Day 22: Sudanese Cultural Night

The desire to stand and dance was strong.

I felt it in my bones, in my blood, in the song through my ears.

Why do they say the caged bird never sings?

Of course it does, but no one hears its song.

But I was not sure a woman could or should, so I shook my  shoulders, snapped my fingers and tapped my feet. I scribbled notes and smiled, with a happiness I haven’t really felt in a long time.

The violin reached down into my core, patting, soothing and comforting every inch of me. The piano gave me rhythm and his voice, the sound of his voice took me back, back to places I’ve been and never been, nights by my grandfather’s date fields during the fortnightly festivals in Cush.  
Two men that moved the crowd more than anyone else. I’ll call them maestros for lack of more knowledge of these terms.  I gave them five stars.

My friend said to me-, 'come to the Sudanese cultural night, I’ll be the MC'. I wondered  how to get back, he encouraged, ‘get a few friends and take a cab back.’ So I tried a few but no one seemed to be free on weekday nights. But Bridget (http://bidgie.blogspot.com) said, 'you don’t have to miss it.'

I was ready to go back at the door when I didn’t feel very welcome. The tall black Arab said to me: ‘we have not started yet, and no drinks allowed, find a trash can’ and walked off. I was about to think –oh no you didn’t. But then I thought, he’s probably have had a terrible day planning all this, give him a chance.

The crowd was made up  of 90 percent Sudanese people , and the rest of us certainly felt like bystanders until the performances started. I really enjoyed the pantomime, and the guy that recited a funny poem, and the choral recital (‘Afihina mashuhuda’ not sure of the spelling) sent shivers of ecstasy down my spine. It reminded me of a cassette I borrowed from an Ethiopian in Eastleigh, Kenya, which I never returned. I should have, since those were memories of his country. I’ll track him down when I go back to Kenya.

When they mentioned political heroes, they didn’t mention  the guy most of us know- The late John Garang. But looking around I didn’t see a single ‘ Sudanese’ as we know them in Kenya. Tall, dark, with marks across their foreheads. No, everyone in that room was half this half that, and I bet all of them live in Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kuwait. That made me sad. Their ambassador was a turbaned fellow smiling from here to Khartoum, and after that all I could think of was how much he looked like the Kenyan vice president, Kalonzo. I also spotted a Tiger Woods look alike. 

There was a girl seated in  my row, screaming  'hey hey, yo!' She annoyed me because the ushers all looked like armed body guards and kept throwing dirty looks our direction, and she wasn’t Sudanese so  we might have been marshaled out without a second thought.

They finally(yes finally) mentioned John Garang, when they introduced  the southern tribe dance, which was funny but I felt like they were making fun of them. I need to look for a Southern Sudanese and ask them if they dance Lingala. 

I have some kind of solidarity with the Southern Sudanese. As much as I am a land of Cush wannabe, I feel protective over the Southern Sudanese since they are as much Kenyans as the Turkana people, so no one dare say anything against them.

There were side attractions too, like one (MC) who came out of  the crowd and started to rap, mentioning his name the way they do ‘call me, J, Just call me J, all my people,  hands to the DJ.’ Haha. That was funny, especially when some high wired teens jumped on stage and the guards had to escort them down.

There was a lot of standing and sitting and clapping too. But all in all, I went home on a high like you can see from my lead. It was a wonderful night, I’m glad I went. I also feel happy when I see children, and there were plenty of them to go around.

The MC, Ahmed Tag did an awesome job at it, he did the English, and his partner, a fast talking girl in a flowery costume complemented him in Arab perfectly.

DISCLAIMER: these are just a writer's opinions 

I copied some of my formerly published works to make a portfolio, and I will share with you a poem I wrote as I listened to the a fore mentioned maestros. My camera died   on me so I just snapped one picture.

 

songs to remind me of my lineage

I just came from a Sudanese cultural night. It was very intriguing. I will postpone day 22 a few hours because I'm spaced out and I don't think I'll do a good job making a blog entry.

Day 21

Hey,

I planned to proof read some more this evening but my friend said she can do  that for me so I’ll leave it  to her.  I spent last evening swimming and learning gymnastics from my friend’s 9 year old.  She was surprised that I could do a double over, said I was the first flexible adult she’s  met in a long time.

I ran away from  my life at the first suggestion by my friend to go over for the evening yesterday, and ended up reading 2 chapters of –spy dog- and 2 chapters of a self help book about getting rid of bad habits. It said that laziness is the closest you’ll ever get to near death experience, I thought that was absolutely hilarious but true.

