Rise Up, Africa

Inspired by the film 'Blood Diamond', in which Leonardo di Caprio as Danny Archer says "God left this place [Africa] a long time ago." But I know He hasn't.
(Lines 4 - 10 are lines from various African countries' national anthems)

Africa, God has not forgotten you
Rise up, Africa
God has not forgotten you
You will have a nation where peace and justice shall reign
Under your black star of hope and honour you will under God march forever more
You will again prove that truth can win after all
God will bless your land and nation and justice will be your shield and defender
Your glory will be raised high, God will hear your prayers
Your pride will be worth your esteem
The happy days of which your ancestors dreamed will come for you at last
North, South, East West,
God hasn't left you
God will forgive you
God will heal your lands and your hearts
Your minds will be made new
Your children will see all the beauty that they were destined to see
Your lands will be fruitful
Mother Africa, you are beautiful,
Your smile like the sunrise after a stormy night
And as the sun rises each day, you too will rise again
Riddled with wrinkles, your face tells a thousand tales of injustice, corruption, violence, but the sparkle in your eyes signifies hope
You are a mother who has prayed for her children
And your prayers will be answered
Africa, God has not forgotten you

El Amor Es La Palabra

So what with Valentine's Day being tomorrow, I thought I'd write about it. Go figure :)

Personally, I'm a fan of V-Day, though I've never done anything to celebrate it before (we won't talk about what happened a few years ago with some any guy, his friend, my house and monopoly lol) but it seems like a great reason to celebrate. It's all about love, right?

After doing some research, I've discovered that no-one actually knows for definite what its origins were, some seem to be pagan rituals from the era of the Roman Empire and others from the Roman Catholic Church, the most popular is the tale of the Bishop Valentine. Apparently, under the reign of Claudius the something, marriage was forbidden because this emperor believed that the reason for low recruitment to the army amongst males was because they did not want to leave their wives and children. Despite this decree against marriage, Bishop Valentine performed weddings in secret as he felt it to be of great importance. One day, he was discovered and thrown in prison and subsequently beheaded. During his time in prison however, he fell in love with the jailer's daughter and the night before he was to die, he sent her a letter which was signed 'From Your Valentine' and behold, the a tradition of being someone's 'Valentine' commenced.

Anyway, aside from tradition and these tales of old, it's still a fly day in my opinion cos it's all about LOVE. The greatest gift of all.

It's just been like a keyword of late; it feels like I never really cottoned on to how bananas love actually is! It's CRAZY. This is God's love by the way. The love through which the whole world was made. The love by which the whole world was saved. Unconditional love. Everlasting love. Overwhelming love. Mind-blowing love. Man oh man, it's a beautiful thing.

V-Day doesn't even have to be about like you and your guy or girl. If you're in a serious relationship, then obvs like, you can dedicate the day to each other, that's special lol. But if not...tell your mum you love her, tell your best friend you love him/her. Even better, tell your enemy that you love them. That'll be tough, but when you let God's love work through you and manifest to that person who you really, really don't like, it will be amazing. [Before doing this, you have to forgive them as well. Unforgiveness is a major hindrance to true love].

Also, I think it's okay to say that Jesus is your valentine, even when talking about it in a romantic sense. You're in love with him right? He is your lover. So, yeah. Makes sense to me.

Well, these were my musings on Valentine's Day. I think I'm gonna go write some sonnets :)

In preparation for reading week...

So, I headed to my uni library today in pursuit of Ntozake Shange's acclaimed play 'For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When The Rainbow Is Enuf' (I'm yet to watch the film, grr)
I found it, happy days and decided to take out the copy that included two other plays - 'Spell #7' and 'The Love Space Demands'. I noticed that I was in a pretty fly section of the library, plays and poetry and so my eyes began to wander across the shelves; drawn in by the old-school hardback and gold lettering, they stopped at 'The Collected Works of Effie Waller Smith'. I carefully pulled it out, opened to a page at random and it was filled with short poems and the line 'Our Father, whose unchanging love/ Gives soil and sun and rain.' I was sold, into my clasped arms it went, resting against the Shange play. Walked a little further down the aisle and happened upon Tennessee Williams' plays, I haven't read anything he's written which I think is terrible, and so I grabbed a title I knew well 'Cat On A Hot Tin Roof'. (Desperately wanted to see that on Broadway - Phylicia Rashaad, love her - but I missed it). This then reminded me of Langston Hughes who I love so I took out a biography of his life and his own autobiography 'The Big Sea.'

Content with my findings I proceeded to the checkout machine when my mind suddenly remembered Jeni's disso. bell hooks was someone whose essays I really needed to get my hands on, so I looked them up, wrote down the code and made my way to the 5th floor - sociology
section. On my way however, I passed world literature, sigh. I had now acquired Wole Soyinka's 'Ibadan', 'South African Short Stories' and 'Inside Black Australia - An Anthropology of Aboriginal Poetry' (Ridiculously hyped about that).

