November in Retrospect
Dear Friends,
Two passages come to mind when I reflect on the just-ended November. The first, this passage from Jaiya John’s tall glass of sweet refreshment, “Daughter Drink This Water”:
“Do not look for me in the market, bartering in clouds of confusion over things that do not exist. I am on my knees in the soul garden, where truth sings and flowers and flows, and has its eternal way with me.”
The second from Terry Tempest Williams’ short story “Coyote Canyon” in which a woman leaves her family and friends to retrieve her soul in the solitude of a Utah canyon:
“This is how it should be, she thought. She was free and frightened and beautiful.”
(A bonus would be this reminder from Buddhist psychologist, Bruce Tift: “Experiencing our worst fears doesn’t kill us. Experiencing our greatest hope doesn’t save us.”)
For the bulk of MA’s November, the podcast spent time with the Myth of the Bagre, the sacred orature of the Dagaaba of Burkina Faso and Ghana, and a framework through which they, traditionally, make sense of their lives. Finding my place as an African in the context of the human race’s lore has been a driving factor behind my curation of Mythological Africans so I remember how excited I was the first time I read Jack Goody’s The Myth of the Bagre. Here, once again (in addition to the Odu Ifa, the only other such collection I was aware of at the time), was something of African origin articulating a coherent worldview, complete with complications and contradictions which only testified to its authenticity. At this point, I’d read enough mythology and folklore-related commentary to be aware of the ambivalent and often prejudiced attitudes toward African mythology and folklore so to find a book which not only documented such an important aspect of an African people’s oral lore but also provided the proper context for it, a book which Dagaaba people refer to when discussing the Bagre, felt like vindication. But that was the first step. The second involved sitting with the material, seeing it in historical context and then approaching it with the same rigor and compassionate perspective afforded to the myths, folklore and sacred texts of other peoples.
To study mythology and folklore (or religion, history and philosophy, their posh cousins) is to witness the triumphs and tragedies of the human experience play out, in exactly the same way, over and over again, across time and space. There is something both deeply comforting and enraging about this realization. As we revisited the Bagre again this past month, I, woman, African, knelt in the solitude of my soul garden, away from family and friends, surrounded by still verdant, still coveted fruitful land and life, and looked at my hands, the lines of my palms caked with dirt, cuticles torn, fingernails packed full of detritus from ideas, beliefs and practices which sprouted, flourished and died. Scattered around me in the patch I’d been digging through were hard chalk-white truths, the bones of beings long gone, flesh mixed into the rich brown soil of the stories of African people.
This is how it should be, I thought. I am free and frightened and beautiful.
I have, since then, returned to the market to witness and participate in the cacophony of opinions and be rained on by the clouds of confusion that is life and, these days, social media. But each time I heed the pull back to this garden where truth sings and flowers and flows, perfuming the air with its unique scent of ever-blooming promise, fully grown potential and lingering rot, each time I sink my hands into a patch of soil, observe a leaf falling, bite into some vegetable or examine the difference between new and old growth, I am struck with a deep sense of relief at the rightness of it all, despite what has been told of African people. This is how is should be, freeing, frightening, beautiful. This is how it should be because this is how it has been for all peoples. Gardening can be messy business.
And so I invite you to linger in this garden with me for the month of December during which the MA Podcast will revisit the African Sexuality series from the MA YouTube Channel. We’ll start today with an overview of African sexualities and sexual practices and then explore Intersexuality, Heterosexuality, Homosexuality and Lesbianism over the course of the month.
Here, also, are some previous reflections on the topic of sexuality:
On eroticism in African folklore
On how guilt, fear and shame complicate the joys of sexuality
On the painful discovery of how we got some things wrong
As always, thank you for being on this journey with me.
Be well,
Helen