The reminder to take at least one and a half liters/litres everyday was helpful, otherwise you can get irritable and stressed and your brain doesn’t work as proper as you’d like it to because you get ‘liverish’. That means your liver gets tired of running due to little water in your system. It also said that the quality of our thoughts can determine the quality of our lives. I thought, nice, I can see how much quality my life has .It was talking about positive and negative thoughts but this morning I made a promise to talk to someone mature for assistance with my life :D, in future.

And as I was reading another point about getting enough rest, my friend’s son, who was getting his hair cut, and got a bald spot when he moved and was complaining very loudly, said something interesting.

The world has evolved right? So why don’t we have 12 midday to 12 midnight days, since no one seams to sleep before twelve anyway?   8-5 might have worked when we didn’t have computers and the internet but it sure doesn’t do anyone  any good now. So he woke up at midday this morning, maybe to prove his point.

I’ve gotten over my shifting, and I will be shifting again tomorrow(true nomad blood).

I’ll type some more of the novel chapters since I have a willing proof reader and make a portfolio. of my life, I'll tell you my plan.

Btw. Someone asked me whether the novel was set in an African setting or modern ‘like Malaysia’ and I thought about it for as long as I thought about the taste of the water melon  I was going to buy  from the market yesterday, and the seller was surprised at my deep thoughts over a melon and left his son to deal with me as he unpacked the rest of his fruits, so I told her- you’ll have to read to find out.

day 20

In the book, Men are from Mars and Women from Venus, it talks of a point in a woman's life when her wave
crashes. My wave has been heading to the shore all week and today it finally crushed.

I was moving house and feelings of helplessness and sadness took over.
I  felt bad to leave my birds- I know they'll miss me. I also met new people, some pleasant, some I admired, some I watched from a distance. And even though the condominium I stayed has a bad name from the police raids it gets  every other day, I didn't experience any trouble, on the contrary, everyone I crossed paths with was nice. I'll miss the lake too, and the boy who wore jeans and stripped shirts and nearly missed the bus all the time.

So when I got to my new place, I felt heavy with fatigue, sadness and a river.
But my friend said she'd come online and chat with me after work. She's been my friend since high school and always makes me happier.

I read a few chapters of Anne of Green Gables. It's an amazing book. It gives me such an imagination.

Yesterday I did some more editing and proof reading, not as much as I would like but I'm getting somewhere.

I will do more and talk less, rather type less words..

day 19

"Are you going to maybank?"
"Yes."

So when I saw him take a different route I stood up and walked to the front to ask him again.

"Are you going to Maybank?"
"No"
"You said. You. Were . Going . To . Maybank." I said through gritted teeth.

"Okay okay, sit , sit, I go."

I sat behind his seat fumming and preparing for war. Here we were very close to Putrajaya Central, yet I was supposed to be a half hour journey in the opposite direction. We got to the station and everyone alighted. I didn't move an inch.

He drove off at 200km per hr, and I was thinking wo hoo!He's taking me back to Maybank. Then I thought, oh no, maybe he's a suicide bomber and is going to crush
the bus into the first bridge column. So I sat silently and hoped.

Ah, then he turned and I saw Maybank.

"Terima Kasir!" I said to him and flew out of the bus.

He drove away, back to the station. Perhaps cursing me, perhaps cursing himself for trying to be clever.

I was smiling really hard, it's unusual for that to happen. The least I expected was to be kept packing at the station until the next bus came half an hour later.

Chapter 5 and 6 is going pretty well. I need to edit the punctuation since I've changed the narrator to third person. I expect to have more time next week I will finish them off and start tying the rest of the chapters. There's no response yet from the publishers. I have to wait 6-8 weeks for them to have a look at it and decide whether to publish. I expect response on one of them, which I sent 7th April soon. Meanwhile, I applied for a copy writing job in one of the Malaysian publications.

I'm tired to the bone marrow, and I will be shifting again on Friday. You'd think I'd have got used to it by now but every time I have to move, which is every few weeks it always feels like a major life shift, which it is in a way because I'll need at least a week to adjust at my next place.

18

I was invited to tea last evening and couldn't be bothered to come back to the
house. English tea means pies and roast and gravy and all that kind of thing. I call it super.