I finally make it to the 5th floor and locate all bell hooks' books. I think, okay, let me just get one cos you know, I've got enough already. But I was really struggling to chose, it didn't occur to me that I'm here for another month so I could always come back for a next one, so I got four. 'Black Looks', 'Sisters Of The Yam', Talking Back' and 'Ain't I A Woman'.

Twelve books in total. And I'm looking forward to a magnificent reading week of actually reading. (It doesn't matter that these books aren't part of my course...extra-curricular, mind-opening, all that jazz. Yeah.)

I'm yet to finish my book on The Hottenot Venus by Rachel Holmes. Brilliant by the way, highly recommended.

When we've been here ten thousand years
Bright shining as the sun.
We've no less days to sing God's praise
Than when we've first begun.

The final verse of Amazing Grace, one of the most beautiful hymns ever written.

The lyrics are so powerful, so uplifting and there's so much truth in them.

When I sing this last verse though, it's like my spirit soars.

The concept of eternity is so unbelievably difficult to comprehend, especially for our human minds where every thought we conceive, every plan we make, everything we know is constrained by time.

Then one day. BAM. Eternity. That's like forever and ever and ever.

And all our evers will be spent worshipping the Most High.

New Jerusalem, son. You wouldn't wanna be anywhere else. Seriously.

I can't wait.

Boxes

Started writing this over the Christmas and finished it this morning :)

It was really weird actually, the evening when I decided I was gonna write on this concept, I was doing some youtube poetry watching. After watching for like 40 minutes, I clicked on one vid and was like okay, after this one I musttt go and write my poem. And oh the irony, the poem I started watching was based on the same concept as my unborn poem. It was so bizarre.
I went on with the poem anyway, but I'm thinking, unintentionally, it will now have elements of the poem I watched in it. Never mind...
(It's consciously a typical 'im black(and asian) and proud/them and us' kind of poem. My views to an extent but highly exaggerated. Cheeky bit o' feminism in there too. And Christianism? :/ that doesn't exist but you know...)

Boxes.

In some respects, we are nothing but lettering and numbers on various pieces of paper and cards.
From birth certificates to passports to drivers' licenses to the forms we fill in every single time any single things happens.
Same questions.
Name. Date of birth. Gender. Race. Race.
(Although that won't be taken into account at all in the processing of this form)
Please tick the box which applies to you
Tick. The. Box.
Tick. The. Box.
How dare you try to squeeze me and my heritage into one tiny box?
Mixed: white and black.
Mixed: white and asian.
Mixed: other.
Mixed: other. Is that all I can tick to represent what I am?
The rivers that ran riot through the souls of my ancestors cannot and will not be contained by your box
The Gongola river where they washed their clothes and washed their souls and were born anew
Mass gatherings at the Ganges to soak their far from sullenly coloured saris
And give their young freedom to splash and wade as they pleased
Your box cannot and will not define me
The contours of my countries nor those of my corpus do not course in straight, angular lines, they will not fit
In fact, all of your boxes fail in their attempts to imprison me within their categories and subcategories
My female form will not be fettered
The ebbs and flos of she, the bump when life begins inside of me are not lines and right angles, they are curvaceous and round
Like the sun and the moon
Naturally in tune with nature and the natural

In actual fact I refuse to fill your forms and be filed away

Take me at face value

Look at my face and evaluate,

cos when you look into my eyes, you'll see more than could ever be imagined on a piece of paper or an electronic checkbox

Listen to my voice and let the decibles of my laughter ripple through your bones and then you;ll begin to know who. I. am.

Don't need to be packed in boxes and put in storage on the shelves of society, standing idly by as worthless as my ancestors were once said to be. I will be seen AND heard.

Four walls won't suppress me.

I'll jump out of the box, spread my wings and fly

Nothing to hide

Even better I'll soar on the wings of the Most High

And yes, I'm a Christian but that's not to say that I can be defined in a cube of stereotypes

I'm not "happy clappy" or a "bible basher" or "boring" or "restrained by the rules and regulations of my religion."

You need to unfurl the lines of this convenient little box you've put me in and gaze at the cross upon which my Saviour hung, when He personified love and became the sacrifice.

Perfection slain for my sake. And yours.

So take me and yourself out of the box that society has put you in, define yourself in Christ, look at you as you are seen through His eyes, cling to the cross, don't allow this four sided mathematical form to mould you or form you, oppress you or cause you to conform to the ways of this world.

Renew your mind, look to Christ, in Him you'll find peace of mind, while eternity awaits.

