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.