Sizongena~Coming Home

April 27, 1994 Voters for a free South Africa

This morning I went to my favorite cafe Arizmendi to partake in my ritual of decafinated tea and the best oat scone in the East Bay. I ran into a brother, an elder who I had seen a couple of times before but we had never conversed. I joined him at his table. A beautiful gentle spirit with salt and pepper dreadlocks. Our conversation began with him asking me what I had been up to, "singing" I said. He told me he had come up in a family of singers and musicians. He mentioned them all by name. except the elder brother. I was curious about that. Our conversation meandered into the fact that he had recently come across photos of his grandparents who are from St. Kitts. The line "one fine St. Kitts woman" came into my head from a song Taj Mahal sang, Clara (St. Kitts Woman ) which is a song about his grandparents " my grandfather married one fine ST. Kitts woman She would hold you love you and scold you. Making sure she could tell you everything she feel and now I feel the spirit that spirit deep down in my soul, make me think about my ancestors who lived a long time ago." We discussed the importance of knowing where we came from and that he plans to go to St Kitts for the first time. It reminded me of my own journey in finding my way home. Something kept me wanting to know about his elder brother~ yes- it was Taj Mahal, and I was touched by this man's humbleness in not wanting to mention his elder brother's name.

He talked about this upcoming change in the USA, a black man as president, was a long time coming, and I suggested that his ancestors had suffered and worked and struggled for the freedom of their children and grandchildren. And that it is their strength like the people of my homeland that have paved the way for us. We talked about the importance of knowing our home and who came before us and we lamented the fact that neither of us knew all our grandparents. He said if they can be strong so can I, and we parted having connected through song, story and our ancestors.

On saturday I went and saw a woman sing and read poetry. Charlotte Oneil " Mama C" is an x black panther that exiled to Tanzania. A powerful woman who sang about her having to leave her country of birth but landed in the mother land only to find that she cannot forget where she came from, even though she is a child of Africa and that it is important to go home. She now provides a multicultural experience and a community center not only for Tanzanians but also to provide an exchange program for the youth here in America to visit Tanzania as a place for them to return home and participate in the program and vice versa www.uaacc.habari.co.tz/ and we parted after connecting through song, story and our ancestors.

Coming home for me has been an amazing journey. Touching the soil of my homeland for the first time in 52 years re awoke a part of me that I had denied, had died and shoved deep down into a place I thought I did not want to access. I had planned to go in October of 2006 but suddenly I changed my plans and left in May of that year. I stayed with a cousin who I had not seen since I was three, he and his wife recounted many stories of my parents, they knew more about them than I did. Three weeks after I returned to the USA my cousin passed. And so he had stayed to pass the stories on to me... October would have been too late.

I did ritual on the land where we had lived as children bringing soil from USA and London to Cape Town. It is now a creche and school. I "felt the spirit deep down in my soul, make me think about the ancestors who live a long time ago"...... I announced to them that their great grand daughter had returned home. I inhaled the whispers in the wind of the ancestors that, came from Table Mountain, and I cleansed my face and feet and head in the Indian and Atlantic Oceans that meet at the foot of the town.

Every name I had heard somewhere from my family, and every view was familiar. I remember standing outside the house of my grandmother and looking down the street, it was though my bones were rumbling as I remembered, but I was also re awakening the pain of leaving my homeland and that even at three years old, somewhere I carried that memory in the cells of my body, but also what it must have been like for all those who had to leave their land and be exiled and worse still have their land taken away. To have returned but more important to re remember was traumatic and deeply healing all at the same time.

Remembering where we come from is important, touching the motherland is indeed a healing journey, and if you cannot do that, to know your ancestors is to know who you are. Millions of black and colored and white people stood in line for hours and hours to vote on April 27 1994 for a free South Africa. They stood for the first time in unity in Ubuntu, no one said you do not belong here, and it is to them we owe our gratitude, they stayed they protested and spoke out and, they taught us about truth, peaceful protest and reconciliation.... so that we can now~ come home.