Sean Jacobs's Blog, page 332

Body Politricks and the Worlds in Between: A Review of Ta-Nehisi Coates’s “Between the World and Me”

Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me is part memoir and part testimonial, but it is also a Black father’s textual and public initiation of his Black son into the edgy paradox that is Black manhood in the U.S.

Coates opens his letter with an anecdote about an interview he conducts from “a remote studio in the far west of Manhattan” with a Washington DC based TV host on the significance of “losing” his body. The writer confesses he is saddened by the question because not only does it highlight the physical and metaphorical distance separating the television host and himself, according to Coates the question conjures images of the American God, democracy, Abraham Lincoln’s speech in Gettysburg, and the proverbial “people.” But, Coates is particularly saddened because he is aware of a disturbing ideal in the American context whereby “race” is “implicitly” accepted by Americans, “but to which they make no conscious claim.” He is also aware that the essence of racism is “the need to ascribe bone-deep features to people and then humiliate, reduce, and destroy them.”

In this equation, the body, the object of vilification and eventual destruction, takes on a significance in this edict to Samori, his son, and other Black boys coming of age in what the writer describes as the ‘galaxy’—which at times still seems beholden to an era where to “humiliate, reduce, and destroy” Black bodies was enforced with impunity.

In fact, the body is significant for Coates not solely as an extension of the individual self, but because it is the representation of its place [or race] in the hierarchy that is an offshoot of racism. The body is significant because Coates knows that if Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Trayvon Martin, Renisha McBride and countless others were not in the bodies in which they were in, when fate arbitrarily ended their lives in the manner in which it did, they would still be in possession of their bodies.

Fortunately for Samori, his father was raised by parents, who like most parents of their hue, raised him with an awareness of the significance of his body in a way that enabled him to confront the starkness of his place in the “galaxy”; yet unlike other Black folks, who had retreated “into the church and its mysteries,” resigned to the monstrosity that history had begotten them, Coates recounts how his “parents rejected all dogmas,” noting that in his household, “we spurned the holidays marketed by the people who wanted to be white. We would not stand for their anthems. We would not kneel before their God. And so I had no sense that any just God was on my side.”

Immersed in this world of Black bodies, Coates’s extended family emerge as an armor against a “galaxy” that in ways was constituted and enriched by the debasement of the body, which he inhabits. In this regard, the writer pays homage to his Philadelphia based grandmother, who emerges as perhaps his most impactful teacher; the one who would punish him to write, and who impressed in him the need “to ruthlessly interrogate the subject that elicited the most sympathy and rationalizing—myself.” And this self, as Coates demonstrates, transcends that body, and the distortions, which accompany its harmonious being in a world that wants to objectify and destroy it.

Still meditating on the significance of the body, Coates summons the memory of fellow Howard University peer and one time love-interest rival, Prince Carmen Jones, a “scion of a striving class” gunned down in Virginia by a Black police officer working for a majority Black police department in majority Black run Prince George County, Maryland.

Coates recalls attending the Jones’ memorial service, sitting amongst other mourners in Howard’s Rankin Chapel during the funeral service, and reflecting on how he was “raised conscious, in rejection of a Christian God.”  He notes that he “could see no higher purpose in Prince’s death,” ruminating in that moment that “our bodies are ourselves.” He concludes “my soul is the voltage conducted through neurons and nerves, and that my spirit is my flesh.”

The significance of the body, the Black body, is splayed across this personal public correspondence in a assortment of hues. There are the Black bodies, with their coterie of accents, animating the writer’s Howard University Mecca; there are Black bodies dancing in Washington DC’s U Street; there are the young Black bodies of the writer’s West Baltimore youth; there are the bodies of the women the writer has loved. And of course the bodies of boys and girls with absentee fathers, and resilient mothers; the bodies of those conditioned by fear.

It is this fear that compels the writer to conclude that, “The spirit and soul are the body and brain, which are destructible—that is precisely why they are so precious. And the soul did not escape. The spirit did not steal away on gospel wings. The soul was the body that fed the tobacco, and the spirit was the blood that watered the cotton, and these created the first fruits of the American garden. And the fruits were secured through the bashing of children with stovewood, through hot iron peeling skin away like husk from corn.”

Between the World and Me is an engaging read that unfolds with honesty and tenderness. While it might be tempting to situate Coates among scribes of a bygone era like when reading Coates’s incisive interrogation of the significance of the Black body in the American garden, this book-length letter is best read within the context of the visible and invisible forces that forged Coates into the son he was, the father and husband he is, and the writer he has become. It should be read for what it is, as opposed to what it could or should be.

In her blurb for the book, Toni Morrison not only anoints Coates as James Baldwin’s intellectual heir, but also notes that the work’s “examination of the hazards and hopes of black male life is as profound as it is revelatory.” Meanwhile Cornel West, in a Facebook post that garnered as much attention as Coates’s work countered, stating that in “our age of superficial spectacle, even the great Morrison is seduced by the linguistic glitz and political silences of Coates as we all hunger for the literary genius and political engagement of Baldwin.” West goes on to argue that Baldwin’s “painful self-examination led to collective action and a focus on social movements.” West is right that Baldwin’s work was braided to the struggles of his era, but is wrong when he suggest that Coates is cowardly for not engaging in certain causes in the manner in which West thinks he should. In fact, writing about race has never been a cowardly act; it was not in Baldwin’s era, and neither is it now.

Another early critic of “Between the World and Me” is Shani O. Hilton who lamented that the “inclusion of black women in this work doesn’t seem to have progressed much further than Baldwin’s time,” an era, which according to her “the two requirements of being a “race man” are 1) being black, and 2) being male.” She then surmises that that the “book being rushed to print is surely due, at least in part, to the very specific moment we’re in where America is being forced to confront the deaths of unarmed black men at the hands of police.” While there is some validity in Hilton’s reading, it is a tad bit unfair to expect Coates to write from a perspective that is not his and can never be his.

Coates is a man of his time. This letter reflects that reality and is, perhaps nothing more than a singular meditation on Blackness from a particular perspective molded by a singular experience in the unfolding epic that is U.S history. He could not have written this letter to Samori if he were born in Harlem in 1924. It would not be the same voice and tone; it would not have the same pace and passion. This letter will not unfold in this manner had the writer not grown up in West Baltimore, imbibed street code, bopped to hip-hop, found his Mecca, dropped out of Howard University, and attempt to transcend the barriers separating the world from his body. Perhaps his son, Samori might not even have been named after upper West African anti-colonial leader Samori Toure had Coates tried to be anything other than who he is—a Black man in the most powerful nation on the planet presided over by another Black man.

