. When the island became visible in the distance, we were all excited. Everybody wanted to see Unguja. A family with a video camera was filming the approach to the island. I was standing next to them and could hear their little boy crying out for candy, “Awz helwa,” over and over again to his mother. The deck was packed. Everybody was standing out there watching the island. I imagine many of them were coming back home to visit their families. Some were probably coming to visit for the first time, perhaps to work, or maybe to make a new home on the island. Others were tourists, come to see “Africa”. There was a mix of people on that ferry, rich and poor, but for the moment, we were all equals as we stood on the deck, caught up in awe at the island’s beauty

From thoughts into words

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From thoughts into words by Rose Kahendi is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License .

Mgeni siku ya kwanza...

Remember when we were kids in primary school, and we had to sit through endless hours of Kiswahili, memorizing semi , methali and the like? And remember how Mr Macharia was constantly making us use that phrase, “ Chembilecho wahenga… ” in our essays? How about “ Wahenga hawakuropokwa na maneno waliposema… ” And then we’d have to complete the phrase with a saying or proverb that captured the apt sentiment for that paragraph. “ Haba na haba hujaza kibaba ” was a great favourite of mine. Apparently, those were choice condiments, guaranteed to spice up your essay and get you one step closer to that perfect score: 19 out of 20. (Mr Macharia would never give anyone the full 20 points.) We thought they were silly phrases back then, but still used them because we wanted good grades. And today … well I never thought I’d say this, but those old folks we were always referring to in our essays sure were wise. My life today is a testament to the deep truth encoded in those proverbs, sayings, r

Do bees here speak Swahili?

They say that it’s easier to write about home when living away from it, that the colors, scents and sounds that filled our childhood come back to us in bold, clear detail when we are shut off from experiencing them. That’s not true. The last desire on my mind is to write about my home and my childhood. My memories are too precious to lay bare to the eyes of an outsider. And truth be told, my memories are rather hazy. I can hardly remember the names, faces and places. My present is more real to me. I want to connect with the people around me and to talk to them about our shared reality. My present surroundings may not be the hibiscus lined streets of my hometown, but the white florets borne by the branch scraping across my window pane smell heavenly. The bees go about their busy way, moving from nectar sac to nectar sac. I wonder, do bees here speak a different language from the ones back at home? I want to laugh at this thought, but pause. Maybe it’s not ridiculous after all. No. It

Sunset

Yearning, reaching, grasping for the unattainable. The dream of an island of light, distant… unreachable, Beyond the horizon. Drowning, sinking, choking, gasping… Too blind to see the elusive skin That would allow a final escape. The silent screams Rise and emerge into the air, The bubbles of urgency, now devoid of meaning, dissolve into nothingness. And the weight descends, sinking, gliding through the curtains, Expelling the old memories. Pink… Blue… Indigo… Black. The darkness surrounds and encloses, Its impenetrable veil covering up all traces Above and below. First published in TakingITGlobal's Panorama Zine on 18th June, 2007.

Majengo: the Old Stone Town

I came To seek Refuge in words. Alone, I stand marooned in the emptiness of nowhere. With words come color, resolution and momentary joy When my hand brushes against the tail-end of a fleeting memory, just before it flutters away into he blue sky. I speak of them, of their memories. They asked me to remember them when I came back, Not to forget their names, faces or stories. I remember The sadness and sweetness mingled in the pictures that leant against his wall. The soft colors spoke of his dreams and memories Before he crossed over to that new place. He'd thought he was moving on to bigger and better Things. Yet there he was in another nation, But still on the same side of the railway track. And another. A traveller and story-teller Looking for a way out. Sadness in his eyes And memories of the cyclical violence. Two brothers Dearly missed. This poem is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License . Please feel f

WHY?

I recently saw a picture in a daily- a picture of a bulldozer crushing structures in a shantytown somewhere on the outskirts of an African city. The caption described the scene as an ongoing project in the "beautification" of the city. "Beautification"?! I realize that our culture is obsessed with euphemisms, but this particular use is pushing it too far? The theory behind the beautification project is probably that the poor slum dwellers make the city ugly and aesthetically unpleasing. Apparently, the city planners' and policymakers' solution to this urban "eyesore" is to evict the slum dwellers and force them out of the city, pull their structures down and burn whatever remains to ashes. It's a common enough occurence in our cities, so common that the use of he word "beautification" no longer raises eyebrows. Particularly disturbing in this instance is the fact that the human story is lost. Does anyone wonder what happens to these p