I have to go out in a while to fill out forms- that seems like my
career now, feeling up forms. I do hope they'll give me some forms to fill
for food stamps soon, that I wouldn't mind filling.

Anyway. I've been telling myself I should wait until evening to write this when I'm calmer but I've decided I never followed reason at anytime anyway so I might as well write now when I have fire in me. It could be from the episode of The Avatar- the last air blender me and my friend's kids watched this morning, it could be my hormones acting up,or it could be the fighting mood that has possessed me the last few days.

I woke up on Saturday raging. I was supposed to go out study with some kids but it rained and I was glad it did coz I was obviously in no position to sit and tell kids - no, we must restrain ourselves when people anger us, like the Great Teacher-

So I stayed home and edited the things I told you a couple of days ago, what someone called a Scotsman bad English. All that does to me is remind me that English is a foreign language. After the first page I can't tell who's worse off, me or the Scot.

Then, I typed a query for a children story to phoenix publishers in Kenya.
I grew up with their books- Beautiful Nyakio, The sun and the wind. Those kind.I'm hoping they'll like my idea.

I have to say though, I don't feel very enthusiastic.

I am afraid I might not get responses from these publishers.

I also feel a bit down, and this is my opinion, but I'm not just saying but I've been with people, and when everyone is talking, I listen and I watch and observe get called slow. I have realised that I come from a society that doesn't believe in girls' education. Yes. I always thought that was the North Eastern people habit but oh no. And since I got this understanding,I get it now.

I will write more sense in the next entry. I cleverly uninstalled my Ms. Office from my computer.
I just clicked on it ' because I thought I didn't need it' now I have to do my typing on notepad.

Computer for DUmmies, anyone?

Day 17, Calm down my heart, life is steps.

Three things took my breath away today.

A sunset so red, so round, so big, so confident , like a sun should be.

A small red flower which I later saw was actually orange not red and I stuck it to my hair all day

A lad that wore a black suit, a white shirt and thin orange tie. He reminded me of a chief as I imagine they looked  7 generations ago. Tall, proud, with a good color combination.  

I had an urge to write last night because I had had a really extra-ordinary day. I don’t remember most of it now but in the morning I was really bashed up with little sleep and self pity.
Around three in the afternoon I walked into a Chinese restaurant and was looking at the food asking what is this what is that. So the guy packed me a full plate of handmade noodles with beef and lettuce. I was getting out my wallet to go pay at the counter. I asked what the  combination was called, he said –mee tarik. Then he looked at me and said, no need to pay lah, just have it, but come again. You should have seen my smile. I went to sit in one of the metal chairs feeling funny like you feel when you’re in a day dream. I happily ate the meal . I had some money, but not really. What I mean is, I had rm 10. The meal was Rm.6 and honestly, that much on a single meal would blow off my “budget” completely.

 I was remembering the verse in Isaiah 55:1) Hey there, all YOU thirsty ones! Come to the water. And the ones that have no money! Come, buy and eat. Yes, come, buy wine and milk even without money and without price.

And I was smiling thinking, Jehovah hit me with that one to get me off my self pity.

Today I printed out chapter four and five of the novel to proof read. For chapter five, I wrote it in first person but I‘m going to change it to third person narration. A suggestion I read from a book about changing the point of view of a chapter. I edited chapter four and since it’s only 800 words, I will patch it up with another part I haven’t typed but would fit in as chapter four.

Last night I felt the temptation to send in  an old poetry manuscript from 2006. It’s complete, over a hundred pages, with illustrations and five different cover designs, all by my dear friend Ken. It has poetry dating back to year 2001. Since  my writing has changed  to a certain degree, when I went through it it felt a bit basic and too contemporary but I guess there is no harm since at that time I really felt that was super work. I’ll write a query and decide whether to send it.

Otherwise, it has been a good week, even though I did a few things which thinking back I told myself- Some of the things you do Ciss,can only be explained  with medical terms. That felt satisfactory enough, especially after hitting my knee on a crossbar someplace. Don’t ask what I was doing. Just that sometimes I imagine I’m Catherine Ndereba.

I took a walk to the lake and watched some fishermen, they had a big net and caught about three small fish for the half hour I was there, and some frenzied guys on a motorbikes were asking- you alone ah? No friend ah? I wished to show them a video called cat calls by  Amalia Ortiz, try find it on youtube it's funny.

 I  enjoyed the wind and imagined I was at the beach.

Moyo wangu tulia, maisha ni hatua