This work speaks to a generation of Black men, including this Cameroon born writer, who see in it a testimonial to experiences we encounter in our daily lives. This work speaks to our fears and apprehension towards law and order. It speaks of our suspicion of master narratives that negate our very humanity. For a segment of Black men of this generation, this work is braided in our reality—a reminder of our responsibility to the past of our forbearers as we pave the way for our sons and daughters.

It Is Time: The need to rethink homosexuality in Kenya and Africa

“This is personal for me.” ~President Obama on his visit to Kenya.

The near rabid response surrounding the speculation that President Obama would address gay rights on his first visit to Kenya as a sitting U.S President seemed poised to dampen his trip. There was the planned nude protest that would show the President the difference between a man and a woman, called off mere days before his arrival. There had been the heavily homophobic sermons pouring out of pulpits on Sundays for weeks now, and the repeated reminders from political figures such as Kenya’s Deputy President, Mr. Ruto, that homosexuality was not African, and Kenya did not have “room for gays and those others.” Meanwhile, Kenyan media was rife with coverage of the topic, and on Twitter thousands of Kenyans using #KenyansMessageToObama had asked President Obama not to address gay rights during his trip.

When the long speculated moment did arrive at joint press conference at the State House in Nairobi, there was a timid exchange of opposing viewpoints between President Obama and Kenya’s President, Uhuru Kenyatta on the issue. President Obama tread around it, speaking to legal equality, drawing on US civil rights history and the resulting damage “when people are treated differently under the law.” President Kenyatta issued a rebuttal with the satisfied look of a school boy who had told off his headmaster, stating that gay rights are not “an issue on the foremost mind of Kenyans. And that is a fact.” Further “there are some things that we must admit we don’t share – our culture, our societies don’t accept.” He was greeted by applause from the Kenyan audience.

These proud proclamations of bigotry as a Kenyan way of being would be comical, except that they have real lived consequences for Kenyans like me. I am Kenyan, I am a lesbian, I am part of our culture, part of our society, and gay rights are at the forefront of my mind. In fact, gay rights never leave my mind; and the right to live, die or thrive that comes with them.

As I watched these two presidents – one fighting for my right to live and the other decrying my existence – I was reminded of a question I had been asked weeks ago. I was sitting in a room full of black women writers explaining the role of the queer African writer in speaking a community into existence, when one of the women had asked me how I felt about writing “from exile.” Exile? I had never contemplated that I was in exile, this being a word for political figures, heroes who have stood and fought for something. It is for the likes of famed Kenyans like Ngugi Wa Thiong’o and Koigi Wa Wamwere whose political thoughts were too ahead of their time, and far too dangerous. It is not for a writer who spends nights spinning letters from the diaspora into articles and essays and never sending them to a home she feels she no longer knows. Yet, the more I contemplated this word ‘exile’, tossing it around, tasting its corners against my mouth, I felt its truth rest upon me. It is true, I am in exile: a self imposed one, for fear that my country will not only reject me, but may harm me. Remarks, such as President Kenyatta’s only reinforce the fear.

As an out LGBTQ Kenyan, I am privileged enough to not have to live with the fear that comes with being gay in Kenya. A very real fear that is realized through harassment, violence, raids on social gatherings, disownment by family and friends, financial disenfranchisement, employment and housing discrimination, and coded laws that punish “homosexual relations.” I cannot even begin to imagine the emotional toll of being queer, let alone out, in an environment like that. Through a combination of pure luck and my mother’s determination to give us a better future, I am able to live a very gay life, freely in a state and country that not only supports my right to love, but guarantees me protection from hate. This country that is America, is not my own, this state that is Minnesota is not my home. But the exclusionary and discriminatory practices perpetrated in the name of culture, and religion that run rampant in Kenya, keep me, and others like me, in homes that are not ours.

The denial of a gay Kenyan existence (because it is not just about rights, it is instead a society’s attempt to deny the existence of an entire section of its population) is an affront to the Kenyan LGBTQ community, their talents, hopes and aspirations. There are many like me: educated, brilliant, creative, innovative minds with much to give and receive in a pluralistic society that is willing to see us as more than a sum of sexual acts. Instead, we find ourselves stifled by a culture that seems hinged on maintaining some of the worst parts of the colonial experience: oppression through religion, division through tribalism, and heavy handed political games in which innocent citizens pay the price. Kenya’s refusal to uphold human rights, whether in regards to sexual orientation, gender, nationality, or tribe, inevitably hinders our growth as a country and progress as a society.

Further, as Kenyans and Africans as a whole, it is time that we let go of this antiquated and thoroughly disputed notion of homosexuality as “Western.” Beyond the paradox of appealing to a Western religion, Christianity, to decry homosexuality, it is a mockery of our history. Colonialism necessitated the use of Christianity and the Bible to justify its actions in oppressing colonial subjects: us. That we now employ the same tools used against us in imperialistic conquests as a means to bury LGBTQ Kenyans and Africans, means that we have not yet learned from our history. It means that we have yet to recognize that this current view of homosexuality held in much of Africa is not of our creation; so it is not our responsibility to proudly clutch onto it, even while the rest of the world moves forward.

Much like we rejected the colonial experience, and the narrative of a white savior, it is time that we reject these views on sexuality that are not inherently ours. The appeal to the argument that homosexuality is Western also intends to maintain the notion of the “untainted African” in pre-colonial Africa, while ignoring the actuality that the exploration of sexuality has never been limited by geographical constraints; Kenya, and Africa, are no exception.

As LGBTQ Kenyans and Africans, we will continue to thrive; the indomitableness of the human spirit prevails. There is no burying us, whether with shame or violence, for we are here and have always been here. I am reminded of a Mexican proverb that goes, “They tried to bury us.They did not know we were seeds.” We are seeds, planting our roots firmly on this earth, intent on flourishing.

Two books isn’t enough protection: Britain deports writer Ishtiyaq Shukri

Many of you who are familiar with South African literature know that writer Ishtiyaq Shukri was detained and questioned for over nine hours at Heathrow Airport in London on the 14th of July 2015, and summarily deported. He also had his British residency revoked, although he had been a resident of that country for twenty years. Whilst held in detention, he was questioned about why he visited Yemen – even though thousands of people do for ordinary, non-sinister reasons, and Shukri’s reasons were no different: at the time, his wife was working there as the Country Director of Oxfam Yemen, one of the UK’s largest international humanitarian aid agencies. But these clear answers didn’t stop UK immigration officials from deporting Shukri. Their official reason: because Shukri’s “last visit to the UK in 2012 was more than two years ago.” Because Shukri knew that how he was treated is “indicative of the increasing heavy-handedness facing African migrants at UK and EU borders,” he stepped forward to make a public statement about his encounter with British immigration authorities.

