Feb 19, 2019
Photographed and edited by Konate Primus
My brother and I took these photos March 15, 2017, my Grandma Flossie’s 93rd birthday. I was just a few months fresh from my 2016 trip, still feeling like my heart was in Senegal.
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Photographed and edited by Konate Primus
My brother and I took these photos March 15, 2017, my Grandma Flossie’s 93rd birthday. I was just a few months fresh from my 2016 trip, still feeling like my heart was in Senegal.
This was a good day. I’d spent the weekend in Rufisque. Me and Moussa, Mame Oulimata’s last son, walked from Mame Oulimata’s house in Arafat, all the way to Mame Fat Seck’s house in Thiawuleen. Since I arrived in Rufisque I had been so in love with the colors and the construction of this beautiful mosque just across from the beach, down the road from Mame Seck’s house. I passed it so many times but always forget to take pictures. So this day I made sure to stop and I’m glad I did. This is one of my favorite pictures from the whole trip. Right after we took these pictures we had lunch with Mame Oulimata and it was hands down the best thieboukethia of my life. THE BEST!!!
PS. I didn’t plan to match the mosque, but I really nailed it lol.
Spritus
When I was in 9th grade, for our first schoolwide assembly, we sat in the chapel, and our Head of Upper School gave this speech about “Spiritus”. I don't think he knew that almost 10 years later it would still be ringing in all of our ears.
I think about my first day in a private high school, how unsure I was, how foreign my environment had suddenly become. To go from my public K-8 elementary and junior high school where I knew just about every teacher and student, located just two blocks from my Crown Heights home where I’d lived since I was 2, to this hour long bus ride into Bay Ridge, with new peers and teachers many of whom did not look like me, talk like me, many who didn't think like me. At the time “spiritus” was just a long winded speech that didn't seem like it had much to do with anything. Maybe it was all my angst, maybe I was too young.
Today I think about what Spiritus means and I understand. Spiritus, the latin word for breath, is also the root word for inspire, perspire, respire and so on. To breathe, in a literal sense, is one of our most basic human functions. Its an autonomic nervous response, one that is not necessarily controlled by a conscious effort to do so. As long as we have breath, we have life. If our ability to breathe determines whether or not we are alive, breath is more than just a physical action of filling and releasing our lungs with air. To inspire, scientifically means to inhale, or breathe in, while in its colloquial, more figurative definition means to arouse a feeling or thought. To inspire feeling or thought, is to breathe life. To perspire, or sweat, to work strenuously, is to have life. Without inspiration, the thoughts and feelings that excite us into action, that drive us to perspire and work hard in the name of dedication to our passions, whether it be ensuring the security of your family life, or pursuing a creative goal that gives fulfills your sense of purpose. Your breath, determines your heartbeat, which pumps your blood, your purpose through your entire being.
When Bud Cox took to that podium and told us to think about what spiritus meant to us, I had no idea that here in 2016 I would understand perfectly the seamless interdependent nature between breath and life. What is your inspiration? What gives you life? What ignites your sense of purpose? Why are you here? Do you listen to your spirit when its asking you to follow your inspiration? For me, my sense of purpose comes from dance, and I am so grateful that life has allowed me to follow my inspiration, from since before I knew it was my inspiration. So i ask you, my treasured reader, to takeout least one big breath today and as you fill your lungs, I hope you feel inspiration and purpose pumping through your veins, because that is your life force!
When the thieboudjenne is hitting just right😂😭
This is what I love to do.
Choreography by Fatouseck Primus
Xew Ci (The Wedding)
I’m putting together a production in the spring 2017 where I will showcase a compilation of choreography and music composition in the Senegalese and Malian tradition, entitled Xew Ci (The Wedding). I am super excited and hope to use this blog to build interest and track my progress!