Pause for Reality Please

There is a sad silence about my soul these last few days; a pause of reality in an otherwise endless going of doing that makes no demand for understanding. Each day is a test of my strength to face my decisions, to deal with the consequences, to accept the changes and find the strength to mourn them. Putting ones head back into ‘doing’ finds the easy comfort of denial. Anyone who has ever said goodbye will know the heart-pulls of the days leading up to it. Days when ones stomach is warm inside, with the bitter feeling of anticipation; where hands shake with unsteady nerves and the heavy feeling of Lost follows you like a shadow.

My goodbyes have started, despite my anticipation of its coming. Last week, I sat with seven hundred others under the shade of acacia trees overlooking the Monduli hills. Hulda Ayoub Zelote, cleansed of wrinkles and shrouded warmly in her coffin, lay while we filed past, bidding farewell with a nod of our heads, aware of the crowd. Two older men, one supporting the other and his stick, walked slowly – painfully – up last. They approached the coffin in careful steps, aware of the uneven ground. One steadied the other and, slightly leaning forward, they bowed to her in perfect sychronisation. That mythical lump of cliché appeared in my throat: an incredibly moving moment to see men, whose age alone commands respect, honouring a woman, and a Maasai at that, when Maasai women are truly at the end of the political food chain.

Perhaps the pause of reality commanded by death strips away the prejudice that comes with doing life; perhaps prejudice is born when doing life makes no demand for understanding. Either way, the harshness of reality facing me now may be painful, but it is fresh and real and the doing of it will be heartfelt, demanding the thought and understanding it deserves.

A Great Woman's Passing

A great woman died yesterday. She was, at a guess, as old as eighty, with her brown-skinned face so wrinkled and brown eyes turned blue with cataracts: she was a striking woman. She was the first woman from Arusha region to earn a degree, following Julius Nyerere to Uganda’s great Makerere University. She returned to Tanzania, a social-studies graduate, and became the first female appointed to a government position in the same region. Friends with Nyerere’s sister, she was recruited to the Independence party – TANU at the time – and fought for the freedom of her country.

Years, marriage and six children later, she fell in love with the words of Jesus and, walking hundreds of miles through the Maasai steppe, stopped to meet women and talk to them about Jesus’ take on gender equality, on love, on forgiveness and honour, on the difference between hope and despair and the power that knowing someone loves you can bring to your life.

She had an impact on hundreds of people’s lives. She had an impact on me: welcoming me into her home, offering beans and maize when 8 grandchildren also needed to eat; telling me with all the graciousness of a queen how she still remembered areas of Arusha town reserved for Whites Only, where dogs were trained to chase off anyone else and white farmers tied Maasai braids to the tailgates of their landrovers and dragged them out of town. She had the dignity to ask after me: what was I studying, did I plan to return to Tanzania, how was my mother, who she loved so much, and told me so.

Death is so final that, with its appearance, it is often a string of disappointed if-only’s that hold hands with our grief.

Mourning Miriam Makeba

Miriam Makeba, or Mama Afrika, dies this morning in Italy. Collapsing on stage after her performance at a concert, she dies in the early hours of this morning from a heart attack. Present tense, because it is today and the world is still waking up to the news as the sun makes its path of Monday Morning across the globe.

I saw her, past tense, in London in 2005, dancing and singing, her voice considerably quieter than recordings in her youth, but her vibrancy no less diminished. She was bright and big, a loud colour of life on a city stage, grey rain misting my view of her. Cold hands of damp held my breath in awe.

My feet were wet and my coat jacket dripped drops of cold onto my jeans. We waited patiently, liberal lovers of all things Afrika, diaspora-determined to see this moment of history. I am glad I did, present tense. I close my eyes today and she is brilliant red against the grey. The memory of rain is cold in my bones but her voice sings, past tense victory into present tense complacency. The meaning of her life is powerful, her achievements solid in a shaky world of uncertainty. Her tune is an anthem to the free and the forgetful are in awe of it. She shook the smoggy streets with her song and the red in the grey glowed warmly.

Present tense, she lived. Now, she has gone.