Iskushuban

If you think Iskushuban sounds like the name of a dark prince in a Middle Eastern romance, you are not alone. If Wikipedia is anything to go by, this small town in North Western Somalia is a place worth visiting for its natural beauty. I am curious to see what a place with such an impossibly romantic name looks like.Visiting Ishkushuban on my bucket list.

***

But I have been to Mogadishu. In the five days I was there I became acquainted with the perimeter wall of the guesthouse. Daily I heard the shouts of workers hauling wet concrete up eight floors. They are making what might become an office tower across the road from the guesthouse. The concrete was in small buckets passed hand-to-hand up eight stories. One morning the electrician was trying to repair something at the junction box. He must have tripped some wires, for soon after there was a swooshing explosion as the junction box caught fire. We used the only fire extinguisher we had to put out the fire. It took several bursts of chemical powder before the fire was under control. The electrician was wearing laundry gloves when doing his work. It reminded me of visiting a friend's house in Nairobi for dinner. My friend forgot a pot of oil on the cooker. Soon the oil caught fire. Her husband rushed in and poured a glass of water on the burning oil. Swoosh!

I heard one gunshot during the five days. It was a policeman controlling traffic. There were no injuries or fatalities during the shooting. I am told this method of controlling traffic is fairly common in the city. In other places they use a whistle. Two days before I arrived, a businessman was assassinated in curious circumstances. Three weeks before I went to Mogadishu, a Kenyan businessman was assassinated in Nakuru.

In Mogadishu I had ate the best fish I've had in a long time. 

While I was there my period came early; way early. Talk of being vulnerable in a strange city. The women rallied around me and provided my for my need. 

The normalcy of life - people laughing, eating, loving, building - in such a dangerous city  gave my expectations a headspin. I am not sure that I am ready to go shopping in downtown Mogadishu (I confess I don't even know where that is). I tend to go into cities expecting to have my worst fears and/or best hopes confirmed. But in Mogadishu I was refreshed by the details of people's being. Just being.

Birdfall (or, who determines our agenda?)

The National Geographic (October 2012) reports that China legally bought 73 tonnes of ivory from Africa in 2008. In 2011, poaching reached the highest levels since the 1989 ban in ivory trade. A single tusk can fetch up to USD 6,000, providing a strong incentive for the poor and criminals. We must urgently take back the driver's seat in setting our own human development agenda.

Birdfall

The next someone says the sky is falling

I shall be more inclined to listen,

because this morning I saw a strange thing happen.

I saw a bird fall onto the tarmac, and I promise you it wasn’t dead.

We might say it hit the ground flying.

I don’t know any more if it’s true: that only dead birds fall to the ground.

Here we don’t cry wolf, because the wolves were wiped out with the smallpox.

And the African painted wild dogs are nearly extinct.

Soon we won’t be able to cry anything at all –

not lion, not leopard.

Certainly we won’t be able to say, I was chased by a rhino on the way to work.

But that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.

The sky is falling. The air cannot hold the birds.

Cities are crumbling, even as skyscrapers go up.

Our stories are about extinction and eradication.

We can’t speak of miracles; such as birds defying buoyancy.

That would be mere superstition. If we insisted that it happened,

some more research would be required.

The research consortium would then patent

the gene that causes live birds to fall from trees.

When the right hand is trying to breed back the wolves,

the left hand is holding workshops about development infrastructure.

The rhino keepers dart, dehorn, and then decry the waste.

Have you ever seen a lump of rhino rotting?

While the cameras flash, the horn makes it way to Asia.

The technology is assembled in Asia.

Part of our development is built on cadavers.

Me, I’m keeping my eyes open. There might be other birds falling.

Maybe this not such a rare phenomenon.

I want to hear what earth might be telling me.

I might to catch a new idiom; speak in tongues.

