Takunda Muzondiwa is a cross-cultural kid born in Zimbabwe, who performs spoken word poetry as a way to express her confusion about her cultural identity. In this video she performs a poem as part of her speech at the Race Unity Speech Awards from 2019.
“Yesterday I was African; today I am lost.” ~ Takunda Muzondiwa
Seven years seems like seventy
Each crisp breeze was glowing
Singing everything from birds in trees
To lions guarding young cubs on plains in breezes
Beating to a rhythm of a tribal drum
I danced underneath a crying sky
As we chanted our glowing style in feet
Dripping in moonlighting
Under intimacy of tribes wearing
Little other than swinging skirts
Made up of plants beads
As beady blowing glow lit lamps
All went down as the sun goes low
We rattled our cups
A malty red wine brewed as stewy smells of aromatic scents expelled
Alongside an African rice hot spicy spread
Along came the moon god
As we all stamped out our other life woes
Africa breathes deeply inside my soul
its diversity greater than the oceans
thoughts of its soil stir up my emotions
as my memories take over control.
South Africa’s vast beauty
feelings of forever on duty
whether in the Drakensberg mountains
hiking or enjoying fountains.
My heart overflows with wishful notions
of a holiday to a game reserve
peacefully the animals we observe
’til we see some exciting commotions.
Recalling the fish eagle’s distinct cry
and giggling Malwaiian children waving goodbye
burning our feet on the sand at the great Lake
the mighty Boababs our dreams awake.
To hear a lion’s loud roar
or an elephant’s rumble
God’s creation makes you humble
experiences one will forever store.
Dearest Africa runs through my veins
on my lips she always remains,
the place i run to behind closed eyes
she is the world’s most neglected prize.
To Africa i’ll always be devoted
little melanin, yet still her daughter
daydreams of her, my soul water
her essence adored and noted.
See more of Michelle Campbell’s poetry
Dry season has come to Nkor at last,
the smiles on our faces
says it all.
Early, before the sun wakes up and yawns,
and wonder what day it is.
We drag our dusty feet,
deeply smeared by oil from last nights meal,
through the wet waiting dew,
into grandma Beri’s cornfield.
everybody is present,
everybody is singing,
the birds are whispering,
the children are dancing,
Their cane baskets waiting to lift
the days harvest.
A sight of joy and singing.
Our women wrap their fingers round the maize plants
Snatching and Ripping,
Our men fill their basket,
lifting and carrying,
running like warriors home and back.
Before you know it its twilight,
its time for feasting,
the harvesters grind the goat meat
between their Molars,
Flushing it down with kegs of palm wine.
Grey-blue air sweeps the porch clean
with the force of a continent behind it;
Africa’s breath, green and wild and wet
and I am small standing here, cold
in my soaked skin, embracing the weight
of this whole world against my heart.
My days here are numbered, just a small
handful left to drip out of my fists and
then I will be gone; gone like the dust
of the harmattan in July or the mangoes
in January, and the rain will wash away
every footprint I left as if it never was.
Clean bird-song rings out to welcome
the sunshine, whistles of hopes that
never died, and I huddle into my hoodie
with every moment burned onto my skin
so that I will never forget the taste of the
wind, the power of the water, anything.
Three weeks later when I touch
down to vivid grass and cold white air,
the droplets on the window pane will
resound lost echoes as loud as thunder,
and I will trace my own handprint
searching for the map of what I’ve lost.
Kuma calls across the rain-drop dust
overlayed on tarmac predictions, and
Pafode answers sharp lightning bolt facts; I
speak this language quiet in my whole
breath as loyal as a continent, but we all know
that in the end no village could ever be mine.
When I was in the village
Somebody asked me, and I don’t remember
Who they were
They asked me
If I had a car.
And I said yes.
Then they asked me if my sister
Had a car.
And I said yes.
And I saw on their face
That it didn’t make sense
And I started to explain
In America, if you don’t have a car
You can’t have a job
And if you don’t have a job
You can’t make money to live.
And they looked at me.
And I looked at them.
And they said
Does your mom have a car.
And I said yes.
And they said
Does your dad have a car.
And I said yes.
And they said
Does every person in your house
Have their own car.
And I thought of all seven of us
And I said yes.
And I wanted to give some explanation
I wanted to say that
This is just normal here
And
Everybody has their own car
I wanted to say
I worked hard for what I have
And I wanted to say
There are people
Who live in this country
Who don’t have a car
People who are poorer
Even than I am
And you know I’m poor
Because I qualify for five different types
Of government assistance but
There are people who have less
Than I do
Who do not have any cars
But I said none of that
I just looked at him
And he looked at me
And I wanted to say
I’m sorry
If I could give you my car I would
If I could trade places with you
I would
If there was some way I could share
All my privilege and benefits
I would
And if there was some way I could trade
My birthright with you
I would
But I can’t
But I said none of that
I just looked at him
And he looked at me
And we didn’t say anything
But I know
The same look I saw in his eyes
That nothing made sense
That he could not imagine
What I was saying
That same look in his eyes
I know is the same look
That people see in my eyes here
Because it doesn’t
It just doesn’t make sense
So I tried to imagine having a car
My car
In the village
I tried to imagine
Driving it to Makeni and going to market
I tried to imagine coming out of market
And putting my groceries in the car
And driving back home
I tried to imagine my sister
Living in the same
House as me
And having her own car
And it just made no sense
It made no sense
And I’m not
Confused
Exactly
I just don’t get how
These worlds can be so different
And how
I can be in both of them
And yet not either
And I just don’t get
What answer I was supposed
To give him
That would ever make sense
Or any answer
I could give him
That he could understand
Because
I couldn’t even find an answer
That I could understand
Yes
I have my own car
And yes
Every person in my house
Has their own car
And no
I don’t know why
In Maforay tonight
it is raining
pounding splatters on a tin roof
and the dark is warm wet barrels
full of hopeful promises
that we will plant in the garden
tomorrow
In Reading tonight
it is quiet
cracked sidewalks lining houses
and the dark is yellow paned glass
full of cautious doors
that don’t ever open for
strangers
My soul sleeps soaked
in Maforay rainy season
My body breathes blasphemous
in Reading summer heat
and i am nowhere much
{I’m disintegrated tonight, divided between places where I don’t belong.}
The tree today is supple and heavy
laden with the weight of too much rain
but where you are the sun is an
Egyptian god, relentless in his dominion
If I can carry this sunburn
across the Sahara skies
could I bring back my hands
cupped full of water?
