Africa - Fred L. Joiner

May 8, 2014May 10, 2014

a half note on Serendipity

This is the long road from to and from Kpalime. On our way back to Lome we got a flat on this long and pulled over on the side of the road.

While we were waiting for Mohammed, on the right above, to go get more air in the spare tire….Bruno, the guy seated in the middle above, decided to take a look around. He sees a path off the road into the woods so he ducks be the brush and finds….

this guy Eric, weaving baskets for sale at the market. Bruno calls us all over to come and look, plus it was much cooler under the shade around Eric’s house.

When I walked in and got a look at what Eric was doing I almost cried. The basket he was making was exactly the same basket that my Gullah/Low Country South Carolinian elders and ancestors make. He smiled with pride and told me that perhaps some of my ancestors are from Togo, I smiled and said back to him “Peut Etre” (Perhaps).

Eric was such a quiet, humble soul…I was honored to meet him and tried to explain to him how much of a blessing it was to run into him on the side of the road that. Seeing him do the same thing the same way my elders and ancestors do and have done was such a confirmation for me.

Some people need or want DNA to tell them where they are from, and while I find that interesting and enticing, I think I would much rather follow the culture and find kinship that way.

me and cousin Eric

Dap with Cousin Eric

If we had not gotten a flat tire, i would have never met Eric. Although it was hot and inconvenient, it was a blessing, one I will never forget and a got a chance to me a potential long lost cousin.

May 5, 2014May 10, 2014

Scenes from Togo #003

A post that needs no explanation…good food, good people…love

coconut and coconut head

peppers

for the ancestors

chaqpa, its fermented millet

mouton and fufu

drinks, beach and the border of Ghana behind me

calima (beans made into a pate) and piment

fish, some kind of greens and pate

more goodness

family dinner, wagash (Fulani cheese)

deconstruction

Ok maybe one explanation….

The above pic is Damigou, Melanie’s sister in Togo from her time in the PeaceCorps 10 years ago. This is how Damigou looks all of the time, not cooking but smiling…always smiling. She is a young woman with a lot of love in her heart and shows in everything she does including cooking which she did for us our entire visit to Lome.

April 29, 2014

Scenes from Togo #002

The following images are me playing around with the Pano feature on my iPhone. I was trying to see what would happen if i did “vertical panoramas” instead of horizontal ones.

I am not totally happy with the result, but is was phone to play…I will keep trying in different contexts to see how it alters my experience.

From left to right, the 1st and 3rd are pictures in the courtyard of the hotel we stayed in in downtown Lome. In the 1st image if you look carefully you can see my feet. The 2nd pic is of this awesome tree I saw that had grown like an arc over the basin of the Kpalime waterfall. The 4th pic are of the waterfall in Kpalime, if you llook closely you can see Melanie down there at the bottom. During rainy season the waterfall would be much more impressive.

April 25, 2014December 26, 2020

Scenes from Togo #001

While in Togo we took a ride up to Kpalime, which is in the next prefecture up from the prefecture that Lome is in.

This was a cool totem at one of the artisinal markets in Kpalime. Although the had some really nice items we found that things were a bit pricey when compared to similar items in Lome.

Totem Front

Totem Side

Totem Back

Totem Side

This area is very close to the border with Ghana, thus the people in this area are part of the same ethnic group, Ewe. The Ewe, span both Togo and Ghana. In the month of November, the inhabitants of this area has a festival called Kpalikpakpaza , the first festival was held in 1997. “The festival is meant to remind the Kpalime people of the valour of their ancestors during wars in the ancient days.”

I am going to do some more research about this festival, because I have long been searching for a festival (or celebration) to replace Kwanzaa, which I have never quite been a fan of or quite understood why African Americans with genetic and cultural lineage to West Africa would accept a festival whose lingua franca is Swahili (East African) and whose founder has such a problematic past. Anyway, that is a discussion for another time…

Stay tuned…

April 19, 2014April 23, 2014

Scenes from Togo #000

Over the Easter Weekend, Melanie and I had a great time in Lomé, Togo. I can now understand one of the many reasons why Togo has found such a special place in Melanie’s heart and many others in our circle of friends. I will be posting some pics that we took and some that our friends took on our visit.

