It’s barely dusk as we land, fireworks bursting confetti beneath us, covering over the tidy patchwork farms. He asks if the celebration is for us – no, it is a holiday you really ought to know, the celebration of your country’s independence. But you know another date for that. The child behind us wails, and her mother shushes her, murmurs soft words to say we are almost out now.
We trudge like lines of ants from the village, clutching our dusty things in tired hands, following whoever is in front of us, hoping they know the way. The line splits. We hover, indecisive. They examine our blue books and send us left with smiles like we’ve gotten passing marks on the maths test; the screaming child and her mother have green and go right.
The gate-keeper stares bored, wants to know if we have been on any farms recently. We laugh. He sprays us disinfected, showers away the disease of our arrival, sends us onward into the July night with stars too different to recognise. I pull up my trousers, re-buckle the belt we bought a week ago in the dripping heat of market, with the brightly sweating mother yelling at her toddlers while we tried to barter. The doors open like voodoo in front of us, and the wall says welcome home with the same confetti colours.
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
An African I’ll Always Be by Michelle Campbell
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.
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.
we carry our lives around in these memories by Shiloh Phoenix
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.
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.}
I’m still peeling from that sunburn by Shiloh Phoenix
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}
Lost Souls of Africa by Shiloh Phoenix
“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}
Grey-Green Rain by Shiloh Phoenix
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
[i couldn’t pick home from a lineup] by CavalierEternal
red dirt soles naked in afternoon sunshine
the asbestos dust hooked to my left lung like a birth mark
knee deep in this man made lake awkwardly wrestling a foreign first tongue
sunderland summer by CavalierEternal
sugarloaf mountain peaks outside our window, I will climb her tomorrow I promise go into town in a good shirt you wear the new dress your mom sent when she asked —
are you happy with her, yet?
I could have sworn you would leave then, curse me, call old friends, smoke two packs of cigarettes, take the car to the river edge where we met in the muddy bed once.
I never said you should come back, I folded your things in a suit case at the door with a note I wrote I am less than enough to satisfy wanderlust.
you said those are my father’s words, my mother’s curse, the sound a door makes as it closes is physics not proof everyone leaves you.
i am talented at leaving by CavalierEternal
I leave this city with her angry barricades to you
I do not want these humid summers her dull sunrise doused in grey you keep the drunken streetside arguments for your 2 a.m. lullaby
I leave the east coast with her tired history to you
I do not want these hurried movements her densely packed den of strangers you keep the frigid winter coastlines like a still life portrait pinned to your wall
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?
The Stars Are Not The Same All Across The World by Shiloh Phoenix
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.
Third Culture Conversations is a talk show about third culture kids: people who are raised in a culture that is different than the one their parents grew up in. We will explore identity, rejecting and embracing parts of our culture, and the struggle to fit in when you don’t feel like you belong. Hosted by Esteban Gast, Leslie Ambriz, and Manolo Lopez, on the SoulPancake channel.
Are you a TCK? A third culture kid (TCK) is “a person who has spent a significant part of his or her developmental years outside the parents’ culture” (Pollock, 1999). This video explores how TCKs feel about home and where they belong.
Josh Gibson Media – “I think the hardest part is not the memories themselves, but it’s searching for the box of memories and realising how far under the bed it is hidden, and how far away that world has become. But Sometimes it’s important to remember, even if it hurts. It’s learning to let go, whilst not forgetting. Its learning that there was a time for that, and there is now a time for this. Holding on to the memories of a place once called home, and knowing things have changed since. And when no one else can understand, because no one else has seen. Its remembering that God understands, God has seen, he was there. He’s collected those memories, the good ones and the tough. And that…that’s more than ok, that is enough.”
Josh Gibson is a London-based content creator with an eye for detail and a passion to create. Check him out at his website –https://joshgibsonmedia.com/
Boxed up in cars All memories of ours are on the go Like footprints in snow
Autumn leaves change But I stay the same Green highways signs Just wave goodbye
I’m tired of living on the road I’m tired of leaving what I know
When will I find somewhere to call home Is it a place or someone I don’t know Where will I get my last set of keys Tell me to stay without without always leaving
My hearts content lies Left in cement It was permanent Or so you said
Same stars, same sky Same moon at night But its different ‘Cause you’re not in it.
