Nerea

My dani, my dad's mama was called Nerea.

She was buried when I was about 5 years old. In a grave next to which most of her children now lay. In Ingotse village, Kakamega.

I have a picture of her on our altar , in our home in Detroit. It is a picture that has her, my kwaru, my baba, my mama, Sammy and Jesse. I was not yet born. I had carried what I could carry of my family when I came.

Most of my family is very far away.

My only real memory of her, Nerea, was when she and kwaru saw me licking Milo out the palm of my hands, from a can in the cupboard somewhere. We lived in Upperhill, Nairobi back then. Milo is like drinking chocolate, but has crunchier and bigger grains, that i loved to roll in my mouth as I slowly beckoned them to dissolve into me.

It must have looked delicious, because within minutes they had beckoned and I was swiftly scooping ample amounts of milo into their palms for them to lick too.

Save from the occasional live chickens sent from dala, from grandma, and possibly gunias of sweet potatoes, or peanuts, I can't remember anything else substantial about her.

But then this:





I can't stop playing it.

The song, unbeknownst to them, is named after my dani, and it talks about every child's potential to be anything, and everything, and urges Nerea, not to have an abortion, because, the baby daddy will take care of the baby.

Firstly,
Feminists,
Sit down.

I know.
And I agree.
Complexities lacking and inadequacies abound.
And i agree,
Not all plates are full. There is entrenched poverty and systematic repression of so many classes and ethnicities among the masses.

But for a minute,
Empathise,

With all the women who never get to have a baby daddy willing to support their babies.

Empathise,

With the women who are so distraught when they find out they are pregnant, they aren't in the best psychological space to make the best decision for them/their baby/their family....
The women who never have the capacity to see the possibilities within their future children, because their heavy burdened with the material challenges associated with pregnancy and child rearing.

I have a bias against abortions.
But it happens.
I would like for women to have the opportunity then, to really have as many options layed out for them in terms of pregnancy care and child support ...before we default to abortions.
Pro choice movements don't often really engage the choices that the various women have. Sometimes, abortion is a resort, not because a woman is definitively disinterested or unwilling to carry a baby to term, but because of very unfavorable and indequate accommodations in society for the mother-woman.

A beg,
They also had me with their wonderful video, harmonies and falsettos.
They also name dropped so many of my heroes, lupita, bambam, Maathai, Mboya, Nyerere, Makeba...

You know I also just love Sauti Sol. ( Amos and Josh were a perfect addition to this jam- can you hear Amos sang!!!!)

They are the dream.

Brothers going hard after their dreams, and then pumping so much of that Afrocentricity, motherland loving....mmmh!


Nerea,

As a mother, it is wonderful to be reminded, about Ominira's  unlimited possibilities for self actualization and success.



As a daughter, it is wonderful to be reminded too, that I am significant, and I am capable, of being someone of great value to my community. I can. Even when it feels like I am going nowhere. I can. I am. Wanted. Wantable. Loved. Loveable. Significant.

Isn't it wonderful, to hear your dad or your mum say, I will take care of you. I want you?

Isn't it wonderful to know you are wanted?

Mmmh.
But what of Dani then?

I don't know....
Maybe this is a mystical message from her...ay, there aren't too many Nereas out there....and that name choice was quite errr...specific..

Got me thinking of Dani though. Got me remembering that I have peoples who love on me somewhere back home, and I should not forget that.

Mother of mothers,

Did dani imagine, she would have a grandbaby like me? Growing alot apoth , alot boo, ododo and chickens in Detroit? Did she imagine that I would be galavanting majuu with a black American moran, digging earth and building village, hustling and bustling towards dreams and desires?

Thank you Sauti Sol, Amos and Josh.
erokamano Dani.

Massage my sole

I struggle to find the right kind of music to massage my sole. Right now, i can feel the tingling, at the root of my toes in my right foot, running down the heart of my foot, circling the ball, and then up through to the tip of my toes.
I need something soft, concordant, perferably rich with minor keys. I need something that will usher peace, tranquility and transcendence. I need to travel back in time, emotionally and psychologically, to the various places where i have found comfort, strength and most importantly purpose.
Things seem to come together and then they don't.
Proverbial carrot stick in front of an ass.
I see it.
But I am getting tired.
I wish I had more of the time to do what I would love to invest myself in. The stuff that's really really about me. Not just sustenance. I am talking talent, passion, communion.
John legend.
From the Album Evolver.
Massage my sole.
Massage my soul.

