The Bantu Heritage Movement

For a brief moment I step outside this dingy office and stand outside in the balcony to bask in the sun. It's a cold winters morning. My colleagues like to keep the blinds closed and use the electric lights. This has a negative effect on my psyche and I cannot for the life of me understand why they don't want  sunshine, especially in Winter. Daily I reach a point where I feel like I'm suffocating and I need to be in the sun. It strikes me that, back home, I spend quite a bit if time in the sun. I love the winter in South Africa! That's when I spend most of my early mornings in the front veranda at home just sitting there, listening. We call it "ukuthamela isigcaki" or " ukulalela ilanga" . That literally translates to, " listening to the sun", in English. It's not just me, everybody does it. It's a known practice where I come from. As commonplace as morning coffee for some, or reading the newspaper. 

So I think to myself, why don't people value the sun here? Howcome nobody understands my need to feed? When do these people take a timeout or get their dose of vital, beautiful vitamin D? When do they take time out to think, to....meditate? 

And then I realize that yoga in East Asia is as commonplace as church is in Africa. That's their form of meditation. My people don't really have any yogi vocabulary, such activity is as mundane as daily bread and nobody really thinks much of it, nevertheless highlighting it as a therapeutic or holistic practice. It's just necessary from time to time. 

Urbanization has people leaving the villages and the homesteads to go work in the cities with less and less time to sit and listen to the sun but I wonder how many take up smoke- breaks not realizing that their craving is actually just to be in the crisp air with an underlying physiological hunger to just get a little bit of sun in their system. I get so happy in the sun, supercharged like a real- life superwoman. But then again the sun out here in Japan the sun is a little harsher than what I'm used to. Just a little more intense, blame pollution and our deteriorating ozone layer. 

It's strikes me as a gross injustice how with Westernization and colonization and it's influence, my own people cannot see parallels in our black culture with those they call the " sophisticated, civilized nations". People running to yogis as the new trend for enlightened people, much like other fads we adopt so quickly, ever changing, ever fickle to ourselves and our own heritage. Im comparing yoga here as a form of meditation, not as a form of excersize. I'm all for choice. I dont believe anybody should be forced to follow a certain way of life just because they were raised in it. However I feel that our choices are not all shed in the same light, with the same fairness and lack of bias from oppressed minds. The colonized brain is a war within itself, grasping relief by so-called salvation from " otherness" portrayed as " enlightenment" . 

I wondered further about other things we've taken for granted, even currently that are overlooked and slowly forgotten. It saddens me that my children may never learn the gymnastic ability that one needed to have to master " umasgalobha" and be head of the playground, known famously in your district amongst other kids as " Uqothi"/ " I-starring" / "  i-spring!" , the number one, the champion, the one jumps higher than anyone  else without touching the rope or the one that can do the most complicated styles and even invent their own when we play outside everyday. The pain of being " unxaka" or the " OB", the yoyo between both teams who could never really claim any victory because they were neutral but was thoroughly used in the game. All because nobody would pick them for a team yet they couldn't be excluded because they had showed up to play. The middle man. The extra.  My children may never know the thrill of playing " ubha" and " ushumpu" , " 3 tin" and " udonki". Games where you had to be agile and quick. Hand eye coordination had to be on point at all times and we would play all day everyday whenever school was out. Children would refuse to go eat or sleep. When we played with children from other districts, everything would stop. Fights would happen, parents would intervene. Everyone had to contribute to the creativity of our pastime. Nowadays our new earned " freedom" has us affording luxuries like play-stations and fearing for the safety of our children from our own neighbors, restricting them to the "safe" confines of heart disease and obesity. They no longer learn our barbaric games. 

Umlabalaba has made national recognition as a sports and cultural activity, equivalent to the likes of chess and drafts. I'm happy about that but I just don't think it's enough. There's a lot that's out there that's being drowned with globalization, ours isn't the only nation lamenting. However as we move on, I'd rather not dismiss my heritage as one that was barbaric and not up to standard. I'd rather not turn my back on my heritage for the expedience of  the first world. I'd rather develop and relaunch that wonderful slice of happiness for my children and their children's children to share and be proud of. We were the youths that adopted stones as children and played " amagenda" outside in the dirt. Flinging " ingeji", your favorite playing stone in the air and flaunting skills of " ukushubhesha" before you maneuvered just in time to re-catch it. Argued with our friends over the chalked line to find out where the boarders of your house were. In our time we knew how to negotiate cattle before we were taught how to do algebra at school. We could count cattle I twos and threes and fours in the game before we decided the winner was an unrivaled champion that deserved her title before the rest of us got too embarrassed with our loss. 

Hopscotch? I played more versions of hopscotch than I care to remember. That's what the English called it anyway. Nowadays when I try and remember, I tend to mix up all the titles from all the different games that I'm not quite sure how it was played anymore. I worry that I'm not the only one. That I can't ask my little cousins how to play because they have no idea what I'm talking about. But I have hope. Maybe the future born- frees will reinvent it all. Maybe they will gather information and put it all together again, or recreate it into something new. Maybe they will learn from us and our hair movement, where we critically looked at perm culture and decided that it should be a choice and not a necessity. I have hope that one day,  the Natural Hair movement will inspire a Bantu Sports movement and a variety of other movements where we are proud to validate ourselves as  sufficient. 

Lunchtime Detention

Ever since I remember, I've even misunderstood. 