I’m tired of leaving what I know I’m tired but now I gotta go
When will I find somewhere to call home Is it a place or someone I don’t know Where will I get my last set of keys Tell me to stay without without always leaving
Wishing on shooting stars To know, to stay, to be just where you are Am I close or are you far ‘Cause miles are like galaxies apart
Right now I have no where to call home It may be a place or someone I hope These will not be my last set of keys Wish I could stay but now Now I’m leaving
“The first year I came to this country, I swallowed down everything I had ever known and it slid down my throat into the darkness of secrets, or maybe just things nobody wanted to know. Either way I was empty, ready for the sunshine and breeze of this new world to wrap me up in a whirlwind strong enough to block out the rest. I should’ve known better, but somehow I still thought it would be that easy, that I would just keep my old secrets and build a new framework of identity and slide myself into it without losing too much. The first year I came to this country, I forgot everything I had ever learned and discovered a darkness of secrets inside of me big enough to block out the rest, but I lost too much.
In the end I found the pieces I needed, I dredged up my past and did not let it be forgotten. Instead I merged the old and the new together, weaving the different threads into a tangled mess of knots behind the scenes that nobody wanted to know about. I managed the chaos as carefully as walking on a black-night path except this time there was nobody to tell me how to do it with confidence and everybody was there to see when I tripped over the stump and landed in the thorns. Still, I wrapped my cloth around me like a bright mask or a new skin and when my new friends poked holes in it they discovered the whirling dances of a different country underneath, so they named me after my mix of colours and I blurred them all into something resembling stability. In the end I always knew that every story I told had holes and half-truths, but when I put them together they stacked into the pieces I needed to keep going so I held my chin high and taught myself confidence.
Sometimes, still, strangers ask questions. They see me and notice the blurred edges of my names, they catch glimpses of the holes in my skin and they wonder if I am really who they think I am. Mostly I reach into my jar of stories and I swirl the choices around and pick a truth to give them, something to cover up the things they don’t really want to know about. But sometimes I toss my head and laugh, unfurl the bright colours into a banner that declares – I am /never/ who you think I am – because I am not even who I think I am and I’m certainly not who I say I am and who am I anyway? Sometimes I spin in a dance they’ve never seen before and I tell them this too is me, sometimes I write them a poem full of foreign languages and can’t be bothered to interpret it. Sometimes, I am too much for them and I do not care because these are the pieces I need to make sure I don’t lose too much and the confusion of one stranger is a small price to pay for the gift of being complicated and confident.
You can’t catch me, I say, whirling away in a blur of secrets and stories colourful enough to block out the rest.
This year I met a stranger who tried. A stranger who chased after my trail of contradictions and picked up every half-truth I dropped along the way, came up to me with arms full of gathered pieces and told me – look I’ve found such a beautiful mess – as if the tangled knots of my underneath could ever be called beautiful. Messy, yes. I know my stories are messy, I know when my colours are spinning around me sometimes they stain the ground rainbow and I don’t know how to clean it up. But I held up the secrets I had hidden away in the darkness and discovered a mosaic of stained mess that even this country has chosen to name as art, and I wondered why it took a stranger to see that this too could be beautiful. Either way, I guess I was ready for the things nobody wanted to know to become the things I could choose to say, and I added them into my jar of stories imbued with every shred of confidence I have taught myself. After all, who else could show me how to wrap myself up in the sunshine and breeze of a new world without losing the pieces of my history that I needed, how to laugh at the edge of the night-dark and stand up to try again over and over until the blur of my stories swirled with confident colours? There was nobody there but me and the watching world.
So I built my secrets into a mosaic, turned the tapestry of my stories upside down and inside out to show the chaos, stacked my names into the holes of my half-truths and called it brave. Beautiful. A new kind of confident, a bold dance in the middle of the street with eyes flashing and feet stomping and hands clapping rhythms they learned somewhere far away and long ago, somewhere I cannot return but will not forget.
I’m not a line, I say these days. I’m a circle, looping back into myself like a repeating eight of infinity, an endless beautiful mess.”
