#za trip

[fvckcolonialism]

Notes in the wake of the news of Stephanie Hick’s alleged suicide in police custody and the deaths of Philando Castile and Alton Sterling by the hands of police back in the US. Written during our meeting with the activits from the Unemployed People’s Movement in Grahamstown. These notes were taken with a lot on my mind. Really, it was just an attempt at leveling my own feelings regarding the heaviness of the day, which included these deaths, as well as watching the play Tshepeng, in a grossly limited summation, it was a play about child rape is South Africa. Heavy day. My thoughts here reflect my largely my own pessimism and frustration, through free-written poetry. It’s currently unedited and so much of my raw emotion given words, that it seems better to say, nodding to the South Africa writer James Matthews, that these notes are truly a gathering of feelings. Here they are.

[fvckcolonialism]

Journal 10

So, we made it to Grahamstown and the National Arts Festival. So far, we’ve seen two productions: A musical and a dance production. The first show we saw was Sold! By  Themba Mbuli which was a collaborative dance performance that included sound and spoken text to in English and I don’t know the other language spoken. It was a fantastic piece, though, admittedly I had some trouble getting in to. It was hard to place where and when the narrative is established in modern dance pieces at times. The performance was a conversation between the dancers, I believe 6 or 7 women and 2 men, and the skulls of the unnamed dead of the German colonial genocide in Namibia, 20 of which were taken from Namibia for “science”. The Germans wished to prove racial superiority by studying the remains. When the remains finally returned to Namibia (at the beginning of the show) an elaborate ritual is performed that evokes a conversation with the spirits of the dead, represented in the skulls. The entire show seemed, to be a prolonged process of mourning, closure, and reclaiming the dead. It also worked to express the hardships that come from a history of colonization and war, particularly these put on women, who give life only to watch it snatched away—their own or their children’s--, then, they are expected to shoulder all that weight and carry on. I wish I could see it twice. I would be able to better articulate the entirety of the piece. There was so much said in the movement, and the spoken text just blew me away. I hear the echoing of statements like, “I don’t want to die a photograph. I don’t want to Die a postcard. I don’t want to die with my hands up or my legs open” Speaking to the injustice of the past and the present where women are killed, sometimes nameless, reduced to photos, killed and/or raped by police and soldiers. One line that I will never forget, during one monologue, a performer read a spoken word piece and said, “the memory says let us go / the massacre says remember us / the blood says the graveyard is no place for healing” Wow. I wish I could see the performance again or get a hold of the text. There were several points of spoken text which elevated the performance even higher than what the incredible choreography had already done. 

This performance excited me about the power and versatility of story telling. I enjoy spoken word because for me, it combines poetry with performance, it takes recitation a step further. It’s a kind of theatrics, dependent equally on the body as it is on the voice. Of course it could lend itself to dance! I’ve seen it before, by the Haley House Slam Team, Boston, MA reigning 2015 National Poetry Slam, Individual World Poetry Slam, and Women of the World Poetry Slam champions. Check out their group piece here Grinding : x So, now I’m thinking of greater ways my writing could deliver a message, I could give it a greater, more dynamic body than my own. I could put it on a stage, I could have it speak alongside a narrative of the bones and flesh and breath of a dance troupe. I could simply write a poetry-play. I play on seeing Ntsiki Speaks tomorrow night, which is a one women Poetry play. This is an intriguing medium I want to see explored. When I do, I’ll surely write you all about it. Keep an eye out :)

[fvckcolonialism]

Journal #...

A return to reflections, with a line in my head: “Everything is Near and Unforgotten.”-- Paul Celan This quote introduced Tarfia Faizullah’s inaugural poetry collection Seam, a work exploring the tragic and destructive 1971 Bangladeshi Liberation War which resulted in the rape of between 200,000 to 400,000 women, through chronicling the stories of the Birangona, the women survivors of the war. The collection used the elaborate, evolving metaphor of the Seam which connected Tarfia, a Bangladeshi American women, with this history of her people, which previously to her travels to Bangladesh she only connected with through the stories of her mother and grandmother. This quote resonates with me through my travels in South Africa as I think about the connection I have and lack with the people here whom I consider, my people. I reflected on this more and more after our discussion with Ashraf Cassiem, a local activist working with the Western Cape, Anti Eviction Campaign. During our discussion, he called us out for being students learning how to enter and operate in the global capitalist system. For some of the students this came with slight offense as they considered themselves fervently against capitalism. My gut response was to feel the same, but then I realized that he was speaking a fact about the system in which we were socialized, not attacking our socio-political beliefs. This is to say, that in America, from a young age we are taught that the purpose of grade school is to get into college in order to secure a job in the labor market and thus build a life. What must be acknowledged is that the American capitalist-industrial complex is a global institution that systematically oppresses and exploits people across the world. By entering into this system, we as individuals actively, and in some ways passively, perpetuate this system.  This is why I’m reflecting on the Paul Celan quote and Seam; there is a global interconnection of all people. What we do and don’t do here, what we fight for or ignore, has real world effects in other places. With that in mind, I can’t justify to myself any one reason for not acting against injustice and oppression. Still, I fear complacency, the dimming of the flame of struggle. I am anxious about which battle to fight and when and how, I still need to survive (work), go to school, take care of myself. It’s so much to take on but people have done it with less. So again, I find I have no excuse. This is interesting, because in my mind, it still plays somewhat into the”American Savior” narrative, but only if I go about this wrong way. The question now is how I effectively enact change in my own home and around the world? I think firstly, it will be a matter of discussion, learning from people like Ashraf, Niren, and Richard on their individual impacts. Secondly, it will take thinking creatively. There  is a sore need for innovation in the struggle against injustice, compromise only suits the middle class and sustains the upper classes, war seems infeasible, because the people don’t have the firepower. SO what can we do?? I’m thinking. I’m thinking.