The accidental minimalist

In July 2012 I sold all my household stuff save for:

• Some linen (my 280 thread count bedsheets and a pair of curtains)
• Books
• Art (I turned down many offers)
• Johari's bed and toys
• Work tools (computer and backup drive)
• Two cabinets, one of which is an antique piece

I was able to scrape together some money for further studies abroad. In a totally unexpected turn of events, my visa application was turned down. I'd given up my apartment as well. I had already resigned from work, and was therefore jobless and without an address. That's an interesting place to be when you have been used to a certain level of financial and social independence. Even if I had been able to have my apartment back, it would have been rather echo-ey, with nothing but the art on the walls. A good friend offered to house us while I figured out what to do next.

The bed I sleep on, the cup I drink tea from, the chair I sit on...all belong to someone else.

Depending on another person for a roof over my head was the scariest part. And strangely too, it has turned out to be one of the best experiences in terms of letting go and letting other touch me. I feel more meaningfully connected, perhaps because I am so aware of others looking out for me. I think this is one of the reasons why embracing minimalism (intended or accidental) can be so powerful: it frees up time that can be invested in relationships. Other opportunities have included rediscovering pleasure in small tasks such picking up the laundry and learning new recipes. 

I stumbled upon the minimalists blog this week; it has become a source of inspiration. Reading the blog has helped me consolidate my thoughts about the place of material possessions in my life and identity. After all didn't Jesus say that a person's life should not consist in the abundance of possessions?

I shall not buy new stuff for the next ten months. I shall most likely take up a new apartment (looking for a roommate) and borrow necessities. Earlier this year I blogged about living on little more than hand luggage. I have lived out of two suitcases for a month. I have been OK so far. I am scared of being without things. At the same time I am excited to see what will come out of my situation: how my community will receive  my need not to buy things: how much time I shall save from not worrying about things, what new dimensions will be forged in my relationships, and how my perspective will be shaped by having only what is strictly necessary.

I even sold my camera. Now, that I really miss.

A culinary look at Kenya's political economy

Pat-a-cake: a Kenyan adaptation
Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker's man
Bake me a cake, with my neighbour's flour
I'll eat it, and have it, and grab someone else's
And put them in a Swiss Bank, for my descendants and me.

Saying goodbye when you never really left

Weird is a place inhabited by dreams in which the past, the present and the future intermarry to create rainbows in the night. It is a place you can explain only to yourself and God; a place known to refuse to go away no matter how hard you ignore it. Sometimes, it seems to me, the harder you ignore it the bolder it becomes.

***

I grew up in a small rural village in Nyeri, a place as beautiful as dreams. I have pictures to prove it.

 

The mountain air is thin and the sunshine like skimmed milk. During the cold season your shins feel like steel rods. I was young and trousers for girls were considered a decadent city thing. People have moved on, I am happy to note. The cold season lasts three months, but it comes right after the rainy season, so often there are four to five months of drizzle per year. The hills wear a cloak of fog, and wood fires never die out. The rest of the year is pure heaven. The peaks of the Nyandarua Range (some Bristish person stole the name and replaced it with Aberdare after a place in distant Scotland) seem to be at hand’s reach. On the other side Kirinyaga shines like the mountain of God, standing guard over the Naromoru plains.

Overlooking the plains

 When my parents uprooted us from Nyeri and planted us in Laikipia district, I was too young and naïve to understand the impact of my departure. Soon thereafter I left my parents new home for university and the rest of my life. But my heart never really left the little village. Every year I’d promise myself to return and reconnect with friends and relatives. My body had been translocated, but my roots clung to the fertile red soil, straining my sense of place in indelible ways, ways I began to identify when I went to university. At first when I was asked where I came from, I hesitated. I’d give a two-pronged answer: my parents live in Laikipia but I grew up in Nyeri. After living in Nairobi for about seven years the answer became: Nairobi is my home, I grew up in Nyeri, but my parents live in Laikipia.

A mouthful, I know.

My old primary school

 

In Kenya it seems everyone must have an ‘upcountry’ origin. It is a part of your identity. So, are people whose parents were born in urban areas devoid of roots? What will my daughter identify as her real home, with all these locales striving for a piece of my heart? Urban dwellings are largely considered transient and lacking in the essence that turns a house into a home.

