New Daughters of Africa

by Margaret Busby

  The casualties of racism on campus stack up. We cry a lot. The number of black students shrinks. One friend—Andre—turns into a shell of himself. He drifts. He acts in odd ways. He was hilarious. Then one day he is rambly. Then he is gone: dropped out. Our numbers are too small. Each departure, under circumstances unhappy and unplanned, shakes us.

  I lose patience with other African students. They are full of excuses about how different Africans are from African-Americans. At first I simply nod. Like them, I knew the rigours of a nightly homework routine and not being allowed to watch TV until physics was mastered or essays completed. Intellectually I see little difference between the two campus communities, the small striving African one and the striving black American one, but there is a rift.

  That first year of college, Spike Lee releases Malcolm X. Keesha and I see the movie on opening night. Our bellies are filled with fire. We read The Autobiography of Malcolm X over and over. “Listen, listen, listen!” I squeal: “I believe in the brotherhood of all men, but I don’t believe in wasting brotherhood on anyone who doesn’t want to practice it with me.”

  I am full of righteousness. I throw myself into more Malcolm X. I go back to Steve Biko. I read Stokely Carmichael. I read about the Black Panthers.

  The poetry we perform is mainly by women, but the politics—the words that animate our conversations, and push us to act in the real world—these belong to men. It takes a while before I understand the effect this has on my own political sensibilities.

  Had I been born into a Black Consciousness family my exposure to American racism at university might not have been so transformative. In our house, non-racialism has always been the quiet centrepiece of our politics. Mummy and Baba are proud and can stand up for themselves. They appreciate Biko but are grounded in a different sensibility. They are part of a Charterist movement, deeply connected to the idea that Africans are also intellectual and as worthy of respect as whites. Theirs is not a politics designed to question the very basis of white people’s civilisation.

  For the first time, I see my parents not as slightly naive. They have been duped by whiteness. Like Christopher Columbus, my friends and I believe that we have discovered blackness.

  It is years before I understand bell hooks’ ideas about radical love and discover Audre Lorde. It takes time for me to discover it is possible to embrace radicalism that looks and feels different from the radical ideas of women. And so it takes me longer than I would have liked to see that there are ways of being tough without being judgmental about the choices of others. It takes me even longer to realise that those with more moderate politics than mine were making choices that weren’t necessarily based on being compromised. Mummy and Baba weren’t ignorant of Biko. They had considered his point of view and differed—not on the basis of weakness, but on the legitimate basis of intellectual and strategic disagreement. I couldn’t see that then, though it is plain now.

  Blessing Musariri

  A Zimbabwean author of short stories and poems, she has had some of her writing published in South African English textbooks for high schools, as well as in anthologies. She has published four children’s titles, two of which have won national awards. She trained to be a lawyer but her active imagination took over after she was called to the English Bar in 1997, leading her to a more varied and fulfilling life in the world of arts and culture. She holds an MA in Diplomatic Studies from the University of Westminster. Over the years, she has worked as a freelance editing and proofreading consultant, an English teacher and a project co-ordinator for the British Council Harare.

  Signs That You Were Here

  A lonely cornflake, ousted from your cereal bowl for its unexplained deformity, now destined for a one-way trip to the rubbish. This, you leave for me to gaze upon and ponder your passing through the room.

  On a coffee table in the living room, a cup of half drunk tea waits despairingly, knowing that it has become too cold to warrant your continued attention, it doesn’t know it yet but you’re not coming back and it’s up to me to put it out of its misery.

  In the bathroom, your toothbrush gloats and the damp towel flung carelessly in the corner luxuriates in the memory of your warm skin. They mock me as I set the room to rights. Through the open doorway, the bed sits in stoic despondency, resigned to the loss of your long, lean frame spread-eagled across the sheets, across me.

  The mirror smiles and keeps her secrets to herself, tells me only that, which my eyes can see, indifferent to my wishing for something else, something . . . more, but here on the dresser is a sad cuff-link next to an empty box—the other is long gone to that place between then and now.