Life never works the way I
want it to
and neither do you
oh Africa, with your back turned to me
Once I was yours
now I am a lost memory
swinging slowly in these trees
that are not the same at all
{and its a constant reminder that my world is small – small in the millions of miles}
“it’s gonna take a lot to drag me away from you”
I once had a friend
just black enough to be called
n****r by strangers in Alabama
but too white to be mistaken
for Senegalese
She left Cape Town years ago
but she’s still tasting the
warm salt of Africa’s ocean
in her dreams
and she told me
even though winters in Minnesota
are bitter cold
they never numb her longing
My brother, black as the dirt
his mother farmed her whole life,
black as the silence about his
missing father, wrote me a letter
from the psychiatric
hospital where they put him, telling me
that he feels like he is losing
his whole self in a war against himself
and he doesn’t know who he is anymore
I replied that California
is where people go to get lost
not to find themselves
Go home, my brother
you are a prince in your own land
though the doctors here have
named you psychotic
To the lost boys of Sudan
I too have watched my workplace
throw out food, and I too have done
the math of how many people
that could’ve fed, and I too have wept
for the stories I cannot tell,
the people who do not know how
to care or even understand
Two years ago I watched
a little white girl
pack up all of her things
and get on a plane to Sierra Leone
but she was too young to know
what she had gained
and what she would lose
or how mirrors never tell
enough of the story
I have never met a land
so alluring as Africa
I have never known a people
so full of yearning
as the lost souls of Africa
Today it is a cool and grey afternoon
in south-east Pennsylvania
and I am gathered with a crowd
of black boys, laughing at each other
in Swahili, wearing skinny jeans and
Nike sneakers while they pore intently
over their English homework
They are too new to know yet
how much they’ve lost
and I will not be the one to tell them
{Opening quote is from “Africa” by Toto}
Why would you go back
she asks
Isn’t life better here
i smile
Depends what kind of better
Financially
she nods
i shrug
I guess so
but some stuff matters more
her eyes are intent
above the rim of her mask
but i can’t think of how
to explain
the warm freedom of Africa
grey-green rain
i remember
heavy mountain humidity
mango juice sticky
palm trees bent wind
smoky night on red gravel
dust and dust and dust
ashes on the breeze
hunger boiling in pots
whispered songs
starch stiff in the schoolyard
stars enough to bathe in
hot breath sweaty
bus tilted in red mud
roosters’ indignation
choking silt water
bare feet on firm dirt
baoba fuzzy sugar
glass soda straws
ice cream wet plastic
wrinkled skin rough
hope enough to taste
she is waiting
my tongue is wet
full of colour and memories
but no words
Only in sleep I see their faces,
Children I played with when I was a child,
Louise comes back with her brown hair braided,
Annie with ringlets warm and wild.
Only in sleep Time is forgotten —
What may have come to them, who can know?
Yet we played last night as long ago,
And the doll-house stood at the turn of the stair.
The years had not sharpened their smooth round faces,
I met their eyes and found them mild —
Do they, too, dream of me, I wonder,
And for them am I too a child?
My first memories include
tile floors cool beneath my feet, fans
blowing endlessly while the crickets
sang in the dark and the world was quiet.
The stars were always out, there, always
brilliant and near and crowded in the sky, like
there were too many and they couldn’t hardly fit.
I grew up there, in that place of chickens
at dawn and sheep wandering grey in the dusk
and fires blowing ashes and smoke all around
the dust of the land, the dust of the people.
We were a large group of family, brilliant and
crowded into the village, like if one more mother
gave birth to one more baby maybe we would be
too many for the space. But somehow, we learned to
condense ourselves into tangles of bodies and there
was always room for one more. Just one more.
I lived years and years of the sun rising every morning
and water sloshing new into the bucket, dredged up
from the earth with the modern miracle-gift from the
tall yellow-haired men so long ago. Our parents told us
those stories, about how the white men gave us
life from the dust, how their machines brought pure water
right here, to our village, to our home. They did not tell us
about the chains that came before that, about how it was
only right the white men come back with life to give as
payment of their debt, about how their restitution could
never make up for the generations lost. No, our parents
lived small stories in a small world and it was enough
to teach us the ways of our grandfathers.
I heard, though, from older youth, about sleeping
in the slave castles next to the ocean, tasting
the salt of the air and the leftover tears, wearing the
disintegrated chains of other grandfathers and remembering
that if we forget that history we have lost something.
But then I grew up and followed the footsteps of those
slaves to the land of their sorrow, I stepped onto that blood-soil
and tried to make it a new home. Tried to redeem it.
In this new place, the stars are faded in the sky, lost in
the vastness of electricity and development and busy.
Even if we had time to stop and look up, we would see only
the reflection of our own lives staring back at us.