*** 

About ten years after my parents moved, I started having dreams in which I’d be walking on the vistaed hills and enjoying the views. Fourteen years after the move, I went back for a cousin’s wedding. I remember the cold. It whistled through my skirt and tights and became a palpable presence in my fingers and toes. Not the nicest of days to try and reconnect with a place you never really lost. The resolve to return became stronger; the dreams more persistent. They’d sneak up on me every few months; so vivid that I could feel the chilly air searing my lungs.

One night in 2012 I had an elaborate dream featuring a massive construction project at an elevation we used to call ‘Kwa Mhindi’. I decided I’d had enough.  

One of the peaks of Nyandarua

Over Easter I was visiting family at the outskirts of Nyeri town. I requested my sister babysit my daughter. When I got into the matatu, there was a sense of being planted back into the dreams that had plagued me. I walked up the elevation that stands halfway between the shopping centre and the Gakanga Forest. It was punishing, healing, cleansing trudge. People looked at me funny as I took pictures, which made feel conscious of being an intrusion into a languid Sunday afternoon.

The hike knocked the wind out of me. I’d forgotten how steep the hills are. It is not possible to experience level ground for more than 100 metres at a time. I lost the agility with which I navigated the slippery valley paths more than twenty years ago.

I didn’t tell any of the family where or why I was going. Weird is when you go to reconcile with a place rather than a person.

I haven’t had another dream.

A hairy anecdote

The other day I decided to go for a drastic new look. Please revise your expectations downwards -- there was no mohawk or purple hair dye involved. Purple hair is to my mind the ultimate expression of courageous fashion. A little higher up on that scale than the small things Nairobi girls wear in July. The day I dye my hair that colour, watch out, world.

My first new look lasted eleven days. I went to a little place by Adam's Arcade that a friend had recommended. The lady at the salon wrapped braid extensions around small plats to create a dreadlocks lookalike. It was pretty cool, I thought, but by day three, the 'dreds' at the back of my head were falling off. I decided to go to one of my two regular platting ladies for a remake. As I walked in the door she told me she had to run off for a doctor's appointment (thanks for telling me in advance!) and handed me over a colleague. I judge hairdressers by their gentleness. Let's just say, that colleague is not coming near my head again. Two nights of cradling my head in my hands to sleep reminded me why I only let two women do my braids.

Down came the 'dreds'. In went chunky kinky braids. They are pretty funky, if I say so myself.

After the pain of pulled-tight follicles was over, it was time to try wearing clothes with a regular neckline. Into my dress went flailing arms and what felt like a wooly medusa. Half a minute of wiggling and twisting and I was ready to face the world!

Are you considering kinky braids? Rethink whether you want to wear your LBD while you have them.

'Sometimes'

Sometimes things don’t go, after all,
from bad to worse. Some years, muscadel
faces down frost; green thrives; the crops don’t fail.
Sometimes a man aims high, and all goes well.

A people sometimes will step back from war,
elect an honest man, decide they care
enough, that they can’t leave some stranger poor.
Some men become what they were born for.

Sometimes our best intentions do not go
amiss; sometimes we do as we meant to.
The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow
that seemed hard frozen; may it happen for you.

By a certain poet (not me)

The colours in our blood

(a critique of the rhetoric behind the colours of the Kenyan flag. To be read alongside Jerry Riley and Stephen Derwent Partington)

Painter: Your colour is black.

Wanjiku: The whole lot of us –

From the brown Wataita;

Chocolate Patels;

Yellow-yellow Waswahili;

To light as milk McIntyres?

Painter: McIntyre? Patel? Kenyan?

Think again. They were not born here.

Wanjiku: You mean they can’t trace the exact burial spot

Of their forebears six generations back? –

The way you can?           

Painter: I won’t argue with you.

          Moving on, red.

Generous swathes of crimson for the blood shed;

The price of independence.

Wanjiku: But that is so old! We have new stories to celebrate!