[fvckcolonialism]

There is so much to talk about.  I think I’ll begin with my initial aspirations for this trip involving my own evolution as a poet. I thought, I’d be more heavily invested in writing poetry to document my experience. Instead, it’s been mostly these journals and that’s alright. I managed to supplement my desire for poetic expression in other ways, I bought several books, found 2 open mics, performed in one of them, and received several recommendations for other books and artists to look into. As I remarked to my friend Wesley, in an attempt to articulate the complex feelings arising from our conversations with Ashraf Cassiem and watching the documentary Dear Mandela for the first time, that in studying resistance and apartheid, my thoughts have gravitated around my own position in the resistance movements of the world. I feel like I have not been doing enough. I feel that I want to do more. I know I do. I’ve been stifled by complacency, by fear of putting my neck on the line, by feeling inadequate and ill equipped. 

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A new day, fresher thoughts on the subject: Affirmation. What I’ve tried to articulate was the pressing anxiety arising from wanting to join the movement. Fight for something. This was hard to say? somehow. I doubt myself, so I don’t want to make the claim and not live up to it. I recognize the nature of a flame,  to burn and burn out. It’s conviction I fear I don’t have. I feel confronted with a choice that will define me and wow...I’m scared and excited. I want the frustration and the outrage and pride and joy to manifest into something more. Being here crystallized that feeling in me. I want to enact change in a meaningful and  I need to be so much more creative and committed to my principles-- I need to solidify those as well. I’d shame my father to join a fight and not know what I’m fighting for. 

[fvckcolonialism]

Journal Entry #4

Good morning everyone! I overslept an have about thirty minutes reflect on yesterday and get dressed and get breakfast before church so we’re hitting the highlights!

Briefly, oh my  dear lord what we’ve been lucky to see of thiscountry is damn damn damn gorgeous. The landscape just rolls with color. The water is gorgeous, the mountains are breathtaking the architecture is so stylish. Having drove along the coast to get to cape point, I wish I had a go pro to record every vista. I found myself searching for any poem that would come and nothing. i was fine with that. Writing poetry about landscape is not usually my go to. I’m beyond happy I was able to experience any of it. Aside from the beauty of the days excursion, I will note, if I haven’t already that the food here is delicious; the AfricaCafe was an experience :)

There was so much more to the day and when I finally upload pictures, you all, who visit this blog that are not already on the trip with me will see that.

Before the beautiful trip to Cape Point we sat in on June Bam’s lecture on the history and contemporary experience of the Khoisan people. She spoke about thee identity, heritage, and culture of the indigenous people of South Africa; how those things were rewritten, in and out of history, claimed and reclaimed at different points in South AAfrica’s history. What stuck with me the most was how she and others were trying to reassert their Khoisan identity and claim it once again. It is being done through language, in song in particular. She mentioned that a part of the Khoisan revivalist movement has been to Occupy the Castle and teach classes on the ancestral Khoisan languages so that people who want to learn about thier history and culture from the heart of it, the language, they can.This is important and powerful to me, as a writer, because my whole art, expression, occupation is with language. It is at once devastating to hear about the suppression of a people -- the loss of their language because to speak it during Apartheid would be to risk becoming a 4th class citizen and uplifitng to hear that they are reclaiming it through the ancestral hymns of their own religion(s). This is a wonderful segue into our trip today to a township church. I’m very much looking forward how worship is conducted by some in South Africa.More on that later! gotta run. :)

[fvckcolonialism]

Pre Departure Journal Entry #1a

As I as shared my excitement with others about this trip, I’ve come to think some on other people’s perceptions and experiences in South Africa. Many have noted how visibly stratified the country is. I understand with the quite recent end to apartheid that much of the social repair work has been slow if moving at all. With that in mind, I am a bit concerned and a little curious how the history of racism in this country might impact me, overtly or subtly, as a Black American. Even so, I am very excited to go and experience the country’s history and culture. I’m eager to study the history of resistance on that soil, because I’ve come to see resistance as something part and parcel of the Black experience, anywhere really. Langston Hughes once reflected on the Blues, noting that the music was the ‘tom-tom beat of a people that struggled and kept on living’. I think the spirit of the Blues, in that vein, is also quite alive in Native South Africans. To that note, I’m looking forward to be surprised by the music there! Specifically, the muffinz. I’m on the fence about checking out their music now or wanting to completely surprised by their sound. Luckily I have a few weeks to decide. I’ve said this a thousand times in passing: it doesn’t feel real yet. With little more than 12 hours before departure, I’m finally finalizing my departure gear. Next journal entry, I’ll be in South Africa.

p.s. 10.24.16 “of the Black experience” is clearly an essential  notion. What I am speaking of is the wealth of history that’s involved resistance by the collective body of the Race, thus creating a tangible narrative of resistance which can be traced through said history by virtually any Black person.