Anyone who has read his writing cannot fail to see the irony of the situation: Shukri is an author who writes about possibilities for dialogue and understanding between people of different faiths and personal histories; he also includes references to the seemingly irrational, yet quite intentional methodologies through which empire functions and dis-functions, employing petty functionaries whose dismissive judgements make or break the lives of those who are located on the outskirts of empire’s power structures. It was his first novel, The Silent Minaret, that helped me coalesce my own ideas about the ways in which colonial era tactics used to subdue people and control their resources were parallel to strategies employed by both apartheid-era South Africa and the post 9/11 world. His second novel, I See You, makes one question whether it is conceivable for any country to follow its purported democratic ideals, when interests of arms dealers and the possibility of making money and brokering power though war enters the picture.

When Shukri first wrote to say that he had been deported, my thoughts went immediately to the multitude of stories – including my own – that immigrants share about the indignities they face at borders and checkpoints, when their bodies are in transit between nations. Sometimes, we are less aware of power structures, even when they affect us deeply, and in the most mundane ways. Many of us do not even have the language with which to speak about these violent and violating encounters. And that inability to language, that lack of connection to power structures, the fear of voicing a protest in case of consequences, and the general feeling of powerlessness has a lot to do with why violations at borders and in no-man’s lands of airport questioning rooms continue. In these transitory spaces, petty immigration officials have enormous, unchecked amounts of authority that allows them to make decisions that affect the trajectories of of thousands of people’s lives everyday. One is not permitted to use a phone and one cannot record a conversation: so the go-to technology checking authority in the 21st century is made unavailable. I’ve resorted to taking extensive notes – once, as I was sitting and writing what I overheard in one of those rooms in an airport as a petty official harangued a Senagalese woman in a wheelchair (“Why are you in a wheelchair?! Why are you in a wheel-chair?!”), someone noticed, and quickly processed me out of there with a friendly smile and a joke about making sure that I did not miss my next flight.

At national borders, especially those of powerful nations, where the boundaries defining one’s personal integrity are made porous and penetrable to authority, one has little recourse over one’s life. There is no boundary of protection around one unless one displays markers of power: a passport displaying that one is a legitimate heir of a powerful country in the geopolitical West, accompanied by Europeannes or Americanness – that means one’s name should align with Algo-Saxonness, Christianness, and whiteness for that “pass” to really work. Otherwise, as in Shukri’s case, no pass will allow you pass automatically, a privilege that Blondie from the North who is in the customs and immigration queue with you most likely takes for granted.

Shukri insists on making “a concerted effort not to observe the ways of the world by race” having grown up “in a society obsessed with race.” He notes,

I always try to look beyond race in my life and in my writing. So, for example, my characters are never described by race. They simply have names. The reader does the rest.

However, his is not some Pollyanna non-racialism; he knows that encounters at immigration distil the fact that the world is equally insistent on deciding people’s fates based on racialised markers:

When I was led into that detention room where three other people were seated, that old apartheid dynamic to assess the world by race took over, and before I could help myself, it struck me immediately that none of us was white. Apart from the immigration officials, there were no white witnesses to our humiliation.

In the detention rooms, Shukri saw quickly that he was meant to be the person with little access to language of power, to be the supplicant who would have no choice but to accept what the immigration officials decided.

In the early stages of the process, there was the assumption that I spoke no or little English. So the officers who come to take me to have my luggage searched spoke in a very deliberate way, slowly, with excessive articulation. I let them do it to themselves until the time eventually came for me to offer more extended answers to their probing questions. I sensed the tables turned then – slightly, when I spoke [….] But they had already committed themselves to a course and line of action, from which they could no longer step back.

What does the arbitrariness of immigration officials do to the personhood of the other, as they attempt to cross national borders – a right that those from politically and militarily powerful nations do as easily as liquid through an open pipe? One prepares, first and foremost, to lay one’s private life bare: to answer questions unimaginable to a First World traveller, to make oneself transparent and porous to authority. To be a supplicant at borders is to prepare to play a part – one knows instinctively to playact harmlessnesss, to display lack of threat, to exude submission, to be a bland, a-political, Yes Sir, No Sir supplicant who knows their place in the geo-political totem pole (for some, it is no playacting – it is truly how they have fashioned themselves in the face of all they’ve been trained to believe about the cultural superiority of the West). The desire for political and philosophical integrity, or even for privacy means that one resents intrusion into one’s personal life – why must one supplicate? But part of how abusive authority works is by testing our desire to be ethical witnesses to life, to maintain personal integrity and privacy. So it is no wonder that many of us, under the enormous pressure of dehumanising circumstances, will lay ourselves down, hoping that authority might not see us, and let us pass by.

Third World immigrants always carry proof of their legitimacy in the form of papers – papers that a white traveller from the geopolitical West would never think to carry: passport, of course. Visa, duh yes. But also: letters from institutions or friends from stating that they are inviting one to come visit, which include those friends’ national ID numbers (to show that they themselves are not illegals), their phone numbers, addresses, and utility bills (to show that they are actually residents at the given residence); letters from employers to show one is gainfully employed; also one’s birth certificate, printouts of bank statements to show that one is solvent and will not become a burden on one’s host country, and proof of health insurance, for the same reason as the former set of documents; then, if applicable, marriage certificates, maybe even deeds to property. That is the burden of the Third World traveller: envelopes of papers and their duplicates, carrying proof of legitimacy. So when you see some Dark Other holding up the immigration queue, shuffling through what seems like unnecessary papers, know that this is what’s happening. Shukri, too, carried many papers (including his “marriage certificate, birth certificate, bank statements, even though I am a permanent resident”) – seemingly unnecessary papers – for what was a simple holiday, a joyful time with family, in a city that was “his”…a place where he completed his first novel, a place where he had friends, love, meals, prayers.

