“Motherland, Motherland drip on me”
Memories are not reality, yet we end up sharing the rest of our lives with them as if they are.
I have my own memories, I have memories I have been told and I have memories that I inherited from my ancestors.
People call it imagination, but my ancestors visit me and speak to me. It started when I was 22. I realised that it’s the only way they could ever communicate with me. They were not literate and couldn’t write letters for me, and there was no technology of sorts either. So they waited until they became ancestors and then they learned to speak to me.
Through the sun, through the moon and through the ocean.
It is 3 women.
My African great-great grandmother speaks through the sun.
My Arabic great grandmother speaks through the moon.
My Portuguese grandmother speaks through the ocean.
It is the Sun that reminds me of where I come from.
It is the Moon that reminds me of who I am.
It is the Ocean that tells me what I will become.
I want to share with you what they tell me.
