“This fascination with our hair and patterns, the love for creating and beautifying, adornment, jewellery…..this is not new,our great grandmothers sat under grape vines ,beading and plaiting. Our hair is continuous history”
-Gogo
“This fascination with our hair and patterns, the love for creating and beautifying, adornment, jewellery…..this is not new,our great grandmothers sat under grape vines ,beading and plaiting. Our hair is continuous history”
-Gogo
Dambe – A form of boxing associated with the Hausa people of West Africa. Historically, Dambe included a wrestling component, known as Kokawa , but today it is essentially a striking art. The tradition is dominated by Hausa butcher caste groups, and over the last century evolved from clans of butchers traveling to farm villages at harvest time, integrating a fighting challenge by the outsiders into local harvest festival entertainment. It was also traditionally practiced as a way for men to get ready for war, and many of the techniques and terminology allude to warfare. Today, companies of boxers travel performing outdoor matches accompanied by ceremony and drumming , throughout the traditional Hausa homelands of northern Nigeria, southern
Niger and southwestern Chad . [1] The name “Dambe” derives from the Hausa word for “boxe”, and appears in languages like Bole as Dembe .
Sguru – A Fight.
–Sguru–
“sguruu!! sguruu!! sguruu!! sguruuu….”
It was within a chanting circle where i got my first fist beating. First we stood there striking our best Kung Fu stances ,
Long before he clenched them into solid knuckles……..i could almost feel my tiny bones snap under the force of those solid rods ,four times the size of my puny fists .
Maintaining my most ‘menacing’ posture, with my diminutive stature ,the aftermath mock went that i
looked like a timid giraffe ,a wobbly calf…a cornered prey.
Unfinished Piece November.
Poetry Monarch.
As if tired of carrying all that voluptuous beauty on herself..
She moves,
Slumberous …
.. with clumsy finesse ,
Her thigh long locks adorned with colourful beads moves in accordance with her every hip sway.
Her limbs carry her body like obedient lackeys…
….the rhythm of her strides, a nature choreographed gait.
As graceful as a well fed feline.
Poetry Monarch.
Chronicles Of A Petrol Attendant.
The Broody Hen (A Narrative )
Conversations With The Notepad.
Just yesterday a very great friend asked me a question and i quote : “If there were no destinations and you could travel forever, what form of traveling would you take and to where?”
I said First Class Armchair traveling through a creative soul’s rich imagination ,exploring and sightseeing places beyond touch ,fuelled by the inspiration fanned smoulders of passion,the love for written arts and of course; the silencing of the nagging voice of scepticism . What there a better way to travel or place to travel to ??
Than through the path made of threaded words and within the minds and bodies of fictional characters that can take you as deep as the past and as far as the future , or the vivid narration that can dangle you just above the presence,with buoyant prophecy ; as if you were a superior being with the power of foreknowledge only without the ability of altering fate (and yes, the thrilling pleasures of suspense to constantly incite and intensify the anticipation ).
But then comes the most loathed and quite inevitable part of Armchair traveling for every avid reader . The Destination. Those little words often written in bold italics : “THE END” as if to forcefully yank you off the cockpit of fantasy. You dread turning the last page and wish for a sequel, however satisfying the resolution or denouement might have been . More so because you know that reality is impatiently waiting for you to digest and sober up from the stupor of the utopia . Panting like a tortured bull ready to pounce ,swollen and inflated with even more tragedies because every book you read makes you conscious of at least one more human error . The legendary Mark Twain was spot on when he said : “Books are for people who want to be somewhere else” .
My greatest respect to the fictionate sculptors for creating a place of refuge and refill .
The Poetry Monarch
Chronicles Of A Petrol Attendant.
The Broody Hen (A Narrative )
Conversations With The Notepad
….bite at her neck and gain territory, melt the sleet on her cold heart in sparking chemistry… Make her inhibitions evaporate with heated intimacy ,weaken her knees and compel her instinctive guards to join your infantry…
Sink the tip of your fingers on her flesh delicately,nibble on her earlobes and whisper erotic absurdity…
Twerk her nipples ,till sensation ripples and trembles her entire physicality…
Quell her internal itching, make her squirm ,till she claw and evoke her Felinity,
Demarcate her neck with embroidery of hickies and seed her fertility with a love legacy.
Broody Hen.
A Narrative.
©copyright reserved -Afrika Zwelibanzi.
Everything but laundry and groceries.
Soul Embedded In Writing
Africa Zwelibanzi 