London provided him a home. It was one of several cities in which he made “home” possible, as immigrants often do. Globalisation theorists ushered in the 2000s with a celebration of the “global nomad” who can flit between continents; even those who called themselves “Afropolitans” plucked themselves a bit of that privileged, nomadic cool. But the majority of the world’s travellers can’t imagine travelling without worries about standing in long queues at consulates, filling out intricate paperwork demanding ever more proof of thier legitimacy, adding up the fees necessary for visas. Ultimately, we fear that no matter what one does, that visa for which we applied so carefully will be nullified at the border, scuppering all one’s plans and ambitions. That cool, liquid identity of the global cosmopolitan remains, in reality, accessible to a privileged few.

Shukri is not one to publicise his personal life. In interviews, he typically speaks only about his writing. But there needs to be examples on record. Few of those to whom harassment and deportation happen are as articulate as he, nor will as many people in positions of authority sign a petition on their behalf, as did a list of academics lead by Professor Isabel Hofmeyer at the University of Witwatersrand. A reasoned decision such as his to make a public statement wouldn’t have come without a lot of thought about the unwanted kind of attention and exposure that it will bring. And now, some things about his private life – details about which he never speaks – have been made public. In the news articles about Shukri’s deportation, there are several references to his wife – her life, too, has been made public. It was impossible for Shukri not to mention why he was going to London, to mention that she is British, that they have a home in London, that they have been married since 1996: information that one should not have to supply.

But every Third World traveller knows that immigration is about breaking into one’s personal banks – officials rob you blind, and you are supposed to willingly give. Some of us go into the mode of supplying as much as we can, even when not asked, in an effort to look as though our “banks” are open – a signal of the lack of threat we pose. According to the rules of this game of power, Shukri’s wife is afforded no privacy either; she has to be brought out – partly because her work helps add “legitimacy” to him: because she works for Oxfam, hers is compassionate, important work, and that makes her (and him) appear “peaceful” and not-terroristy. These are the details that help people build emotional ties to him, her, and comprehend the injustice of what happened. And now, her life, as well as his, are going to have to be deployed in order to show that this deportation was illegitimate – because we can see that these are good people who do good in the world. And yet, this exercise in exposure is not enough. The legitimacy that all this work is supposed to weave, creating a system of support for one’s freedom – one’s thoughtful, beautiful, critical, ways of being in the world – none of these things are not enough. It is never enough.

Hipsters Don’t Dance Top World Carnival Tunes for July 2015

Hipsters Don’t Dance is back on Africa is a Country! They’re webcasting direct from London out to wherever you are! Enjoy this month’s selection of tunes, and be sure to keep up with all the latest and greatest from the World Carnival on the HDD Blog.

Patoranking x My Woman My Everything (Feat. Wande Coal)

Filmed in london, this video for Pato’s latest release is clean and pretty typical of the Afropop music video template. The song however great, hitting an “alkaiyda” tempo of 110 bpm but still plays to Pato’s strengths. VP is doing a good job of letting the artist be the artist.

Ayo Jay x Your Number (Feat. Fetty Wap)

We once declared New Jersey the most creative space in the world about 2 years ago. Little did we know that Fetty Wap would come out as the singjay star of the moment. No clue about him teaming up with Ayo Jay on this afropop romantic single. Now if only Fetty released the afro remix of Trap Queen.

Krept & Konan x Freak Of The Week (Remix Feat Jeremih, Wiz Kid, Davido, Fuse ODG & Ice Prince)

In true World Carnival vibes we have Nigeria, Ghana, America and Uk all on 1 track. Throw in the classic Jeremy Harding production that was sampled and you have Jamaica as well. Hootie Who would have liked 1 of the A-team (AKA, Burna Boy and Da L.E.S) on here as well. A true summer jam just got more international.

Wizkid x Oluejeba (Feat. Skepta and Drake)

It’s been an interesting few months for afropop, on one hand you have artists realising what they are worth cough BET cough. On the other you have major artists embracing them fully and not just for a check (we see you Snoop Dogg). Drake sleepwalked through his verse but Skepta’s description of an immigrants struggle is everything.

Sauti Sol x Lipala Dance (Feat. President Barack Obama)

We have all been at family functions where you have had to dance in front of people. Now it’s Obama’s time.

Humans of Lagos offers a glimpse at daily life in the West African mega city

In the recent abundance of social media pages and campaigns that focus on portraying a more extensive image of Africa, Lagos is one of the many cities that have been photographed and put on display. Not only because of its towering architecture and vast expanse of water, but also because of how well this resilient, rousing and restorative city capture the essence of Nigeria. Like New York, Lagos is viewed as less of a place and more of a feeling; the rambunctiousness of the yellow Danfo buses or the leafy trees that shade the milk colored house in Ikoyi evoke as much emotion as the people do.

Home to 17 million people and counting, the people of Lagos, or Lagosians as they have been dubbed, are some of the most captivating people in the world and there’s a man whose mission it is to make sure everyone knows this, one picture at a time. Tochi Ani, the photographer and curator behind the immensely successful Instagram page, Humans of Lagos isn’t very open to revealing information about himself or the page that has over 10,000 people talking.

“It [Humans of Lagos] was inspired by Humans Of New York, I’ve always had it in mind to start the Lagos version of HONY but I kept postponing. I eventually started in January of 2015 after a series of events that occurred in my life. I’ll leave out the details out for now, but then, I needed a distraction.” Ani says over online chat.

Like its New York counterpart, the page is a colorful look at the lives of everyday Lagosians, it features an image of a different Lagos city resident accompanied by a short anecdote about the subjects life. Ani tends to aim his lens at the middle class or sometimes, lower middle class citizens from industrial neighborhoods like Surulere and Yaba, a choice he claims is not intentional but rather a result of who responds to his advances. The subjects reveal to him their hopes, dreams and even disappointments in the matter-of-fact way that Lagosians are known to approach everything. According to Ani, whose subjects range from schoolteachers to bus drivers and even little children, the people he approaches aren’t prompted to reveal a particularly interesting tidbit about their lives, that is something they offer up on their own. “People are always willing to share but no one cares enough to ask or listen.”

Like the work of photographer, Roy DeCarava, Humans of Lagos is not a sociological experiment, but more so a look at the ordinary lives of a group of people. Therefore, no matter how many people Ani covers, he rejects the claim that the page is a complete representation of Lagos and all of its inhabitants. “I think it will be hard to get a definitive view of Lagos from the page. Lagos is large and so are its inhabitants. There is only so much the story of maybe 10,000 people can tell about a city and I’m nowhere near that number yet.” Says Ani.