  Then, you were right here in front of me, laughing as we said goodbye, sighing at the wonderful of it all, and now, the sound echoes faintly, whispering of your having been here.

  The Poem I Wrote Standing Up—Indictment

  We are proud to be Africans on distant shores,

  learning ancient tongues, fighting for their survival,

  while forgetting our own.

  We adopt new inflections

  and sing-song ways of speaking

  to camouflage our origins,

  hiding from the tainted brush.

  We are the new Celts—darker, more robust.

  We sanction our memories of sun and hunger

  and hopeful hopelessness.

  We unlearn our songs and disappear through our children—

  the pristine generation, unmarked by unpopular citizenry.

  We are not proud. We are not Africans.

  On Platform 3

  The 3.28 has been cancelled.

  I’ve been dropped off and left alone,

  no-one likes this side of morning—but I with my love of holiday,

  left in singular dread, in a place unusually deserted.

  After all, I am not a Lost Boy, wandering through Sudanese nights,

  afraid of lions and land-mines. I am in Luton—

  well-lit; a target for any passer-by,

  who has issues with his mother, but,

  it’s the land of CCTV.

  They are sorry to announce that

  the oh three twenty-eight service to St Pancras

  has been cancelled. They should have announced it in my dreams

  so I could sleep a little longer.

  Time doesn’t tick, but lingers,

  drones seamlessly in my ears, bites into skin,

  slowing fingers, stiffening limbs,

  nibbles at microscopic morsels in my gut until it grumbles.

  There’s no one here to answer my questions,

  only machines, mouths open for my money.

  I’ve walked for miles in tiny circles,

  the killer has not come, and still, the tracks are silent.

  They don’t announce the loss of the 3.28 anymore,

  they are over it now, but I am flying to sea, sun and sand,

  I must sit and wait.

  She, on the way to Monk’s Hill

  She knows everyone on the way to Monk’s Hill,

  stops to ask for mangoes—they are growing everywhere

  it’s almost a crime to pay.

  At the overflowing bridge, men wash pink-skinned sweet potatoes

  while the river steals a few,

  she hollers hello and lets them know, tells me, they’ll fetch them later.

  Stopping for ginnip breeds nostalgia

  of her childhood in Guyana—

  plantain, sour-sop, breadfruit—

  always free, from neighbours,

  says her brother doesn’t believe in apples;

  he’s never seen an apple tree, so doesn’t trust the juice.

  But her nephew, he eats strawberries in

  banana cake and doesn’t know the difference.

  She careens through mud; a carefree cowboy, calling out the sights

  arms wrapped around her waist, I am a jockey without her reins,

  holding on to every word, bracing at every hurdle.r />
  St John’s, Antigua, 30 May 2010

  Wanjiku wa Ngũgĩ

  Born in Kenya (into a family of writers that includes her father Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o and her brother Mũkoma wa Ngũgĩ), she studied in the US and has lived and worked in Eritrea, Zimbabwe and Finland. She is a political analyst, the author of The Fall of Saints (2014), and the founder and former director of the Helsinki African Film Festival. She has been a columnist for the Finnish development magazine Maailman Kuvalehti and her essays and short stories have been published in Wasafiri, The Herald (Zimbabwe), the Daily Nation & Business Daily, Pambazuka News, and Chimurenga, among other publications.

  Hundred Acres of Marshland

  Even I find it hard to believe that I learned how to swim in a low-lying wetland with grassy vegetation. Down the hill from my house was what seemed like hundreds of acres of marshland. The sky with a blue so prominent that even when dark clouds gathered it was difficult not to make out the azure bouncing off the clear waters of the lagoon. I spent half my life swimming, even with passers-by who rested their weary feet in the cool of the water. A week after Ted, my now five-year-old son, was born, the lagoon was waiting for me to wash away the fatigue of motherhood. This was before I boarded the plane to the land where I began the wait. Waiting for Ted to join me. Waiting for my life to come together in the way I had envisioned so many times while lying on the green grassland by the lagoon. Like the photos I had seen of my neighbor’s daughter’s life in America.