Painter: Old? You must never forsake your past, carved out with machete and home-made gun.

Wanjiku: As if I could, the way you rub it in my face.

Couldn’t red also mean the passion;

The fire forged every morning in Kibera, in Turkana

To make today a better day?

But since you will have blood,

Mention the violence in our homes 

and our machines of death

decorating the highways

with shattered limbs and broken lives.

Painter: You feel too much.

You question too much.

You believe too much.

Only I have answers; only I know the future.

And now to green:

O, majestic mountains and pristine forests!

Wanjiku: Really; where?

          Green turned to grey while you were sleeping.

City skies, burning slums, and chemical rivers.

I’ll take some brown for the desert cycles of flood and famine;

Tally the poor who starve annually.

Put our red-hot devotion to work; see the green return.

Painter: Your stubbornness doesn’t move me.

I must deliver the full lesson, as I was paid to do.

(God knows I deserve a raise).

SIT DOWN and listen!

White is the gentle dove of peace dusting this nation

With golden omens of prosperity.

Wanjiku (Yawning): I could fall asleep from your bad poetry.

I won’t let you infect me with your numbness.

(Walking out) I will take white for the hope in our faces;

A blank white slate handed

To every citizen,

On which to dream our identity.

I might just paint the whole thing white,

Except, white is just one colour.

Give me nuance, give me tertiary colours,

Give me love, give me a rainbow.

Blood and supper

There has been a blast/earthquake/fire/traffic accident. The media rushes in after the paramedics/fire engine/rescue services. In the breaking/evening news there is a clip of a lone unconscious man with a bloody bandage over his right eye. His trousers are still on him. They look like military camouflage, only red.

He has been wounded in someone else's battle.

Does this happen in other places too, or only here: hapless bodies filmed and their wounds archived for posterity without their consent? Did the now-unconscious bodies sign a release to have their stitched-up torsos photographed before oblivion came knocking? Does the journalists’ code of conduct state that when a patient is incapacitated, the duty to report trumps the patient’s right to privacy? How about conscious patients: how many know they have a right to refuse to be filmed? 

It seems that we are OK-ish with blood. Perhaps we are too OK with blood and violence. Let’s swap the unconscious bloodied man with a woman who’s given birth on the roadside. The first thing we do is smother her lower body with Khanga. We must hide the juices of her labor.  And you bet she won’t make the evening news. Birth blood is not sensational. If anything, it is a source of shame. It speaks of sloppiness, unpreparedness. A not-accident. Even though it’s been known that some babies decide to pop out at the most inopportune time. Ask Akitelek. 

Apparently not all haemoglobin is equal…

Never mind that the business of bleeding makes billions of revenue dollars for companies such as P&G, Johnson & Johnson, and many others. 

Now, I would not advocate that we flush out our sanitary towels with the same flair some do their smart phones – in the same way we wouldn’t flash our toothbrush or nail clippers. And I am not saying that menstrual blood is on the same level as mud on our shoes or curry on our shirt. Still I wonder who makes the unwritten rules about what body fluids we can watch at dinnertime.  

Woven alongside Dr. Wambui Mwangi, Akitelek Mboya, and Kati ya Wanawake.

A letter protesting the actions of Minister Liljeroth on World Art Day

Dear Ambassador Ann Dismorr,

I trust you are well. Your attention is drawn to the now very public issue/act that took place at the Moderna Museet in celebration of World Art Day. This is a letter of protest based on the following:

The depiction of a woman’s body as a consumable item

·         Enough said.

As art, it crossed several red lines

While the motive of the installation (provocation) may have been noble, the execution was wanting in several respects:

·         The ‘eating’ of a woman’s body is problematic for those of us who are against the commoditization and resultant cheapening of women’s bodies and lives.

·         The use of time-worn racist caricatures (a golliwog, disfigured African body, and cannibalism) was hardly imaginative of the artists. The endorsement of this by the Minister for Culture is, again, problematic.  