Other than the obvious fact that Ani’s subjects are humans themselves, it is the way that their stories tug at our different emotions that humanize this social media movement. Some make us laugh, some even make us cry, but most importantly they allow us the feeling of empathy. As Ani positions his lens on the lives of people who are either as different as can be or more similar than we expected, something happens to us as we look at them and listen to them. They become visible and the more clearly we see and hear them, the clearer we see and hear ourselves.

When asked how he would describe Lagosians as a whole, Ani chooses one word in particular, optimistic. “Lagosians are very optimistic people. No matter what they are going through, they believe things will eventually get better for them.” When looking through the page, it’s not hard to see what Ani is talking about. Even as some subjects recount tales of family members that were victims of the recent barrage of Boko Haram kidnappings, or lament the demise of their businesses or personal lives, there is always a resounding affirmation of hope, a belief that things will get better.

The page has gone on to raise funds for two people that were featured on it, both in financially unstable situations, and although Ani stresses that fundraising is not the page’s main focus, it does make him happy to see how quickly people come together to help others. In the case of Vivian, a young girl with an acyanotic congenital heart defect, the page’s followers rallied together to raise money for her surgery in India.

Ani says, “I was so surprised when we got over $3000 in less than 24 hours. When I posted about Vivian, I didn’t initially talk about raising funds because I wasn’t sure we would be able to do that and I didn’t want to raise the families hope and dash it because they had been disappointed by so many people in the past.”

The page raised over $12,000, but unfortunately, Vivian did not survive and the money ended up being split between her family and some of the ailing children Vivian befriended while she was hospitalized.

In another case, Ani recently photographed an ongoing demolition along the Lagos-Badagry Expressway that affected multiple homes and left residents homeless. As subjects recounted how homes that spanned generations were demolished in one day, the comment section of the page buzzed, some quick to ask “What can we do about this?” others foregoing monetary assistance and tagging Lagos state governor, Akinwunmi Ambode simply saying “Do something.”

Amongst everyone the page has touched, it’s clear that the man behind the lens has been impacted the most. Although he cryptically sidesteps all attempts at discussing his personal life, Ani does admit that the page is more than a part time gig.

“It has impacted me in so many ways, when I started I didn’t have any expectations, I just wanted to go out there and just do something that would make me look forward to tomorrow.”

As the page continues to grow, Ani remains cautiously hopeful about his expectations, “The page has the potential to do so many amazing things but I don’t want to get too excited over the prospects of that. I just want to take it one step at a time. It’s still evolving and now I want to focus on the work and see how it goes.”

But it is clear that amongst the literal noise of Lagos and the figurative clutter of social media, Humans of Lagos has found a way to bridge both communities while continuing to prove that storytelling is an actionable tool, especially when the people being portrayed are given a chance to speak for themselves, literally.

“Good photography always tells a story and good photographers always want their work to mean something. The page does that to an extent, Africans are tired of the images the West have given us and this page evens things out a bit.” Says Nigerian born photographer, Ima Mfon.

Therefore, Ani’s decision to keep the entire page in English is an intentional one to show that his audience is not limited to Lagos and definitely not just Nigeria. In a country with 250 ethnic groups and a variety of hybrid languages that merge English and other native tongues, it’s safe to say that Ani’s responses are not always uniform in language.

“I keep everything in English to make it easier for non-Nigerians on the page to understand.” Says Ani.

The feedback from the page’s community is obvious – They appreciate the work Ani and the page are doing. Other than the following from everyday people near and far, the page has attracted a number of celebrity fans. In one instance, Nigerian singer, Banky W spotted a painting of himself done by one of Ani’s subjects, a street artist, and after the page brought the image to his attention, W eventually patronized the artists and bought the painting.

While celebrity notoriety and international interest is always welcome, Ani reinforces that the community that he is building and the gap he is bridging between Lagos and the rest of the world is what makes the project worthwhile.

“Reading people’s comments and getting messages about how the page has impacted people’s lives mean everything to me and that is what has really kept me going.”

In Germany, are some refugees more equal than others?

Family gatherings can be a pleasant but occasionally dreadful experience. At one such dinner three weeks ago, my grandmother’s cousin complained to us about the, in her opinion, never-ending flow of refugees and asylum-seekers to Germany and, in particular, her local municipality. “It’s only a matter of time before these young men start raping our girls”, she declared shamelessly. “But, of course, I don’t mind Syrian families, they can stay here!”, she added apologetically. In Germany, this reveals a simple truth: all refugees are equal, but some refugees are more equal than others.

Under international humanitarian law, states are expected to grant asylum to people fleeing from war and persecution, regardless of nationality, race, gender, religion, or political opinion. In reality, this principle is often ignored or actively thwarted, as in Germany’s current discourse on migration. It is not only private spaces that offer a platform for racist and xenophobic propaganda. Bavaria’s premier Horst Seehofer bluntly denounces people in need of protection as “asylum abusers”, while right-wing movements warn against Germany’s creeping Islamization through uncontrolled immigration and lax asylum laws. These claims seem to target one asylum-seeker group that is considered particularly undesirable: lone traveling, young African and Arab men. They seem undeserving of state protection and are branded as potential criminals, idlers or parasites, as exploiting the welfare system, threatening state security, and encroaching upon “our” women. After all, over 65% of Germany’s asylum-seekers are men. Part of this irrational antagonism stems from deep-rooted racism.

For centuries, racialized knowledge about colonial subjects, so-called ‘orientals’ and ‘negroes’, was at the heart of Europe’s imperial vigour. Black and non-white bodies were at once despised and fetishized, mystified and sexualized, displayed and hidden from view. Nonetheless, intimate contact between European men and non-white women was often tolerated as a perfidious way of appropriating conquered societies, cultures, and subject bodies. In Europe’s male-dominated social order, the reverse was a strictly-policed racial and cultural taboo. As Cynthia Enloe argues, “affairs between colonial women and local men were threats to the imperial order”. Black bodies were ascribed an exotic, boundless, and violent sexuality. Yet, colonial subjects were also deemed lazy, lustrous, barbarous, and irrational. With a flare-up in Germany’s migration debates, these racist resentments come again to the fore.

