Skitz Gemini

Just before I turned 15, in high school grade 10, someone pissed me off. 

I wasn't a really happy teenager, in fact  things sucked badly. One day, after my Saturday Math and Physics classes, I stumbled upon some interesting looking teenagers outside the city library on my way home. They looked all hip-hop. I had just started falling in love with hip hop.
Among these I spotted some people that I knew from primary school. A friend told me that inside the library, at the basement, there was a poetry session going on. I was thrilled. I was curious. So I asked the girl I was walking with, a friend at the time, if she wanted to come with. It was all good. We had a bit of time before curfew at 5pm. 


It was dark inside as we walked in. Only the stage lights were on. There was a tall, brown man standing at the back with long dreadlocks dressed in rasta colors with bohemian shorts and a scarf on his head. We were told to join the rest of the audience sitting on the floor. I found it strange but beautiful. It was all kumbaya-peaceful like. We sat towards the front. On the stage were two teenagers, a guy rapping out his lyrics as a girl sung a melody and then they would swop. It was mesmerizing for me, the beauty of their art. 

As they finished the tall dread-locked man at the back approached the stage and started rapping on his way up, all the way to the stage. I was so surprised! It was just majestic. I was wondering who all these wonderful people were and why I had never met them before. As he reached the foot of the raised floor he took his shoes and scarf off. It was sort of like a ritual as he laid his shoes neatly to the side and stepped on the raised floor, un-scarving his dreadlocks as if unwrapping his nakedness, ever so carefully and laying the scarf, folded at the corner of the stage next to the shoes. Under my breath I mumbled "Oookaaaaay, whatever makes you comfortable..."

To my surprise he, at that point exclaims mid-poem: " So, whats wrong with being comfortable?!" with so much feeling and passion that I was embarrassed I had said anything. Honestly I didn't know he could hear me and he carried on nonchalantly as if it was part of the poem . It could've been, but at that time I was so stunned that I wasn't listening anymore and kept wondering if that was part of the act or if he had actually heard me and took offence even though I wasn't offering any.  

The poetry continued and I was already immersed, having acquired comfort in this new zone. It felt like home. The people there were friendly and spoke to me like I'd been with them at those sessions all my life. It was easy to make friends. Before long though, my accomplice pointed at her watch and said that we would get into trouble if we didn't leave soon because it would get dark and we would run out of taxis. I told her to hang on a while, one more hour before the session ended. It was 4.30pm.

She wouldn't hear of it. 

I told her that our parents were the same, maybe mine even stricter than hers. I knew I would get into trouble. I was thinking in my head that for the first time in my life I didn't really care. I wasn't doing anything wrong by enjoying WORD. I told her that if we stay together, since our parents know each other, we could vouch for each other in telling the truth. Its not like we had decided to go drinking or do drugs or have sex in dodgy places like our parents were always insinuating we somehow would. Like some of our peers, however few and between and distanced from our daily lives, were doing. Surely truth counts for something?  

Despite my pleas, she left me there to decide for myself. I chose to stay. I have never regretted it. And then my old best friend from primary school pitched up out of nowhere! She recited. She was wonderful! An hour and a couple of new friends and excellent poetry later, I left for home. Got a taxi and got home 6.30pm on the dot. 

My dad was at the dining room table working on something as I walked into the door. He looked up and didn't say anything, the way he does when he is mad at me. In his head, I can imagine all the thing she had invented as to the reason his wicked daughter was home so late. Class ends at 1.30pm and she arrives 5 hours later.

Mom calls me into her room and tells me that they were worried about me. As I'm explaining where I had been she tells me that she received a phone-call from my "friends'"　parents. I sigh in relief thinking I'm exempt since obviously my friend had made sure they knew where I was. Only to find out that that wasn't quite the story...

My friends parents were very worried about their daughter but were glad to hear we were together at the poetry session. What they didn't understand is why I refused to leave when it was getting late at 4.30pm. My friend had had the sense to leave and tried to convince me that it was best this way but I had refused and tried to coerce her to stay, drag her into my defience. The disapproval of my character was blatant and discomforting, never mind the insinuations that were coated onto my insolence. I mean, how can they be sure I actually stayed at the poetry session, a whole hour more and got caught up on the frequent long queues of commuters heading home on a Saturday afternoon after a day of shopping in the city? How do they know for sure that 4.30 was interval time at the poetry session so people could get refreshments and a bit of air after sitting in a dark basement for two and a half hours? How do they know that 4.30 was the end of the session and I had gone with my old best friend to do...god forbid!
I remember thinking to myself that she would have done better not to even say I was with her that day, now that my reputation had been tainted by imaginary sins. I was mad. I got so oooooo mad!

My father gave me a hiding that day. 

I seldom get angry but that day my anger BLEEZED. 
In my room  I sat down with a notebook and a pen and just started jotting down all my thoughts. I was mad. At her! I had obviously taken the fall for both of our guilty pleasures. Guilty for loving word and pleasuring my ears. This sinful indulgence called art. And she was chaste. Chaste as a blooming daisy. 

So I wrote and wrote down all that I felt, expelling her from my system , lacerating our friendship there and then. When I finished crying, I had my first diss rhyme filling my page. Suffice to say that SKITZ GEMINI was born on that very day. 

A few weeks later I was to recite this to my emcee boys at school and back then I didn't even know what punch-lines were but, I was officially team. 

Skitz Gemini is the schizophrenic gemini that is me. She has a dual personality. On ordinary days she's really sweet but when really really pissed off, which doesn't happen often, she pops out of me and starts spitting venom. I have no idea why she needs to be really angry to do this though. And I was plenty angry as a teenager. There have been less than a handful of people able to make me angry enough to bring her out. Its usually women, too.

