Dear Friends,
How are you?
If you don’t feel well, I am so sorry. I hope you find some ease and relief. Somewhere, somehow. And know that there is at least one person out here wishing you the best.
If you feel well, I am thankful for that. What a luxury feeling well can be these days!
Today is July 6th. The sun sets after 8:30pm. Cicada song thrums all day. The houseplants, tomatoes and the peppers are thriving. The basil and watercress, not so much. The parsley was heartbreak. I will try again next year. The summer heat rests on my body like a gently possessive lover’s sweaty arm under a warm blanket. A bit too much, but I don’t mind. I just discovered the Bath and Body Works Salted Amber and Vetiver house spray. It smells as lush as what I imagine paradise smells like. This holiday weekend, I got to spend time with two childhood friends who married each other and made beautiful babies. In many ways, the world right now is stressful. Laughably bizarre. Horrifying. But in other ways, it is simple. Magical. Something beautiful is always emerging.
In her book about the ideals of femininity and beauty in the art of the Mende of Sierra Leone, African American Anthropologist Sylvia Ardyn Boone writes that to the Mende, beauty is an ideal, a process, a person, and a historical fact. As an ideal, beauty is Tingoi, the water spirit: perfect, aspirational, but ultimately unattainable. As a process, beauty is Nėku, the emergence, pathway toward, and the eventual culmination of the admirable. She elaborates further on beauty as a person (Haenjo – a young girl newly admitted into the world of womanhood after completing her training and induction), and as a historical fact among the Mende. But it is on Nėku, the conception of beauty as a process, that my mind has lingered these past weeks. She writes:
“As a noun, Nėku is a young shoot, a sprout: as an intransitive verb referring to plants, it means to sprout, to come up; about things, it means to be smooth and shining… Nėku is the tiny shoot that pushes its way up through the soil as the first life of the plant. Nėku is the newest, the tenderest young leaf that shows itself at the central growing point of the plant. Nėku is the flower, blooming in an efflorescence of life…. Nėku is what satisfies the sight…it is the thing which [the Creator] has put in the world for us to see and admire and emulate.”
I remembered Nėku while reading about the Japanese term shinryoku (which also alludes to the beauty of the fresh green of new leaves) in this delicious essay about the changing of seasons in Japan. Isn’t it amazing and comforting how universal some human delights are? On opposite ends of the planet, two different peoples find beauty and inspiration in the freshness of new leaves, in the process of becoming that they signify, in the steadying reassurance that planting season and spring comes every year, and with them, fresh opportunities to nurture and witness the beauty of emergence, growth, and fulfillment. Nėku. Shinryoku.
All is quiet on the Mythological Africans front. It will be even quieter this week because there will be no podcast episode. Having reached Lake Victoria after sailing up the Nile, I figured we could take a week off to splash in the waters, walk the banks, learn the currents, and rest before moving on to what’s next. However, if you must have your African mythology and folklore fix, the second installment of the Mythological Africans Quarterly essay is out. This time, I share about how Mythological Africans came to be. I also comment on the joys and miseries of curating African mythology and folklore. There is much to enjoy and celebrate. There is also much to deplore and contemplate. To change. I use two popular themes from African folklore to elucidate: the case of the Boon Bringing Bird (or other Magical Creature), and the Enfant Terrible.[i] This is not a particularly joyful essay. Matter of fact, it took me quite a while to put it together because I wanted to edit out any plaintive cynicism or defiance in my tone. I ultimately decided to go with what emerged, choosing to trust that it too was, in its own way, Nėku – a process, something beautiful emerging, and reaching toward growth and fulfillment.
What to Expect From MA in July
I’m not sure. I want to sail other rivers in East and South Africa. I also want to paddle around in some African dams and explore the folklore associated with them. As I mentioned in last week’s episode, there is a wealth of folklore around how dam construction on the African continent has been haunted by the spirits of the rivers the projects commandeer. We shall see.
However, if you are in Berlin this July, hope to see you at the African Book Festival, curated this year by Akotowaa.
In the meantime, my hope for you, dear friend, is that whatever your circumstances are, may you always see the potential for something beautiful and fulfilling to emerge. May you always see Nėku.
Be Well,
Helen
[i] There is a whole section dedicated to the Boon Bringing Birds of African Folklore in my book.
Love this, thankyou 😊