When I was in first grade I got framed by another kid over a theft. I've never stolen anything outside my house my whole life. A girl had lost money and somehow I ended up getting blamed for it and I didn't have a sufficient alibi to prove that it wasn't me. I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. My only fault was to be honest to the teachers. I can't remember correctly because this was back in 1994 but I must've gotten detention for a month. However long it was, it was torture and seemed like forever. It was lunchtime detention. It seemed that for the rest of my stay at that school, I was confined to that prison of a detention room, serving time for a crime I never committed. It was a miserable little dark room, cold and cruel, away from the wonderful sunshine in then playground outside where the rest of my monkey friends ran wild and free. I remember that I had to stand there and face the wall the whole time. When I got tired I was allowed to sit on the floor and face the wall but that was it. No looking around. Absolutely no talking to the other detainees, if there were any. A teacher would supervise lunchtime detention but for a long while, while I was the only one in there most break times, they would wonder off and I would stay there, honestly and still like I was told. At that point in my life, 6 years old, I was aware I was not popular. The other kids hated me. I had the best grades, always. I spoke the best English. I wouldn't do anything naughty. I was always clean and my uniform never got dirty. I ran fast and I could climb the highest of all the girls. I had a different religion and I stuck to it with all my might. Sweet Jesus I prayed every day in that detention room for courage and strength. I prayed to endure like him and I prayed for it to be over. I had one friend. Just one. She believed me. She knew I was innocent. But after a while even she went to play with the other kids and stopped hanging around the detention room as moral support. We were 6. She became friends with the other girls, my bullies. I wasn't mad at her. 

I wasn't silent about my pain. I didn't want to bother my parents. There was always some kind of trouble at home that needed attention. My moms best friend, gobo Ndimande, had just passed away. A woman I loved too. She had a huge house. I loved it there! She always had cookies and tea for me. It was at her house that I had met my first ever best friend. His name was Njabulo. He was 6 and I was 5 when we met. I told him he would be my husband one day. We played all day,all the time. I used to remind him that I'm a girl so he shouldn't be too rough with me. He complied. We played hide- and- seek, catches, did homework together, cartwheels, even baked with his mother at some point. He was a sweet little boy. By that time though, we were going to my moms friend less and less. She was ill for a long time until she passed away. 

One day, during the winter holidays I had gone to my grandfathers house in Durban to visit. Njabulo and gogo Ndimande had come to my house for a visit. At that stage I had started expressing my writing skills on the walls at home, to my parents disappointment. I had found the perfect spot in the bathroom, hidden from the authorative eye. Njabulo found my writings. He wrote me a letter. That was the first ever letter I have received my entire life and probably the only one I've ever gotten from a boy! In his letter, my bestie wrote that he was sad that he visited me and I was absent. Then he wrote about the writings on the wall and pleaded with me to stop that bad habit. He said it wasn't good but perhaps I can write on paper. I still think about that letter and smile. That was the last time I ever wrote on the walls. Mom asked me if I wanted to write back to him. I was upset that I'd missed their visit, upset that I'd missed my best friend. I wrote a letter of thanks. 

That was the last time I heard from Njabulo and gogo Ndimande. Gogo passed away a few months after that. She had been weak and sickly and my mother wouldn't take me to see her in hospital. Cancer, it was. She was someone very dear to my whole family, not just mom. A woman who's reputation preceded her. A mentor to my mother and almost like the maternal grandmother  I never had. It was the first time and probably something I will never see again. I remember one day around that time, dad had picked me up from school in his white Ford Saphire and we were driving home. He was unusually quiet. Ever since I remember, my bonding time with dad was the trip on the way home from school. That's the only time we would really talk. I was in the car yapping away. I was complaining about school and the nasty kids. I told him about the bullies, and my wonderful test grades. Dad just pulled the car over. He wouldn't look at me. In the rear view mirror I noticed his eyes were red. It was weird. He sat there for a moment and then he blew his nose. I knew daddy was crying. It was just very strange for me and confusing. I didn't know what to do so I kept quiet the rest of the way. I never told anyone,ever. We got back on the road and as soon as we got home, dad acted natural. 

Anyways, I was serving time and one day I had to ask for help. I remember telling dad in the car about my prison sentence. What I remember now is that I told my father about it and he questioned me. He asked me how long I had been in detention and why I hadn't come to him sooner. I had told him that I hadn't expected to be in detention this long. The teachers had put me in detention indefinitely until I confessed to the theft. I couldn't confess to something I didn't do. By principle in my 6 year old mind, confessing would be lying because I hadn't done the crime and that was very wrong. My father didn't step in like I expected him to. He didn't take me out of that school like I though he should've.He let them win. My peers were bullying me,the teachers and even  my favorite teacher had turned against me. I don't even remember our dialogue but I remember that my father didn't do anything. He didn't protect me. I felt alone through all of it. Me with my Jesus and my prayers. I remember praying and asking to be more like Jesus because I was being persecuted like him, although I had done nothing wrong. Asking for patience and a way to forgive the people that caused me pain. I remember in my prayers pleading with someone I felt understood what I was going through. Little did I know at 6 that that would be a mantra I would keep for the next six years. I felt like my father had abandoned me to suffer something that I knew he had the power to rescue me from. I didn't understand why. He was a school principal, a person of authority. He knew how these things worked. I still don't understand why. Nowadays I wonder if he even believed me. I was miserable for the rest of the year. As for Njabulo, I'd like to see how he turned out in the end.