#OCCUPY PARLIAMENT: Finding Self in the Collective

I have only been back in Nairobi for nearly three months now. It has been an interesting journey. From settling into a new job to having to find new friends, I have realized that either something has changed in Kenya or something has majorly shifted in me and the way I think of social relations. If the latter is the case, then I guess this should be understandable. I mean, com’on, who lives in South Africa and goes home the same? There is something about Johannesburg/Jo’burg/Jozi/ Egoli that just seems to allow for self-evaluation, self-discovery and all manners of self-things that may not be exactly open to public interpretation. So, yes, I am back in Kenya after more than six years.

I am different. I have been different for a while in fact.

Having left the country immediately after my undergraduate studies, you can imagine what has happened to my social life. I have no friends. But how is that possible for someone who was born in Kenya, grew up in different parts of the country and has family living in Nairobi? Is it even possible? May be it’s just that old age pattern that Kenyans who live outside the country –by the way being in Kampala for two weeks included– have formed. They come back with accents (except when they are from India), they dress differently, they don’t speak sheng anymore and they want to act like they are only visiting Kenya. Could that be what is happening to me? Where are my friends? How come they don’t want to hang out like we did before? No, I know my friends just too well; they wouldn’t do that to me. I mean, while I was away they always posted on my Facebook wall (that wicked cyber-place) about how much they missed me and how much they wanted to see me once I get back into the city! Well, this is the proverbial will with no way.

But I get them. I totally do. I mean they have kids now. They have jobs too. One of my friends even tells me that she has to ask for ‘permission’ from Baba B, also known as ‘my husband’ to join me for a Tusker baridi. Tjo! So, in my feeling lonely and isolated, I have taken to finding company on Twitter (disturbingly addictive & often fascist). I have this thing about civil action and I try as much as I can to partake in processes of protest and all sorts of direct action. But my kind of activism seems to have matured with time. From being a professional heckler to a now more analytical toyi-toyi-er, I am desperate for change. Change for hawkers. Change for sex workers. Change for women. Change for intersex persons. Change for differently-abled persons. Just change. Justice for everyone. The whole lot of us. And thanks to dear darling Twitter, I stumble upon #OccupyParliament and there I found it, just a few days before the agreed date, May 14^th 2013. I found something that excites me. It is in Nairobi. I am in Nairobi. 

I strongly believe that Kenyan Members of parliament should not earn more than the Salaries and Remuneration Commission has allocated them. I think they are being too arrogant to want to disband the Commission. In fact, they shouldn’t even think of it. That would be unconstitutional. I want to ‘occupy parliament’. They must see us. They must hear us. We are marching for economic justice. So, #OccupyParliament it is. I will meet all these like-minded folks who believe in direct action. I will stop thinking Jozi and all the possible protests. I will not wish, at least for today, that I was in Jozi for Iranti-Org-led IDAHOT event on May 17^th. 

I will be Kenyan. At least for a day. Today.

Insecure

This is not the first time that I summon my heart
And I know I will do it tomorrow
Or may be not.
But that is just okay.

You see my heart has been in a constant whine
About all sorts of disatisfactions and lacks
my heart has been torturing me about my lack of eloquence
In whichever language

But how am I to say a thing
When I don't know how it is going to be
If only when I try to fix things, they became better
If only I was certain of how others feel
And if only people believed what I say
may be then, only then, I'd speak

Today at the meeting I told my heart to diss the nag
Because I would like to just reconnect
With the drops of rain hitting my roof so hard
I just want to rub my dog by the belly
And count the falling strands of his fur 
Quietly

And in my silence I want to find myself
That old self that used to know 'I don't care'
I want to reconcile with that tongue
That first taught me to say 'No'
And together we can drop my heart at the panelbeaters

But I know this will not happen
At least not now. may be not soon.
For I know that I don't know how to be amorist especially with them
I worry 
about death
about pain
about life
about them
more...

And even without listening to my nagging heart
I am insecure
And that is perfectly okay
We wait!

A Slice of Death

Why do you beat me up

If you are going to kill me

Anyway?

The kicks, whips, blows, slaps

keep coming. Flooding.

And bit by bit I have died

I have been dead to you

To myself

A part of me dies

Everyday.

So why don't you just kill me

Why must I die by the slice?

Why don't you do something else?

I wanna die. Once. And now.

You will kill me

Anyway.

