matatu I rode

into town this morning was blasting Justin Timberlake's Losing My Way.

Can anybody out there hear me?
'Cause I can't seem to hear myself
Can anybody out there see me?
'Cause I can't seem to see myself...

Can anybody out there feel me?
'Cause I can't seem to feel myself

My first thought was how ironic the lyrics were, applied to the matatu itself. Pedestrians are invisible on Nairobi's roads - to drivers, that is. As are cyclists, animals, pavement demarcations during rush hour.........

But if anything is seen, heard and felt on Kenyan roads, it's matatus. And they know it.

My second thought was that the lyrics feed into some of the responses to Migritude's run in Kenya. People who've said it makes them angry, and what are they supposed to do with this anger, this knowledge, why do I have to dredge up this painful enraging history?

I want to respond:

How can we be seen accurately by the rest of the world, known in all our complexity, if we haven't taken in the pain of our own history? If we haven't really looked at, listened to, the schisms and jagged cracks in our own society? Claiming the truth, feeling everything it evokes in us, gives us power to name ourselves. To tell our own stories. To see, hear, feel ourselves, is vital political work.

If I were to define - which I strenuously resist doing in every interview - the current 'trend' in contemporary African art, I would quote from one of my poems that we are meeting ourselves in the mirror. We are talking to each other, instead of telling the Western world simplified stories about ourselves. Making work about Africa for contemporary Africans. Work that does not dumb down, prettify, or translate. Art that demands effort, engagement, from the audience.