·         Was the installation meant to also depict a cannibalistic sexual rite (after all the audience ate the female figures ‘genitalia’ with glee)?

Cheapening of the horrors of FGM

·         The carving of the cake figure, much as it was intended to draw attention to the issue of female genital mutilation, ended up as an insult, humiliation and deep disrespect towards the bodies of women. That the action of slicing and eating was headed by a woman depicted absolutely no sympathy or fellow feeling for millions of black women who undergo real pain and real cutting in the process of female genital mutilation.

The obvious potential for the installation to be perceived as racist

·         While I am in no position to judge the Minister’s motives as racist, she should have known better; she should have known this awful picture would be perceived and received through the lenses of race. This is a case of inexcusably bad judgment on the part of a government official.

Depiction of Swedish people

·         That the lead person in this act was the Minister for Culture represented the people of Sweden in questionable light. I find solace in knowing there are many Swedish people who are angry about being represented this way.

I trust that your government will take appropriate action not only towards Minister Liljeroth, but most importantly, towards women throughout the world, whose bodies have been disrespected and desecrated once again in a very public manner by an individual who should have known better. An unqualified apology to from the Minister to all women, particularly black women, would be a helpful place to start.

In solidarity with woman,

Phyllis Muthoni 

Woven alongside Dr. Wambui Mwangi's Black and White and Red All Over

My favourite blogs of last week

Akitelek Mboya does this thing with words that touches all the raw and vulnerable places inside. She is able to do that without a hint of self-pity. She writes courageously. Sunny Days in Nairobi

Annette Majanja celebrates her 'Fighter' grandma. Her blog goes to show that true influence doesn't necessarily come from those with money or education. Rather, from those with the ability to see a new future and safeguard it for their children.

When women get angry, they shake the world. Women, like men, don't always do the right thing when they are angry. Do we stop and try to hear and heal one another's anger? Jean Thevenet has inspired me to stop and listen instead of judging.

Salt is like a stinging lash. So is the incisive dialogue brought to life by Nyambura Githongo in relation to the girls of Aitong Girls High School. The motivations for mortgaging our children's future are often complicated, albeit unacceptable.

Jerry Riley's photography speaks to me of depth of vision and an intimacy with his subjects that is empathetic and respectful. He is the biggest photographer of all time in my mind, because of the investment he makes in understanding and identifying.

Falling in love with a bag

Written with 'Wanjiku Travels II' and 'Wanjiku Sends a Postcard Home' in mind

Some people are morning-people. Some people are not-morning-people. The two categories are of course not as discrete as people-who-can-roll-their-tongues and those-who-can’t. Saying I am not a morning-person is somewhat of an understatement. I am likely to be the grumpiest and most disoriented before nine o’clock in the morning. When you add checking in for a flight at six A.M. into the mix, interesting things happen.

One morning in 2010 I went to the airport without my passport.

If only it was my ticket I’d forgotten! I could have talked my way into check-in using the e-ticket reference. It makes you wonder why no one has implemented an e-passport system. Until someone figures out other ways to earn money through the immigration process, maintaining the revenue stream from visas and passport fees is probably a no-brainer.

One morning in 2012 I forgot my bag in the house. I had my passport and ticket. I had four other pieces of luggage: three food packages that my colleagues had requested and my laptop bag. If we count my handbag, that makes it five.

I have been accused of having a memory like a sieve. This quality is most manifest in the morning hours. Note to self: put all the bags you need at the door before going to sleep. Alternatively, embrace forgetfulness and pay the price.

Four days and many phone calls later I picked up the missing luggage. I have never been happier to be reunited with a physical object. I wanted to hug it, but I thought the people at the airline office might get a bit confused.

There were several links in the chain: the girl from the airline who arranged to have my bag checked in as unaccompanied cargo and extended credit; the taxi driver who took my bag from the flat and delivered it to the airport; the logistics person here who arranged to have the bag cleared free of charge.  Many others are ‘invisible’ and will never receive my thanks in person.

