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Be a part of Migritude's journey.
No contribution is too small - or too large. $2 buys coffee for a volunteer. $15 rents a rehearsal studio for an hour. $100 covers 2 hours of lighting / tech / set design. $500 helps fly Shailja to international festivals!!


You can also make a tax-deductible donation by check. Please email shailja@shailja.com for details.
 

Wednesday, February 01, 2006

saa ya kinyumbani

It's 2.30am in the UK. A couple of hours ago, I gave up on trying to sleep and got up to rehearse for the Nairobi show. I had to get up at 4am anyway, to get on the coach to Heathrow. Once I'm on it, it's almost continuous motion until I hit the stage at Carnivore tomorrow night.

My plane lands around 10pm Nairobi time tonight (Nairobi is 3 hours ahead of the UK). We'll get home by 11-ish. At 9am tomorrow, I have a phone meeting with Ciru, the wonderfully capable, on-the-spot-with-everything marketing manager of Kwani. Then an interview on Nairobi's Capital Radio at 1pm. Then we head to Carnivore to begin tech for the show. I go on at 8pm. Somewhere in the interstices, it would be nice to fit in a conversation, or even a cup of tea, with my parents :-).

Between now and 8pm tomorrow, I intend to drink as much water as my body can physically hold without actually leaking through the pores. Hydrate, hydrate, hydrate - the magic spell I rely on to generate juice on stage after double-digit hours of travelling.

The East African ran a piece on me today. Capital Radio has done several short spots on Migritude this week. A couple of hours ago, I was jumpy with nerves - they yanked me out of bed. The fear of not living up to the expectations of all those I grew up with.

After 2 hours of working the material, the nerves have morphed into exhilaration. Migritude and I are going home. To an audience that may love us or loathe us, but cannot possibly be bored or indifferent. An audience more intimately connected to what we have to say than any other in the world.

The novelist May Sarton has a line in one of her books: Perhaps, in the end, this is why one is a poet. So that once in a lifetime, one can say the right words, to the right person, at the right time.

Almost 3am now. 6am in Nairobi - sunrise, and trees erupting into bird chatter. On Kenya Airways flights, Local Time At Destination is rendered in Kiswahili as Saa Ya Kinyumbani Ya Mwisho Wa Safari.

Literal translation: Time of the home at the end of the journey.

Tuesday, January 31, 2006

her position in transition

The website is up for the international festival in Vienna that Migritude was selected for in March this year. It's official title is Her Position In Transition.
The Migritude page is lovely - except for the error on the photo credit, which should read D. Ross Cameron (sorry, Ross! I've asked them to correct it).

Sunday, January 29, 2006

pambazuka

means arise or awake in Kiswahili.

It's also the best resource I've discovered to date for progressive movements, in-depth reporting and commentary on Africa.

Pambazuka News is produced by Fahamu, a non-profit organisation that uses information and communication technologies for social justice.

In 2005, Fahamu was selected by the Tech Museum of Innovation from a field of 301 candidates, representing 64 countries, for a Tech Laureate Award. The awards go to the "best of the best technologists whose innovations benefit humanity".

sudoku

sucks me in and spits me out on a regular basis. What bugs me most about it is that there's not enough room in the empty squares to jot down all the possible numbers. So you end up rubbing out, writing over, making clots of scribbles in the corners of squares that take away half the satisfaction of solving it - and makes it a lot messier than it needs to be.

Sudoku purveyors take note: it's a design thing. How hard would it be to enlarge the squares, and give users enough white space to work on? Until you do, I'm boycotting you.
 
         
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