MLK, Luthuli and Nonviolent Resistance

Introduction An undeniable link connected Martin Luther King and Albert Luthuli, two socially and politically active black leaders on separate continents in the twentieth century. The former, American, and the latter, South African, lived under the shadow of white supremacy in their nations. Both were members of economically and politically disadvantaged populations and saw solutions for the trials of their people in social and economic justice. For the two, the liberation of their people lay in Christian ethic and in the employment of non-violent methods of resistance. They were respectively committed to ending the racially divisive systems of segregation (in the American South) and apartheid (in South Africa), and replacing these with communities where racial and ethnic equality and tolerance prevailed. At the same time, the two sprang from the loins of unique cultures with particular socioeconomic and political concerns, separated by an ocean. Their responses to the s

No end in sight

A few encounters with people and with books have given me pause for thought lately. In one conversation, two friends were talking about their love for reggae, going back to their childhoods. I was therefore surprised to hear the turn in their conversation. Apparently, both of them had lost their taste for reggae and felt disillusioned when they listened to it. As far as they were concerned, it was the same old lament being voiced in the present that had been voiced twenty or more years previously. Why, they wondered, couldn't reggae tunes incorporate more uplifting messages? Why hadn't the lyrics evolved to reflect major developments in Africa and her diaspora? They felt that listening to reggae actually disempowered them and, as a result, had decided to turn to “more inspiring” musical forms. I found myself ruminating on their words, but I was not ready to agree with them. Reggae does often express the disenchantment of an economically and racially marginalized group with “the

Lost in Translation

With a wistful smile on my face, I remember a dear friend who, struck by homesickness, recited some of his favourite poetry to us. It was beautiful... but I had no idea what it meant. Afterwards, he explained the meaning of the words to us, but his English summary wasn't quite the same as the alliterative Somali consonants and rhyming vowels that had rang melodically in my ears minutes earlier. That experience led me to wonder: is it really possible to translate poetry, particularly poetry coming from the long and rich oratory tradition of the Somali peoples? I'm still wrestling with that question, especially since, years on, I still love poetry and yet still don't understand my friend's language. Margaret Laurence's "A Tree for Poverty: Somali Poetry and Prose", only seems to put into stark relief the impossible task that is translation. Her introduction to the later edition is telling. In it she consciously reexamines the assumptions that she had fi

Ibrahim Shaddad's "Insan"

Sudanese director Ibrahim Shaddad's experimental film, "Insan" is memorable (to say the least). With no spoken narrative to guide me as I watched it, I was disoriented for a while, but eventually, I was able to put two and two together. It's a short film- 27 minutes- but that is more than made up for by the powerful story line: a herdsman undergoes a series of crises that cause him to lose his wife, his livelihood, and eventually, his hand. Quite a sad conclusion to what started out looking like a simple film about a villager's adventures in the city. Particularly striking is the setting of the film. The film was released in 1987, a few years after the debilitating drought in Western Sudan. Was the film a reflection of that experience? Unfortunately, my grasp of Sudanese history is very weak, so that question will remain unanswered for now. Truthfully, my interest in the film had nothing to do with intellectual engagement. I watched the film for the same reaso

Darwin's Nightmare- an East African Tragedy

The documentary film, "Darwin's Nightmare: A Celluloid Dream Release," sheds light on the extremes of globalization and the impact it has had on Mwanza, an East African urban center. Many of the villages around the Tanzanian lakeside town are stricken by HIV-AIDS, and regularly lose their breadwinners. Young women, many of them widowed by AIDS, are forced into prostitution to support themselves and their families. The fishermen who catch Nile Perch from the lake for their livelihoods are unable to eat the same fish: it is too expensive for them. All their catch is sold to the factories that process the fish for exportation to Western Europe. So what do the fishermen and their families eat? They eat the remains from the processing plants i.e. the rejected fish, and the parts that are unappetizing for the Western European consumers. As if that is not bad enough, it transpires that the Nile Perch are foreign to Lake Victoria, and that their introduction to the lake has cr

Inter-African Ties

I read columnist Wallace Kantai’s “Ties with North Africa Shallow” in the February 26th, 2006 edition of the Sunday Standard with great interest. In it, Mr. Kantai expounds on the idea belief that any ties connecting sub-Saharan African nations to North African nations are shallow. However, I ultimately disagree with his conclusions. In my opinion, Africa is first and foremost a geographical entity. Therefore Algeria,Morocco, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt are incontestably African. Another articulation of what it means to be African is racial. However, in reality, we can’t seem to agree on precisely what it means to be black. The moment that we try to determine whether it’s skin color, hair texture, the shape of one's lips, nose or physical frame that makes one ‘African’,we hit a roadblock. There’s also the idea that being African is political. A few decades ago, when we were united by anti-colonization movements, we readily accepted Ben Bella, Abdel Nasser and others as Af