Chicago, here I am

I have been to Chicago about 3 times before.

Downtown Chicago is wonderful. I am a big city girl. I thrive in the presence of people. I want to walk down streets filled with people...all sorts of people, that hustle. That Nairobi-like hustle.

If I can't have New York, I will take Chicago, gladly.

Down-town Detroit is good too. But not as good. Not as accessible on foot. Not bustling enough. Not too many colored folks running the show down there either.  Plus there is just too much bad press about Detroit, that holds people back from being in open space. People don't seem to just walk around downtown to walk. Everyone is going somewhere.

I enjoyed taking matatus downtown in Nairobi. No. 48 took only 20 minutes from our back door to the stage at Odeon, in the heart of the city,  except of course for rush hour. Two different matatu kanges' (ka-ngey-z, meaning psv conductors) were infatuated with me, and so they would wait on me when they saw me approach, clear out the best seats, and make sure I never paid my fare. I never thought I would be that girl getting favors from matatu kanges. I neither beckoned nor encouraged it, but I wasn't one to be rude or cold to conversation prompts with wananchi on the ride to town or back home...Besides, the brothers were young like me, and one was really cute.

I certainly hoped that I would never get on a mat chaperoned by any of my crushes while with my mum. Kanges' have the worst rep, only second to Mpigs (dishonorable members of parliament) back home...and I had been the head prefect of Alliance girls...goddess forbid I be known to be dating a kange. I did not need any more drama.

There is nothing that compares with matatus here. Nothing with that level of chaos, culture and convenience all at the same time. Public service vehicles, in East Lansing, Lansing, Chicago and New York are closely regulated and run on tight predefined schedules. Matatus and buses at home, in Nairobi are the complete opposite, but they have their perks too, since they are able to take liberties with their routes and pick up or drop off sometimes as close as your front door- instead of a designated stage.There must be abundant literature out there about how matatus have been central in the creation and the modulation of much of Nairobi's culture: the good, the bad and the ugly. Of particular interest to me is the appraisal of local hip hop and pop music, which I have come to appreciate so much more during my time in America and, on a darker note, the misogyny, violence and masochism, expected of an informal industry dominated by young, under-educated, under-employed men with a lot of pent-up sexual frustration, and perverse moral conditioning.

I would dare to compare matatus with public transport in Detroit, if only for a minute, but almost argue that Nairobi has it even better. Detroit's transit system is inadequate for the size of the city, is hopelessly unreliable in most lowerclass neighborhoods, and features some of the rudest black folk working you will ever meet this side of the Atlantic. So unfortunate for the city that delivered the automobile to the world to be one of the worst places to own ( highest auto-insurance costs in the nation) and use one.

Chicago though.

Chicago meant Oprah for the longest, and then Obama, and then...

I am not sure what Chicago has to offer me.

But Chicago feels good.

It feels very good.

I have connected with a number of sisters and brothers whom I will either live with or meet during my stay, who are invested in "healing" work and the work of rebuilding communities around collective spaces, sustainable urban agriculture, art and transcendence.

I connected with Elisha today, for instance, a brother whom I now know through my wonderful friend Crystal, a badass capoeira/marshall arts/yogi/ healer in Detroit. He has three children, the youngest being 13 months, only a few behind Omi, and is working on a housing collective project in Chi town, that will do some of the things we have been doing at our own homestead in Detroit- hosting and accommodating peoples interested in all aspects of earthship, social justice, communing and transcendence.

Jessi from Freedom Freedom Gardens had also generously opened up her own space to me, where she lives when she is teaching- apparently she is a professor- a couple times a week in Chicago, then she comes back to Detroit to build, to farm, and to commune just a couple of streets, a few blocks up the road from us.

So many friends and friends of friends reached out to accommodate me, I had to choose, and determined this by proximity of their homes to downtown Chicago. I don't drive yet, and would not want to be cooped up because of hefty transit costs.

I am going to Chicago.

I am going to absorb and to interact with the energies of the masses of people flowing by.

I am going to say, Chicago, here I am.

I am present.

I am going to look at Harpo towers and say, Oprah, I been seen you all these years on TV, and Now, here I am. I don't need to write you long distance letters. I am touching this space. I am worthy of this space.

I am going to take Omi to see Obama's house and tell her, nyathi, here it is, here you are, just like him. There is nothing to hold you back.

There is nothing to hold us back.

We are present.

We are ready.