Protests against asylum-seeker homes are no rarity in German cities today. Right-wing demonstrations in Freital (Saxony) and a steep increase in reported assaults targeting refugees and asylum-seekers nationwide echo the murderous arson attacks of Rostock-Lichtenhagen and Solingen in 1993. By appealing to nationalist and xenophobic sentiments, conservative politicians condone and incite such hate crimes. And yet, all political panic reactions seem disproportionate to both the number of asylum-seekers/refugees in Germany and the country’s strong capacity to accommodate them. According to the European Commission (EC), around 185,000 people applied for EU asylum in the first quarter of 2015. Around 73,000 applications were submitted in Germany. Meanwhile, conflict-affected neighbouring countries in Africa and the Middle East are bearing the brunt of global displacement. In Lebanon, every fourth inhabitant is now a refugee. Ethiopia alone hosts 665,000 refugees, the highest number in Africa. Kenya comes a close second with over 600,000 having escaped civil wars in Somalia and South Sudan.

But, with racism and xenophobia again on the rise, not only numbers matter. A conservative audience fearing “asylum abusers”, “economic refugees”, and “Islamic extremists” has found easy scapegoats in young Arab and African men, some of whom have lost their homes and families. In contrast, Syrian refugee and asylum-seeker families are seen as more agreeable. Besides offering welcome photo opportunities for German politicians, they are frequently co-opted as “poster families” to embody “the good refugee life”. Particularly for conservatives, Christian or secular families are the “safest bet”: the more educated and integration-prone, the better. They seem to pose little risk to the cultural comfort zone of more right-wing voters.  Further, these media celebrations of refugee families who “know their place” reinforce an illiberal notion of family as the building block of society, while simultaneously delegitimizing asylum claims of single men (and women).

Unsurprisingly, this hostile social climate is a European-wide phenomenon. Eastern Europe’s Visegrád governments – Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary – declared their unwillingness to accept Muslim asylum-seekers. Petty diplomatic wrangling over the European Agenda on Migration, the EU resettlement scheme for 40,000 refugees, and an equitable quota system for member states is a clear sign of Europe’s moral destitution. Czech Interior Minister Milan Chovanec cautioned that EU quotas for asylum-seekers could mean the “collapse of [Czech] society”. Many European governments therefore favour “culturally close[r]” refugees and asylum-seekers, preferably white, educated Christians. But, pick-and-choose asylum systems are both unethical and unlawful. In fact, asylum regimes must per definition respect people’s rights and needs without prior discrimination. A 2013 article in The Atlantic alluded to the discriminative practice of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Jordan and its bias towards assisting Syrian rather than Sudanese refugees, and provocatively asked “How do you rank refugees?”. Whether in Germany, in my grandma’s cousin’s municipality, or elsewhere, there is only one right answer: You don’t.

Mandela Day: 400 women, 800+ care packs for rape survivors, one vision of South Africa

Since 2010, July 18 has been `celebrated’ as Mandela Day. Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela aka Madiba was born on July 18, 1918. Last Saturday, South Africa celebrated this day for the second time since Madiba’s passing. Last year, many bemoaned the empty symbolism of “a day of volunteerism”, and that not even a day but a mere 67 minutes. This year the criticism was less vocal, but not because people have taken on the banner of social justice. Rather, what with Marikana and Nkandla and imploding unions and load shedding and medical stockouts and tavern collapses and so much more, people are tired, tired of being tired at the empty show. The people at Rape Crisis Cape Town Trust decided to confront and transform that fatigue.

This year, the Nelson Mandela Foundation called on people to embody Mandela Day, “not as a gesture of charity but as a call to justice.” As Kathleen Dey, the Executive Director of Rape Crisis, explained, “The appeal made no distinction between small, individual acts and bigger gestures as long as the focus was on those in need of help. Perhaps the answer lies in this: that the reason for our detachment is that average citizens don’t treat the poor as human, don’t engage, don’t get too close. For these citizens here is a message: let Mandela Day be the start of your journey to get to know the people you want to help. Let it become an entry point to your longer term involvement with an organisation that works with people and communities in need and that works to bring about structural change… This generation might have failed but the next generation has the chance to make a difference if we show them how.”

The organizers and volunteers at Rape Crisis, many of them rape survivors themselves, decided that the point of the call to justice is to break through the enchantments of and inducements to scale, to understand for at least one day that making justice is a concrete, material action, day by day, year by year.

And so they called on people to come to the Mowbray Town Hall and make something happen, specifically care packs for rape survivors who undergo forensic examinations at a forensic unit to allow them to wash and change into clean underwear after all evidence of the rape has been collected for analysis. These care packs are key to women retaining and reconstructing their individual and collective dignity during a process, in the police station, that often seems dedicated to attack precisely each woman’s last shred of decency.

As Rape Crisis Communications Officer Sandile Ndelu explained, “We want to make sure that we (Rape Crisis) are at each and every step of the way supporting them, comforting them and that’s why the care packs are so important.”

300 people signed up; around 400 pitched up on the day. They made 865 care packs in one day, which is a fantastic intervention, and then there are the numbers yet. According to Kathleen Dey, “As an organisation we need 2600 care packs per annum, the city needs 6000 per annum and the province needs 9000 per annum.” These are the maths of social justice for women in just one province of South Africa, and 67 minutes just won’t do. But 400 people started to work through those numbers to a common vision of social justice, which the Rape Crisis Cape Town Trust articulates: “We have a vision of a South Africa in which women are safe in their communities and where the criminal justice system supports and empowers rape survivors in all its interventions.” 400 women, 800+ care packs for rape survivors, one vision of South Africa: that’s very new and very old maths.

Discover The Ma’Ati, a new storytelling platform for travelers

The Ma’Ati is a new digital storytelling platform created by Africa is a Country contributor Shamira Muhammad. The aim of the project is to share stories about and for the African diaspora via two different online outlets. One is an interactive travel magazine, and the other is a novel, published one chapter at a time, that produces a new mythology of African American identity through the places she visits.

The origin story of The Ma’Ati first comes alive in her novel, where we learn of an ancient nation of nomadic storytellers. Through The Ma’Ati narrative, beautifully illustrated by artists Paul Davey and Taj Francis, Shamira reconnects with history and her heritage, forging a renewed sense of self and community. This vision is echoed in the design of The Ma’Ati logo, a khamsa hand imbued with Adinkra and Voudun symbols meaning endurance, protection, resourcefulness and bravery.

Already, Shamira has spent time writing chapters of The Ma’Ati in Washington DC, Harlem, Alabama, Georgia, New Orleans, Kingston and Havana. She plans to generate new chapters from experiences in Accra, London and destinations yet to be revealed.

To launch The Ma’Ati magazine and novel Shamira has created a kickstarter campaign. Consider donating to the campaign to support The Ma’Ati journey. Read on for an interview with Shamira to hear about how and why The Ma’Ati came to be.