Kompelling Kitchen Konversations

Sitting in the kitchen in my halls last night, a most interesting discussion emerged between my friends and I about perceptions of beauty in relation to race; why there is (or why there used to be) so much negativity veered towards being dark-skinned and why girls who are 'lighties' get more attention. We talked about the idea of bleaching, how children are affected by society in terms of what they think about being black, who was to blame, how it could be changed. This group of friends consisted of four extremely intelligent and opinionated black girls so the conversation was...loud

We talked for a while on the stigma created amongst our peers on dark-skinned or girls or boys. Y said that she had always been the darkest of her sisters which was obvious but was never seen as a negative thing, and for this reason she never understood why dark girls didn't feel beautiful. She was mad, as were the others, at girls who would avoid jamming in the sun in summer because they didn't wanna get dark; at girls who would immediately conclude that 'she thinks she's too niceeee' just because she's light-skinned or mixed race; at boys who in their narrow mindedness only churpse 'lighties'. We talked about the diction used when discussing skin colours, 'ohh, you're lucky, your skin is ligghhttt', why was it enviable to be light? 'you're not even that dark though' as if being dark was a bad thing. A key phrase that kept popping up was 'slave mentality'. A still taboo subject. Can this generation of black people really attribute their negative or misconstrued self-image to the way their ancestors were treated during the days of slavery, institutionalized and vicious racism? I can't lie though, my mindset at times genuinely is one of inferiority. I often find myself (as discussed on twitter with jeni) trying to prove myself to white people of the older generation. I'll let them go through the door first, or pick up something they've dropped or apologise when it's in fact them that stepped on my toe. I'll talk loudly on the bus about the good university I go to, and the fact that I play classical piano or that I have a job or that I'm not promiscuous or that I go to church simply so that they don't immediately form their own negative assumptions of me. But why do I assume that that is what they are going to do? And why do I feel I have to show that I'm worthy of their approval? Sounds kinda crazy when put like that, but it is what it is. I'm essentially accepting the negative stereotype that I know is put on black people and it's not cool.

It's only even of recent that white people have wanted to be tanned! Everyone knows that back in the day to be a pale was a sign of wealth and nobility because it meant you weren't doing manual labour outside and getting beaten by the sun.

This then digressed into the mention of bleaching, something which we all find kind of appalling but essentially very sad. It brought to mind Jeni's uni project from last year on skin bleaching (jendelland.blogspot.com). We thought it madness that the connotations of being pure and wealthy and better came from having fairer skin. Think about some of the product names even... Fair & Lovely. (I haven't forgotten that Dark & Lovely is a household name)

The way in which the media affects our opinions then came up. We talked about how, when growing up, the media in every form was strongly dominated by white people. It's a lot different for children today, there a things like 'The Princess & The Frog', 'Handy Manny' - who has a fresh Latino accent lol. But there's still that ugly sentiment that lingers in the air. E's little sister, who is almost the same complexion as me, wished to be white for her 9th birthday. Apparently that wish got seckled nicely with some good old Nigerian discipline lol. A little girl in my church who is being brought up in a very affluent, white area and goes to a school where she's surrounded solely by white girls and boys, told me once that she wanted to be white...(I then proceeded to tell her that being black was beautiful of course)

Thinking back to my childhood, I wonder what kind of thoughts went through my mind. I lived in quite a working-class white area, I went to a predominantly white private school and my church was mostly 1st generation africans or west indians studying for qualifications while holding down a job. One crazy mixed-up up bringing. I guess I could never really pin one stereotype to one group having visited the humble, 2-bed houses of my neighbours and the splendid mansions (literally) of my classmates.

E then told us about a social experiment she'd once heard of where young children had two dolls in front of them and when given characteristics, had to pin them to either the white doll or the black doll. The black doll was coined as stupid, bad and poor, and the white the opposite.

Here's a link to an article on a similar social experiment...

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=7213714&page=1

(Interesting how the majority of my searches show sites from America)

Been doing some research on the topic this morning and came across a social experiement called Brown Eyes/Blue Eyes conducted by an elementary school teacher from Iowa in 1968. She split up her class between the blue eyed and the brown eyed, told the blue eyed that they were superior, and they were treated as such, given a longer breaktime and other privileges...the brown eyed were told they were inferior, ostracized and made to wear collars. The result? The brown eyed pupils became hostile and performed poorer on tests. When she reversed the experiment, roles quickly reversed in turn however the brown eyed students felt more sympathy for their peers having already experienced discrimination.

Whose fault is all this anyway? Can we still blame it on the accepted and ubiquitous racism that has existed up until very recently? Is it the wrong doing of the media? Is it our teachers, our parents, ourselves? Difficult to tell.

I'm Going To Kill Myself

Poem I wrote like two years ago. But the message is still as relevant as ever.

Dying to the flesh daily is a MUST and it's the hardest thing.

I'm going to kill myself.

Yep I'm doin it, no-one can stop me.

But don't worry this aint another piece of emo poetry,

It's an action taken a lot more knowingly,

for those with a lack of knowledge shall perish

and I'm not perishing,

rather grabbbing onto life in its fullness and holding it tight

cos, I've fallen for the light,

the light of the world who stepped out into darkness

here I am to worship You

bowing down at Your feet

with all I have to offer You,

there's always more that I can do

and kill myself, that's what I should do.

Sacrifice myself unto You.

Killing the flesh, that I may have eternal life,

Eternal life with my Heavenly Father,

A day to end all pain and strife,

When there will be neverending laughter.

It's time for my flesh to die.

It's time to say goodbye,

and never look back

For I am now a new creation

Old things have passed away

My new Christlike self is here to stay

It's a brand new day, the sun has risen

Thank You Father

That Your Son, The Christ has risen.