  These days there is hope only in my dreams, when someone gently pulls my hand and leads me towards my aspirations. And then I wake up in stone-cold Newark.

  I mention the lagoon because lately I have been visiting it in my mind during waking hours. Mostly I wonder if Ted has been swimming. But on this particular morning, my attention is on myself. It feels as if someone is ripping my intestines out. I know it’s the French fries. My body has waged a war with food in this new country. Not so new, its been a year already. Right now, I have an immediate problem. The thing is, although most of last night is a blur, I do remember that after the third glass of wine I made promises. To Au, my Thai friend. She is the one I blame for this revolution taking place in my head. I would much rather wallow in dreams about my grassy marshland than make social calls. I do sometimes feel the need to reach out. And then I feel guilty because I know it’s his voice, my husband’s, in my head telling me to make more of an effort. It’s hard to describe how heavy my body feels these days. My pen is lighter. So I sit in a café and fill paper with haikus. A habit I have always entertained, and one my husband used to find endearing. Now he likes to be practical. His words not mine.

  This morning, I watched him set off to work through my half-shut eyelids. I pretend to be asleep when his morning ritual takes place. Mostly so I don’t have to listen to his rants, and his enduring wish to be in my position. Free. He says it as if it was an expensive virtue only available to some. What he really means to say is that two incomes are better than one. Many unpleasant words come to me for him, but I am bound by this contract I have with him, and to say them would only add to the wall we have been building between us.

  In any case, on this particular morning, I have other things to worry about, like the djembe drumbeat playing inside my head, sounding like a hundred cracking bullwhips. And yet, I had made a promise to visit Au this morning. Where I come from, you just don’t wave off an invitation. That’s another reason I did not mention this to my husband. He would have thrown all that culture out, dismissed it like the American in him does. Or maybe it’s his age. Add ten years to mine. I may regret not having his input on this visitation rite, though I suspect Thailand is like Kenya. The way you become friends with anyone tells you a whole lot about how they were raised. Take for instance my first meeting with Au.

  I met her in my “Intro to Nursing” class. On the third week of class, she sat next to me. I only noticed her dark hair and lopsided walk later. In the moment she sat down, her presence was distracting, or rather the smell emanating from the bag at her feet. The lecturer’s drawled words lacked the emotion needed to engage us, so it was easy to put one’s attention elsewhere.

  “Do you want?” The woman asked me.

  “Want what?”

  “The food,” she said, pointing to the brown bag on the floor.

  An hour later, sitting on the wooden bench outside the classroom, I leaned back on the hallway wall as the sweet spice mixed with pepper lingered in my mouth. The cook—Au from Bangkok. The other two smacking their lips were also foreigners. India. Nigeria. It was about six o’clock and it made sense to proceed to the bar located across the street from the metro trains. There is nothing like a watering hole located near transportation home. That was yesterday. And what a difference a day makes. Now I had a friend. And friends come with obligations.

  Yet, on this morning my feet were dragging. I walked to the bus-stop, taking deliberate steps, because if I didn’t, my feet would surely turn back home to the two-bedroom apartment that my husband was planning to eventually buy. Well, that is not what he had told me when I was wallowing in the countryside of Limuru in Kenya. The place I was born, opposite the marshes, where as kids we kicked and flapped in the water, a swimming technique frowned upon here in America.

  I remember holding on to the reeds as I learned how to survive in the water, though in reality there was no danger of drowning, for my feet easily found the soft clay just beneath the water, which made it seem like walking on a soft mattress.