How you got the idea to start The Ma’Ati?

I was living in Paris for a year and a half working as a freelance journalist at France24 and I had a lot of my friends coming to Paris and they’d always ask, “What should I do, what are the best places for me to see?” Paris was great for me to do that because I was so rachet in Paris, I was always in the scene.

After my visa expired, I had to come back to the US. My grandfather had had a stroke [in Washington DC] and so I was going back and forth to the hospital trying to figure out what I wanted to do because I had basically no money. I just knew I wanted to be out in the world and I wanted to know what everyone else in the world was up to. Maybe people in other places were going through some of the same things I was.

So one afternoon I was sitting on my grandfather’s couch and I was thinking about how I had been asking all types of people in my family who they saw me as because nobody else seemed to be as nomadic as me and they didn’t really have answers. So I just thought wouldn’t it make more sense if I came from this nomadic nation of storytellers and they were sometimes a little rachet, but all they did was travel and tell stories. They would go from place to place and help people remember who they were by telling them a story, even giving back to people stories they had lost. I was always obsessed with Herodotus and Leo Africanus and I thought, well, I can just be this character if I want to. Nobody can tell me that I can’t.

Illustration by Paul Davey

How did the concept get its name?

When I was little I was really into ancient Egypt, ancient Kemet and Nubia and I’ve always subscribed to the teaching of Ma’At. So one day I was riding my bike because I kept trying to come up with names for whatever I was trying to flesh out and literally I was at 13th and U St and I just realized it should be called The Ma’Ati. Ma’Ati means that Ma’At and the god Djehuty had kids. The Ma’Ati children in my story are human, but they have powers. So what happened was Ma’at was like, ‘Damn, human women are modeled after me, but they have these beautiful children who pass through them who are mortal.’ Ma’At had never had mortal children, but she wanted to feel what childbirth felt like, what that sacrifice felt like so she had human kids. But I felt gods can’t just have human children without them getting just a little extra something. Plus their father was Djehuty and he was god of the scribes. And that’s why The Ma’Ati were really into telling the stories of everyone because they were the gatekeepers of human achievements. Their parents knew that they’d always be mortal and flesh, but because they traded in words, they’d always be immortal.

How do you relate to The Ma’Ati?

In the origin story you see where The Ma’Ati came from. There’s Keyoni, Ede, Bala Banni and Rahi – five kids. I’m actually one of five children and so the personalities of The Ma’Ati are related to those of my siblings. I was really trying to figure I who I was and where home is. I don’t really have a geographic location where I say, “that’s home.” The story was my way of trying to figure that out for myself. It started off as, ‘where should I live in the world? I’m just going to explore the world until I find out where home was.’ Then it became, ‘but who am I?’

African people in the United States who have been here for several hundred years – it has always bothered me that when we reference ourselves, we start at slavery, but I always knew I was connected to something far deeper. When I went to the archives I didn’t find any evidence that any of my family members were slaves, I found evidence that they had been enslaved. They had these identities and cultures that did not permit me to believe that I come from people who were slaves who were disconnected from their legacies and their heritage. I wanted to show creatively how much black Americans are connected to the entire world and have always been, but we don’t often think of that. You don’t even know why you do certain things or things you may not have ever noticed about yourself which are actually part of something deeper and ancient and sacred. But you have never tried to explore it. So I thought The Ma’Ati could do that on top of being something that helped people figure out how they could explore the world on their own.

The Ma’Ati logo

Tell us about the other contributors to The Ma’Ati travel magazine?

I have people who write different travel articles with photography and I always have DJs contribute playlists by city. One girl who has been contributing is Cassie Reynolds. She’s been doing a tour of East Asia and giving us features and so much amazing photography.

I’m always looking for people. My email is editor@maati.com. Even some other websites have also contributed style features for different cities. I want it to feel as interactive as possible and I want people to be excited if they are about to visit a place that The Ma’Ati has featured. I want it to be something that’s not just tourism initiated I want it to be something that’s really coming from the local creative scene. I feel like the best parts of travelling for me have nothing to do with how many places I’ve gone. I myself have evolved so much by having to travel everywhere. I’ve traveled since I was little, having to move from place to place with my family and all I could take with me was me was my identity.

You have called this a “traveling youth’s guide to the universe”, why target youth as your audience?

As for youth, one of the reasons I feel so free to do a project like the Ma’Ati is because as a young person I had the initiative, but I also had the support to explore the world and who I really am. I still live with my grandfather and I see that we don’t ever stop growing. I can honestly say I look at my grandfather and I still see him as a youth. So when I say traveling youth’s guide to the universe what I really mean is that at all times we’re youth because we never stop growing ‘til we die and even then I don’t know what happens. For all youth it behooves them to try and explore as much as they can because it’s a transformative thing. And as soon as you touch another place you’re automatically changed. It really does do something for you. It’s a spiritual thing and it’s a healing thing. I know a lot of people who have gone through very traumatic things and their trying to regain a sense of balance and sometimes taking a trip – not even that far – can help bring that back into a person’s space.

‘Contemporary Design Africa’ book highlights African innovation, challenging dominant perceptions of the continent

Tapiwa Matsinde’s book, Contemporary Design Africa, challenges perceptions of African creativity by focusing on design and innovation on the continent. Tapiwa Matsinde is a British-Zimbabwean designer, creative business consultant, blogger and writer. Her book is attempting to push back against the “single story” of African art. The aim of the book is to challenge the standard imagery of “wooden statues, masks, animal prints, tribal markings, safari chic, ebony and ivory, and earth tones,” revealing a fluid, dynamic and unpredictable creative economy, in places as diverse as Nigeria, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Senegal, Burkina Faso and Mali. Inspired by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s popular TED talk, Matsinde’s volume celebrates novel approaches to design throughout the continent.

Through photographs and text, Contemporary Design Africa considers a selection of intricate, colourful and sustainably produced decorative objects. Matsinde focuses especially on basketry, ceramics, metalwork, woodcarving, weaving and textiles, fashioned from materials such as beads, raffia, shells, embroidered textiles, leather, ivory, metals and bamboo, among others. Aside from extolling the objects, Matsinde emphasizes the originality and imagination of African artisans. To cite one example, she considers textiles by Henoc Maketo of Design Maketo, which draw inspiration from the multi-layered motifs and effervescent colour palettes of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Maketo specializes in screen-printing and uses old and new print techniques to produce his designs. In 2011 he won the prestigious New Design Britain, Fabrics Award at Interiors Birmingham.