I don’t need deodorant, body lotion...(fill in the blanks) as much as I thought  I did, and it is possible (though not necessarily desirable) to live on two pairs of shoes. The lesson reiterated through my utter dependence on other people’s generosity is that human beings are beautiful. People see God every day; they just don't recognize Him[1].  ^... but if we love one another, God lives in union with us, and his love is made perfect in us.[2]

Inspired by ‘When Wanjiku¹ Travels (II) by Jean Thevenet.

---

[1] Pearl Bailey

[2] 1 John 4:12

Previous Weaving Kenya 2012 posts

The politics of demolition

'Inflamed Words' by Sitawa Namwalie 

The Tongue 

Whitney Wanjiku Houston

Burnt Food

The Words we Use

Weaving Kenya 2012: an introduction

I believe in the power and richness of community. But I haven't experienced it as much as since joining a writing project dubbed Weaving Kenya 2012. This is a writing experiment in which a group of women artists express their vision for Kenya during what is bound to be a pivotal year in the history of our country. Some of the key developments in our public life will include:

• General election in late 2012 or early 2013
• Possible start of ICC trials
• Enactment of key public functions such as County Governments
• Possible revamp of the education system
• ...

Weaving Kenya is an exploration of what Kenya means to us in its broadest conceptualisation: colour, experience, riches, aspirations, dreams, poverty, pain, and hope. In the words of Dr. Wambui Mwangi, this exploration expressed by and through women's voices is necessary because...'it will surprise no-one if the voices that are loudest, most consistently heard and accorded the most space are repeatedly and insistently male.  Many of these voices will also be emanating from the self-same machinery of representation that predictably focuses on starving, screaming, fighting, tribal, atavistic, primitive Africa, with the equally predictable stereotypes unleashed and magnified.'

Weaving Kenya 2012 is a process of aspiring and expressing our aspirations as a community of Kenyan women enmeshed in various ways with one another and with the space known as Kenya. 

 

How does the ‘Weaving’ work? Again, Dr. Wambui Mwangi is the 'go-to' person when you want things explained.

You notice, read, look at, pay attention to, hold in your mind, incorporate, or otherwise integrate into your mind the available-on-the-internet thoughts of two women from this collective... 

You make/stage your own intervention on the internet: on your blog, your website, your facebook page, etc: wherever you usually appear. 

 

Finally, forward (in facebook lingo, 'share') the hyperlink to any two interventions (not your own) from this collective to a new space of the internet 'public'.


I start off showing my sisters' work on my new blog with Jean Thevenet's Hearth Mother. I hope to see this piece of writing grow into a novel.

So, I have started a blog

I have always been wary of blogs. I am a relatively private person, and I find blogs rather intimidating. I am a creature of two worlds: my creative work is out there in the public domain, yet my private life is known to a small inner circle.

I am an introvert, you see.

Just maybe the idea of privacy is an illusion, a bit like a curtain blowing in the wind. It gives temporary relief and distance from the world's prying eyes. But at the end of the day it is just a piece of cloth. I am happy with some illusions, and throughout my blogging life I shall pretend that I have found that imaginary line between open and private. A bit of a joke, maybe; like the international dateline.

What got me blogging, then?

Consolidation comes to mind. I have different web audiences, each of whom has a view to a part of my life. There are my poetry followers on Facebook. Jewellery customers on Jasper Creations. I have very healthy symbiotic relationships with other bloggers, such as DMKW , and Koroga II.

I love piggyback. I hope I can be the back for someone else.

And starting was easy. Such are the synergies to be found in some web platforms. Unlike a friend of mine, I won't have to worry about losing my password. Conversely, nightmare of nightmares: if my e-life was hacked into (who'd be interested - I am neither rich nor famous), a good portion of my life would be OUT THERE. In the hands of a stranger. Shudder.

***

Mbio za sakafuni huishia ukingoni.  A race on the floor finishes at the wall/edge. Everything comes to an end. 

Does it?

Na mbio za ukingoni je? How about a race on the edge of things; life on the precipice; stepping out of the boat? I might just find I can walk on water.