  With every step I took towards Au’s, I swore my jeans got smaller. Just the other day, as I slipped on the same pair of jeans, my husband had enquired about their size. Read my weight. Maybe they shrunk in the washing-machine, I said. He asked too much after my body. I knew what he really wanted; but I knew better than to have another child. Least of all before I had managed to bring Ted over. When Ted came I was going to take him to the local YMCA for swimming and hope he would enjoy it more than I had. You see, it was unlike the lagoon where we had spent hours chatting our lives away. That simple life now seemed a hundred years away. America was different. Besides, everyone worked three or four jobs. As my husband says: There is no time in America.

  My husband’s friends became mine when I first arrived. But I only saw them on Thanksgiving and Labor Day. I tried to make my own friends, when we made our way past midnight to the Shake’n’Drink night club in New York, where all the Kenyans in Newark drove once a month, to dance to songs of yesteryears. Kamaru. Madice. Kenny Rogers too: suddenly the entire club would be dream-dancing to his raspy voice that brought memories of the lagoon into focus. The air pregnant with memories; we screamed out the words, and those words we didn’t know, we made up. But we kept up with the rhythm, one we knew so well. It was a rhythm of memory, of our country, of our childhood, of the place where we had crafted our dreams. In my case, back to the lagoon. For a few hours I enjoyed the connection to Kenya, but the feeling quickly dissipated after the last call for drinks. Then the shoulders stooped, and silence followed the walk to the trains and buses that sobered everyone up.

  So I stopped going. Besides, Jack Daniels could come home to me, in the comfort of reality shows, in between my dreaded homework on nursing ambitions. They told everyone that America needs nurses. God knows my husband had said it enough times to me. If only I could run away. To where? That was the problem.

  For no particular reason, the morning I trekked to take bus 45 to Au’s house reminded me of the morning I left for the promised land. My mother, who single-handedly raised me, had thrown a party. The “my-daughter-is-going-to-be-someone-after-all” kind of party for those who had looked down on me when I stayed home before and after my Ted was born. That was the other thought I entertained on the way to visit Au. Would it better if Ted were here? He was born with a brain older than his years, so he liked to argue, and we constantly exchanged opinions, with me trying to get him to see reason. “He is very much your son,” my mother would say. “Copyright,” my aunt s
aid. Whom else could they compare him to except me?

  I met his father before I graduated high school, a year after he had. A Kenyan like me, he had done well on his university entrance exam. But that was not the only reason I took to him. He was cliché; tall and dark. Back then that was all I had on my list. So I gave in; but Ted had other plans, like being born to me at the wrong time. His father felt the same way and disappeared. My father had done something similar. “Men,” my aunt said.

  But I finally found a partner, not on university grounds because I never made it there. Out on the hundred marshes, I met him among a bus of white tourists. Looks were a thing of the past. He promised to support us—me, Ted and my haikus—since his dreams were already manifest.

  That’s why upon arrival, and the discovery that my husband had just been selling me his aspirations, I did not throw a tantrum. Besides, he had recently been promoted to manage the Starbucks near our apartment. That’s where I did the writing. It will be something one day. Like a book. I knew this.

  Just as I knew I was not a morning person. I had not communicated this effectively to Au. But halfway to her house, I entertained a change of mind. I would not wait for things to unfold in my life. I would not wait for someone to hold my hand in my dreams. Instead I was going to dive into America’s bayou. Nursing. Writing. Ted. It all made sense. I would complete nursing school. I would write on weekends. I would bring Ted over. His dreams would be different. I would make them happen for him. It would also free my mother. Epiphany. Suddenly I was filled with the hope that had escaped me for so long since my arrival.

  Elated, I arrived at Au’s house. It was, like my house, sparsely furnished. A brown couch sat on a brown carpet. To the left was the dining-table. She asked me to join her there.

  It was only 11 a.m. and the table was filled with food. Rice. Shrimps. Noodles. This was another thing I had not told her. I could only stand strong smells in the afternoon. That’s how I found myself on the floor of her green-decorated bathroom—the toilet rug, shower curtain, toothpaste holder. In my house, blue was the color. I gave up the contents of my stomach before I had a chance to fill it with Au’s food.