Dear Heart

Today you are gonna sit here

Still. Silent. Only watching

Today you will try to get out of yourself

Gagged. Unable to speak

And in your silence you'll realise

That palm leaves aren't exactly linear and green

As you take your last step off the stoep

You'll erase that imaginary demarcation

Between the natural and that which art has made

And concrete will become a simulated whole

Of small stones beaten into partiality by water from below

And the blue summer skies that you see will soon be lost

In the greyness of rain clouds now in the horizon

Dear heart

Today you will just sit there

Not saying a word

And of course not dying

Let's see, dear heart

What  woould happen if you were to watch

Without a word

These white rose flowers blooming

Held by dying stems

Whose greenness coils away

Waiting for sunset

Later

We shall have this conversation

Just me and you

Mina

Nawe

Nje!

Dangerous Wellness

For those of us who understand the brain

and the mind

Us who live in deficits and excesses

A feeling of wellness is not just that

Feeling dangerously well cannot last

In the too-muchness of our state

We know the excesses of excess

And we have come to live in fear

Of something awful

Happening

We wait

CAUTION: WOMEN CROSSING THE LINE

Heeeelllllooooooo!

I have not blogged in such a long time I feel like I might need an introduction (again!). But no, I choose  to not introduce myself because my feminist energy is wrecking havok inside me and somehow if I waste another minute she might just get out of my stomach and slap me on the face. My feminist rogue? Mmmmmh, I love her, she understands the power of disobedience.

So, here I am sitting at a conference room for the fourth day in a row surrounded by a group of feminists from across a number of countries in Southern Africa: Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Swaziland. Oh yea, the conspicuous absence of South African participants is rather interesting and exciting for me. One, South Africa needs to  back off sometimes because even with feminists we often internalize hegemonic modes of self-assertion that could be translated as selfish, cultic or outright arrogant. I am glad that there are no South African organisations as participants at this school/workshop.  It helps to imagine how much a strategy of exclusion could possibly prove beneficial to grassroots feminist movement-building processes. Have I lost you already? Helllloooo my South African feminists! This is me sending you feminist love and solidarity. Ok, as you were! :) :) Yes, thank you so much JASS (Just Associates ) for not bringing us in. Oh I fast forwarded there; the second reason I am glad that South Africa is missing from this process is that this opportunity has afforded me honorary South African status! Hey Home Affairs, can you hear me??? I am South African, even if for five days :)

Seriously now, I will avoid all the exclamation marks, smiley faces and blah blah blah. I have listened, in the past few days, to stories of HIV and/AIDS-related experiences of sisters from Malawi. Stories that very strongly illustrate the power of (self-)forgiveness, the power of narrative, the power of a collective, the power of.....I am hearing power all over, all around me. I have heard women from Zambia and Zimbabwe mention parts of the female body that many would consider taboo. Vagina, my vagina, a woman's vagina....uhhhhh this naming is as important as the taking ownership of our bodies. Name it, claim it, re-claim it, own it, use it...Become your vagina, become your body, become a woman, become you. BECAUSE YOU ARE!  I hear the voice of Swati young girls who have figured out the KINGDOM and the space that patriarchy allows this small but mighty kingdom to subjugate women. WoW, hell knows I love women. No, I love feminists!

Please don't ask me how I ended up here...let's just say that the Feminist Goddess Universe knew I needed this!!! Yet another woman that I love soooo deeply! So my feminist goddess did send JASS to find me and find me Anna et al did :-)  I know what I am here to do though, well at least according to my contract with JASS not what I have chosen to do beyond that. I am here to document this process and eventually come up with a report (the boring part)...you know why I hate poverty? Never mind.

I have to go peeps but one last thing: it is hard to document and have to restrain yourself from participating in something so cloooose to your personhood. To your politics. I care about climate change but I bet you it would be easier for me to be comfortable with non-participation at a Global Warming Conference! By naming myself a feminist, I share in the vision of all these women. I share in the vision of JASS. I share in the freedom of women from all forms of oppression. I commit to find Patriarchy behind every dark corner it hides in. I commit to unmask and expose patriarchy. Today. Tomorrow. Everyday. I AM A FEMINIST. BODY, MIND AND SOUL.

One Day you will Read about this Place

I know I will be gone then
My head will have strung itself to my feet
I will have walked miles with my heart
When you start the first chapter

One day you will read about this place
A place never written about
The place I wrote in my head
While you were away I thought
I want you to read about this place

You will read about a place
That I have been to all this while
A place you will never get to
But a place I know all about
Because I created this place

One day you will read about this place
In my absence you will feel the gap
The gap that never was
When I first wrote the preface
A gap that now sits on the blurb

And while you read about this place
I will sit in your head all along
Begging your mind to rewind
What you have been force fed
Before you read about this place

One day you will read about this place
Between your soul and your nails
You will find your heart trapped
In a web of sisal and spaghetti
All dipped in your mustard sauce

When you read about this place
Dare not mention my name
For my veneration isn't yours
Though we shared a sliced heart
While I wrote about this place