Sauti za Busara photograph

of me performing at the opening ceremony.

Someone forwarded it to me today. I hadn't seen it before. The first thought I had when I looked at it was how I spent hours scouring Gizenga Street, the main shopping alley of Zanzibar's Stone Town, for something to wear on stage that would cover me neck to wrist to ankle. In deference to Zanzibari Islamic culture. The irony is that a fully-covered poet, saying the word "clitoris" on stage, in the serious political context of female genital mutilation, was labelled offensive. Singled out for silencing.

Not the half-naked gyrating dancers from the mainland, in Saturday night's lineup.

Not Tanzanian bongo flava act, TKS Mwanaume, who opened their set by yelling: "All the niggaz in the house, put your hands up! All the bitches in the house, put your hands up!"

Why was a woman naming a part of her own body, a part of every woman's body, so much more threatening than racist hate speech? So much more disturbing to the powerful men of Zanzibar than women blatantly packaged as sexual commodities?