 Lately  I feel her wanting to show her face.

Zulu girls Can...

I am sure

I am very very sure 

Of the abilities of Zulu girls. 

Despite their background. 

Despite their upbringing. 

Regardless of their social limitations, 

Whatever their programming. 

Aside from their challenges. 

That they can: 

Travel anywhere they want in the world. 

Adapt. 

Learn. 

Get by with the language barrier. 

Make friends. 

Make interesting conversation with strangers. 

Touch a heart. 

Be someone's secret sexual fantasy. 

Inspire. 

Invoke anger. 

Invoke jealousy. 

Teach. 

Love. 

Trust. 

Abandon their hearts for something bigger than themselves. 

Tell stories. 

Make sacrifices that others would find surprising. 

Keep faith. 

Cry long and hard. 

Whine sometimes. 

Carry the weight of the world on their shoulders, with a weak but determined smile.

Carry their men to glory even when they are not aware they need to be carried. 

Protect their youth.

Fight for their families. 

Punish. 

I am well aware of the abilities of Zulu girls, that too are aware of themselves. That too hold, the power of self knowledge. 

 

Fire and Ocean

Whenever I look into her eyes I see fire.

She once told me that I was pacific

Calm, and calming like the sea. 

I've been drawn to her since the day we met. 

I've been going through my whole life thinking surely, 

surely there must be someone out there that understands...

Surely there exists more than just me. 

And there she was. 

Eyes sparkling, fierce and untamed, 

looking as if laughing at me- with me- at my silliness for not believing 

(as if saying, "Of course we exist!")

- staring right inside without a blink.

I'm holding her gaze, looking inside and she is smiling. 

Outside she giggles. The way only she can giggle.

Wild child, like the universe just threw her right there in front of me. 

We're friends now, hanging out sometimes. 

Busy bees the both of us but its OK. 

When we talk, its special.

We go out. We dance. We drink. 

I meet her plethora of friends. 

They become my friends.

She falls pregnant. 

I don't see her for a long time, but its OK. 

She has a beautiful baby girl. Saggitarius.

We rejoice. 

When I see her again its a happy accident.

She's on her way to a performance. 

I'm waiting for someone who isn't committed. 

So I follow her and get mesmerized again, 

capturing these moments on camera. 

I have to go. 

She walks me to the bus. 

We hold hands and walk silently together.

On the interweb I tell her just how I feel.

She say's she's been wondering what that look in my eye is. 

I know she can see.

Nothing changes.

Except maybe, we live in different cities now. 

We keep meeting briefly. 

I am no longer friends with her friends.

She is no longer friends with some of those friends.

We meet briefly again before I leave the country. 

I tell her I came only for her because my heart has already left. 

We embrace for a long long time. 

My boyfriend tells me she is the only one of my friends that he likes.

My boyfriends' often tell me too much.

And then I am gone. 

In my mind those wild eyes are imprinted. Spirited windows with the fire I have always wanted to have. I guess now I have it. In her. She is Gemini. I am Gemini. Like two parts that fused together form the air element- 

FIRE and OCEAN.

Race Car

Niggas have mastered the art of head-space invasion!

Nowadays you only make an appearance at the perfect time and suddenly my train of thought stops in its tracks.
Thought patterns at a cul-de-sac , the speaker gets one distraction and in a minute there's verbal accidents.

Officer I...I...he...
He blocked my path! I couldn't see straight, 
I mean I...I couldn't see anything in　the room BUT him so I spent the rest of the night ducking conversation and dodging eye contact just to make sure I got to Dignity safe! I swear I was under the drinking limit! Only two glasses of wine and　lots of socializing in between. And I was fine until THIS obstacle had me swerving around company and cutting shoulders just to think straight, right until he caught me dead in my tracks, throwing a conversation curve-ball right across the room aimed directly at me.

Before long my wheel had rolled off and I was babbling aimlessly as if I'd suffered injury to my head. This proper-girl  lady-like-and-prudish fort giving way  to a flood of giggles and embarrassed blushes.

I'm not actually enjoying this.
Like any self-esteemed fine driver I abruptly readjusted the wheel and promptly sealed the conversation.

You could swear I was a race-car, the way I need the chase.

And swiftly trailing off to another end of the room to make small talk I left him there, probably wondering if either of us was modelled right for the other or whether that brief conversation was a hit or miss.

In the morning I'm replaying   the accident in my mind worried that it may never happen again. Wondering if schizophrenic race-cars actually get chases or if they end up miserably managing the traffic in their heads.
So I get my phone out and send a text, hoping that I can pave a clean path for us to stroll on

Only...

You don't seem to remember anything about about the accident. Its Schizophrenia meets Alzheimer's! Or was it Dumb& Dumber and the Bullshit?
Either way, I'm thanking my lucky stars that I wasn't Fast & Furious because now it looks like you would've been Gone in 60 seconds. 

Untitled

If my mind was a garden
I wonder if it would sprout
with memories of you
and thoughts
of us.
Could I cultivate a future?
Plant it here in my brain
and bear the fruits in real life?

Your love-seeds  are safe in my heart.
They're here, growing slowly.
They're here, buried beneath all this
rush-and-toil, run-a-bout collecting stones for our graves.
This cycling on a wheel of plastic existence chasing paper that  burns and burns and burns...

Fuelling the couldron of existence
Like hellfire.
Born to　burn.
Born to power the machine.
Born as energy for an existence we go ceasing to know.
So abstract, our realities become a distraction, we can no longer figure out  what we are here for.
Except in dreams.
In dreams these visions blossom uninhibited.
While I am asleep, I know. 

If my mind was a garden
I wonder if it would sprout
with memories of you
and thoughts
of us
Could I cultivate
our future?

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.