Similarly the Cape Town based textile company, Shine Shine, produces funky and playful designs for a youthful audience. Shine Shine was founded in 2007 by Tracy Rushmere. The distinct aesthetic is the result of the partnership between Rushmere and South African graphic designer Heidi Chisholm. The textiles are inspired by anything from barbershop signs found across the continent to religious cloths. The premise of the collaboration was to create designs that celebrated African artisanship. Shine Shine’s products range from clothing to interior accessories. The designs appeal to the transnational hipster aesthetic.

Conventionally, African craftspeople have remained anonymous to international audience members; Matsinde’s book joins others who have been working to ameliorate this situation. One only has to think of the work of Bongiwe (Bongi) Dhlomo. Her piece entitled Artist Unknown: At the End of the Day is a critique on the continual dismissal of African artists in the international art market and gallery space. African artisanship has been relegated to the periphery of mainstream art production, which has led to its seeming non-existence in the international art market (although work by Africans certainly looks large in the international curio trade). One only has to go to an art museum to locate the absence of African artists. Expanding the framework suggests there are more possibilities for African art and artists. Matsinde’s volume recognizes that African artists are adept at providing decorative objects that are functional, beautiful and timely. Matsinde does this in part by focusing instead on nations, materials and contexts to help her audience understand the relationship of these forms to their ‘traditional’ forebears. 

Through novel applications of ‘traditional’ styles Matsinde drives home the implicit point that African art and design has always changed, developed and grown anew.

#Campusnotes: What does the “Sankara Generation” mean for women?

They are being called the “Génération Sankara”: a legion of young Burkinabè men and women dissatisfied with the neoliberal regime of Blaise Compaoré, which drew to a close last fall. The protestors who brought down the regime were almost exclusively youths. Other than the government leaders, older people have been conspicuously absent from the activism and the conversation. As they are often are, older, uneducated women’s voices are noticeably silent. In the summer before Compaoré was pushed out, I spent three months performing an ethnographic study of market women in the Dassasgho neighborhood of Ouagadougou. They were, for the most part, the mothers of the Sankara Generation, but they — perhaps even more deeply than their children — felt the injustices that led to the revolution last October.

Sankara remains particularly beloved by women in Burkina Faso, largely because of his rhetorical and political commitment to their social and economic betterment. He saw women as a symbol of the Third World. In a 1987 speech given to a women’s rally outside Ouagadougou, he claimed that “Socially, [women] are relegated to third place, after the man and the child — just like the Third World, arbitrarily held back, the better to be dominated and exploited.” Sankara believed that Burkinabè socialism could thereby particularly help women: he started trade cooperatives in the cities, production cooperatives in the villages, and even created a new government job — street sweeper — reserved exclusively for the poorest women. After his murder, however, Compaoré rejected this sort of government-led development, in favor of opening the country to aggressive foreign NGOs, especially of the capitalist variety. According to a recent study, Burkina Faso is now one of the most microfinance-penetrated countries in Africa. As a result, the economy is almost entirely dependent on the western NGO industry itself, causing massive unemployment. Unlike Sankara’s push to promote native Burkinabè industry (especially at the expense of Western powers), Compaoré’s shift back to the West has stifled Burkina Faso’s production capabilities.

There was deep dissatisfaction with the results of this shift. Occasionally, during my interviews, talk would shift to the political climate in Ouagadougou, which was becoming increasingly tense after a series of anti-government protests in January and a long, hot summer. Some women decried the shift towards anti-Compaoré sentiment: my primary informant, Aminata*, told me in hushed tones about the beating a woman she knew had received for painting a pro-Compaoré slogan on her wall. It was sometimes hard to understand why, exactly, people continued to support Compaoré. Rumor had it that on the eve of elections, he sent supporters into communities with threatening messages: largely that, should they fail to reelect him, the resulting unrest would allow Côte d’Ivoire’s violence to spread over the border.

Even so, they spoke wistfully of Sankara, especially of the cooperatives that he helped set up in the markets. Only a few of my interviewees were a part of these, and the others spoke enviously of their luck. Farida*, one of the cooperative members, was one of the few who did not complain of the long hours and little profit to be eked out of market work. “Everything is easy for us if we make money when we work. We can work, we can do everything,” she told me. A friend of hers responded to this statement with a grunt. With a wave of her hand, she explained that Farida could say this only “since she is not alone. She has an association.”

The main sentiment that these market women exuded was dissatisfaction: dissatisfaction with their children’s continuing dependence, with the market, and importantly, with the government. These were women who hungered for change. They wanted a system in which they could work and care for their families in a way that was supported by the government, not just by the vagaries of Western NGOs. For them, Sankara loomed large, a figure of the last time it seemed, at least, that their president was someone truly concerned with the fate of the Burkinabè poor. Aminata’s portrayed the current class lines in Burkina Faso as rigid and uncompromising; she, like many other Burkinabè, would love to see those class lines eroded away.

The issues that the Sankara Generation push for so unrelentingly are as important to their mothers as they are to the youths themselves. Children are the primary form of social security for elderly Burkinabè; the lack of employment for young people often means that old women, especially, must work far beyond the time that their mothers or grandmothers did. One of my interviewees, Béatrice, is a retired hospital worker, who now works in the market in order to support her family. At the time of our interview, she was 68 — life expectancy in Burkina Faso is only 56. However, she is responsible for the care of three children and six grandchildren; only one of her sons has semi-regular work. Béatrice, like the majority of the women I interviewed, has worked her entire life to assure a secure retirement under the care of her children, but the economic climate and the redoubling of class distinctions have rendered this impossible. “I am so tired,” Aminata told me, “but I cannot die — for then, who will take care of my children?”

It is as yet unclear what the future of the Sankara Generation will hold, and what parts of his teachings the men in power (and those in power are, with few exceptions, men) will hold dear. Their interest is unmistakable: the push for an exhumation of Sankara’s body is proof enough of that. Is this renewed interest indicative of a revived interest in socialism, or simply the grasping of a people looking for a leader after the end of a political era? Sankara may simply stay the Che Guevara of Burkina Faso, in death representing an image of Burkinabè anti-colonial discontent that need not be compatible with the actions or ideology of the people who put his image on their shirts and walls. Should the revolution come, however, it is clear that many of the market women of Dassasgho will welcome it with open arms: after all, as Sankara extolled in his 1987 speech, “the revolution cannot triumph without the emancipation of women.”