I need, I don't just want

I need to make music.
I need to partake in the process.
To bathe in discordant chords..
To get lost.

I listen to music.
And I am like,
I need to do that.
I need  to be in that work.

I don't want.

I need.

Music is so powerful.
So intense.

Texture.
Depth.

I can feel it in the soles of my feet.
And in the nape of my neck.

The vibrations.
The sensations.

I can feel everything.
In that moment.

I am enlightened.

Unburdened.

I need.I don't just want.

show me who you are, we are alone now...

This is my America

I am about to make a film.
A big ol badass revolutionary film.

But I am not a filmmaker.

I am a person who loves, lives for, spaces where people are vibing hard. Great conversations. Talking about hawt n spicy stuff. Spaces where ideologies are flipped on their heads. Where people break into sweat. Where teeth are ground and bared.

I am here to create such spaces.
I been here for that.

Detroit.

Building from the bottom in Detroit.

This is my America.

Where everyone around me is grappling with one of the most brutal evils of our time: the systematic disenfranchisement of working class folk by the institutions and means of capitalism.

This is my America.

Where I quiver to be walking down the streets of Grosse Pointe after dark with my husband, because  I now understand, and I can feel that we are not wanted there.

This is my America.

Where I am angry, disappointed and untrusting of the guild of whiteness. Where I am no longer shielded by the appeal of Africanah exoticism, and I am no longer inclined to wave my Kenyan passport, or smile at white auntys' fascination of my eloquence and civilized dimeanor.

This is my America.

Where poverty is masked by credit debt, big houses, big cars, endless work days and deep dissatisfaction.

life here ain’t no crystal stair.
It has tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor—
Bare.


This is my America.

Spirits bawl in these broke down homes,

Death.

Agony.

Why aren't we wailing?

Have you walked around these sides?

Detroit?

Stripping down

all that love made in our homes,

all that love-

great conversations caught in walls,

stories,

journeys.

cousins thrown out in the streets,

because of them financial piranhas and thieves,

because of a game we can never win.

because of chasing this here American Dream.


No glitz and glam hereabouts.

Not in this my America.


Ahh.

Aaaahhhhh.

He saw my name and greeted me,

Ba wo ni,  Àlàáfíà ni
And no kidding,

I heard
Atieno, Idhi nade
Uber driver, yesterday.
He had spoken to me in Yoruba, and I heard him speak in Dholuo.

What?

Picking me and Ominira from Grosse Pointe too.

What is this?

Abeg,

America.

Sé dáadáa ni.

I am packing for just one night

Below is a segment of transcript from a CBC radio show I was listening to yesterday [ my 25th Bday]:

 In 2006, the Heat wasn't supposed to get into the finals. Even though they had Shaquille O'Neal, they were overshadowed by many more powerful teams. But under Riley's insightful coaching, they made it to the championship.
The Heat were playing the Dallas Mavericks for the NBA title, and were ahead three games to two, and only had to win one more. But the last two games were scheduled to be played in Dallas, the Mavericks' home court.
Statistically, the team with home-court advantage wins three out of every four series in the playoffs.
And the Heat's handicap would be most intense in the seventh game. If they lost the sixth, winning the seventh game in an enemy stadium would be almost impossible.
But Riley felt certain his team could beat the Mavericks as long as they were convinced they could. He had to make his players believe they could win the championship in game six.
Because he didn't want them having to play that dangerous seventh game in the Maverick's house.
So... how did he motivate his players to win game six?
He simply told the team the whole story of their upcoming victory in a single line:
He told everyone to pack for just one night.
Not two. Just one small overnight bag.
That simple line telegraphed Riley's intention that there was not going to be a seventh game.
That his team wouldn't need a second change of clothes because they were coming home the night of the sixth game as NBA World Champions.
He told it. They felt it.And they did it.

I am packing for just one night too.
That is my resolution.
I have been working towards this resolution for a while now.

25 years old.
There has been a lot of life lived.
So much and yet at this instant, it feels like nothing.
All that is tangible is the here and now.
Bittersweet.

If I hit the jackpot, well and good.
If I don't, die trying.

