Tag: storytelling
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Keep blessings!
The woman who feels everything, knows the name of her pain, the source of her gains and certainly how to carry rain. To see her too, like the desert waiting, or like a flower blooming, for tomorrow praying, but today dreaming knowing what she feels is daring, but grateful still for this wild blessings. May…
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Keep karma!
‘I promise you l, I’ll be right back like karma.’ I love these lines. They are from an artist my son listens to on repeat. His name his Phyno and my second son is his biggest fan. Phyno sings and raps in Igbo and has been a tremendous source of comfort for my son when…
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Keep sustainability in mind!
Since the pandemic began, I cut back from a lot of things and people. Cut back from conversations that were unproductive, people too. I focused on things that elevated and forced me to keep anything. Last year, I took it to another level. Death has a way of helping you find your purpose and mine…
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Keep lions telling their own story!
What makes for knowledge? How is it acquired? And how should it be used? I have been grappling with this notion ever since I arrived at the place called home. I came to teach, but I found myself being the student more than the teacher. I found myself asking questions internally and also doing so…
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Keep formalized curiosity!
Zora Neale Hurston described research as a ‘formalized curiosity.’ One that involves poking and prying with a purpose. I have been blessed to call research my job. To engage in this formalized curiosity full time is the best gift I have ever given to myself. Many take it for granted, but I know what I…
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Keep alert!
A swarm of insects stroll in perfect stride, one after the other, all heading somewhere, any where, no where. The skies above them, stretch out like curtains, something reduces them to nothing, something leaves them light as dust. Something in the wind. Lord, it’s coming for us.
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Keep knowing that we are legions!
I see dust coming from the sky. A cloud full of dust. Coming towards me. In it, there is an army with no cowards. They surround me, ready to do battle for me. They will destroy all that ails me in a single night. Destroy them so I feel no pain. Only peace and joy…
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Keep witnessing.
When a woman dies, and her cervix is to blame, catapulting her from the prime of her life, to her grave, what remains as a witness to her life, her stories, her cervix, her silenced voice? Who will resuscitate a life cut down by cervix? As I watch my life story slowly change, with cervical…
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Keep Ije Uwa!
I am learning everyday, life is short. Love life like air, like mango trees. Ije uwa. Only this matters. No matter how small, keep your story. Write it as a note, a song, a book, the wind, or the kernels of a sheri mango. For candles will blow, tears will fall, even mangos grow old…
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Keep saying Kedu to all the ancestors gone, like my Mama!
I talk to my late grandma, often, every Sunday in particular. Whenever I say my prayers after holy communion, I say hello to her. English was not her first language. So all her prayers were in pidgin English and Igbo back then. She mixed both languages often. My favorite being the one for Blessed Sacrament.…
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Keep notes to Angi’s cervix or cervical cancer!
In a little over a year, now, our life as we knew it came tumbling down. We called her Angie or Angi and to know her was to know life. I am reminded again, that death should never have the final say. Not when those alive can continue the story of a live well lived.…
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Keep knowing what you will keep or legacy!
The news of the Queens death came to me yesterday in the middle of work. I paused to immediately reflect on the number 70 and the age 25. Here was a woman who ruled her land for over 70 years, a land she inherited at the age of 25. Legacies are built this way, young…
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Writing with Juliet Iwelunmor 