No more room for can't.
Not when I am alive.

One bag.

This is it.

Am bringing you with me,
If you will.

Ashei.

Farming my way back home

It feels like I was bucked by a horse.
My thighs are sore and I have this terrible wobble.
I was farming into the night yesterday: tearing up clods of earth with my jembe, creating borders, mounds and pits to plant our seedlings.
I was frustrated that we are buying greens, when we can put these seeds into the earth and have our own. I went hard. A bit too hard maybe.

I was thinking,
Funny, my primary occupation,is farmer, just like my grandfather in Kakamega.
I am in America, and i work the soil, love the soil, pray pon the soil, like my grandfather is doing now, thousands of miles away.
And wow!
So much for that $50,000 a year college Degree...(you can take the woman out the land, but you can't take that land out the ...)
I was thinking about how therapeutic plowing earth, pinching soil, tugging at weeds, and designing this paradise is.
How natural it feels.
How it teleports me back home.
How I am suddenly in conversation with my mum, her mum, her mum's mum and the dynasty of women whose blood, love, memory and energy runs through my veins.
Ashei.

I don't know much about where I am going (professionally), but I know that farming is fundamental. {growing food is ) as essential as drinking water. It should be as common a practice.

At the moment, we have spinach, lettuce, collards, kales, cabbages in already. Theres tonnes of other seedlings germinating in the greenhouse, just waiting to be grounded.The workload is mounting, but the weather will not give!!!

It snowed today. Too cold for a grind. I was all ready to get the work in but, by now you know I don't play with Michigan cold. Hellurrrr!

I started farming proper, 3 years ago, at lilac community gardens, a parcel of land donated by Michigan State University to the city's food bank. I started because Baba Chiengbeng signed up for a plot of land, while we were still in college, but before he could get into it, had to go to Florida for a summer Yoruba program. I was initially reluctant about the whole idea, especially since the plot was a significantly long walk from our apartment, but somebody needed to water the crops.

He was an Agribusiness major so the farming came naturally. It took a minute for me, but you know, once you start tending to the garden you can't stop. You stumble into loving before you know it, and I was there every evening, after my work shifts, hauling water in jugs and buckets from rainwater barrels and sometimes even a borehole several meters away from the garden.

Only pitch darkness sent me home...

Farming (in America) was always, for me, an opportunity to grow the kinds of foods my mum would cook, that I couldn't purchase in the store, or most certainly not expect to find in the college cafeteria.  I grew as many heritage crops as I could find with a vengeance. I grew a forest of black eyed peas at lilac, together with tomatoes, some other greens and pumpkins (malenge). Black eyed peas leaves are a delicacy in Western Kenya. Nyummmmz. Pumpkin leaves are delicious too, as are sweet potato leaves, African Spider Plant aka Saga, Huckleberry leaf aka Managu, nettle, and a few others I discovered and planted in Detroit.

Food is so important.

It is so powerful and healing.

Especially when you are far from 'home' and far from family and loved ones.

And then when you get into the soil, and start growing...you can't stop. It's exciting. It's intensive work- but its great work. It's not oppressive-work. It's loving work.

Today, as I am feeling my way through life, I am glad, excited, and affirming of the fact that I am continuing the work of many of my parents and ancestors. I am glad that I am touching the earth and swinging my jembe, and kneeling on this hallowed ground.

I am connecting dots.

I am understanding many things and accepting many things.

I am not alone.

I am not powerless.

I walk with thousands, and thousands, and thousands....

When I bend down and pray upon the earth, I call so many who have done so before me.

And when I lay that seed in that earth I lay it with love and say thank you. Grow well. And I lay it gracefully, make sure that it is comfortable, warm, cozy, and has access to all it needs, all that I can give, and all that I can not.

I praise the sun.
I praise the darkness.

I praise those that teach that we are all one, human and animal and plant and earth.
I praise those who teach that time is bending, is fluid, is malleable.
I praise those who liberate minds and spirits.

I pray for consciousness.
I pray for peace.
I pray for harmony
I pray for an end to the bullshit and the madness.
Whether it call itself capitalism, nationalism, tribalism, racism, sexism, colorism, religion, fiat money, corporatism, white-savior complex, white supremacy, (name that evil), (name that evil)

I pray for all of this and fling my hoe back onto the earth and keep on working.