You can also visit “With a Poet’s Eye”, my Instagram for some other views of our trip to Lomé and in general to keep up with what we are up to. http://www.instagram.com/fjoiner

Lome, Togo you can see difference between the Coast areas and the Sahel. Lome is much more lush than Bamako.

ASky, African owned airline

A main street in Lome, I forgot the name. I think that the commerce of being a port city contributes to the greater prevelance of infrastructure than I see in Bamako.

Renaud and Damigou’s (Melanie’s sister) compound

Renaud chopping coconut. I looked away for what could not have been more than 5 minutes and a coconut was being prepared for us

mmmm…coconut water

Melanie and Damigou

March 13, 2014November 17, 2023

half note #001

On the Way to Salif Keita's Island — On the way to Salif Keita’s Island

Sometimes it’s a good feeling to know that you are not alone or at least to know that someone else is thinking what you are thinking.

About 2 years ago i wrote this piece called “Mel Bochner: In the Tower…or in the mix?” . It was a brief meditation on Mel Bochner’s exhibition in The Tower of the National Gallery of Art in DC and what was going on my my head at the time. In the piece, one of the things i talked about was visual poetry, in particular what I suggested was Bochner’s render of a “visual sonnet” based on the structure of the the Thesaurus paintings. I further suggest that these poems are connected to Stein, Boultenhouse , Apollinaire lineage starting with Stein’s “word portraits” to Boultenhouse’s “Poems in the Shape of Things” to Apollinaire’s collection of visual poetry Calliagrammes.

Just a few weeks ago I came across this article entitle “Apollinaire ‘s Visual Poetry” on MoMA‘s Blog INSIDE/OUT. AIf felt good to know that the same type of language and thinking that I had used to frame the poetic qualities of Bochner’s work was being used to by a curator at MoMa to talk about Apollinaire’s Calliagrammes. I know it seems like such a small perhaps even insignificant thing, but as a part of my creative process, it is important to create and find community where I can for encouragement, particularly with the experience of living in a new place where you don’t yet have community to plug into and to be a support.

Anyway, that is my half note for now…more soon…

INSIDE/OUT Blog Archive on Poetry related stuff click here .

February 11, 2014February 11, 2014

What’s been on my mind

So many thoughts come to me as I move through my day, exploring my little corner of this vast Continent, trying to keep 3 languages (English, French and Bamanakan) straight in my head, trying to stay creative and nimble, etc

But there are some thoughts, observations, ideas that keep coming back, things that won’t leave you alone. Over the past few months I have been thinking about money, currency, cash, moolah y’all…how it functions in the world, its behavior, the behavior of those who handle it, define it, worship it, and those that are under its foot, caught in its crease. A recent article from SiliconAfrica has made me think even harder as I attempt to come to grips with my own complicity which has made ask and attempt to answer some tough questions for myself and the way I move in the world.

I have always been interest in Africa (I will post more about that soon my my other blog BOOM FOR REAL BAMAKO), even from a very young thanks to late Uncle Clemson “Russell” Joiner and my parents efforts to make sure I understood that there is more to African American history than enslavement (rebellion and victory) and the Civil Rights Movement.

I have been fortunate enough to have people around me from an early age to explain to that Africa and its influence on all American life is not some remote dead thing of the past, but that it is still with in a lot of ways… not as retentions but as things we have always done. I was reminded of this just a few weeks back when the The Daily Beast posted pictures from Martin A Berger’s newly published Freedom Now!: Forgotten Photographs of the Civil Rights Struggle where this photo taken by Don Cravens in 1955 caught my attention:

which in turn immediately made think of the picture I took during my first week here in Bamako in 2013, which I call Royalty.

Although I was not surprised to see women carrying things like this in Bamako; I must admit, despite my Low Country/Gullah roots, I was still surprised to see this. I see women like this everyday walking around Bamako, I marvel at them, how they are always in motion, always at work, always serving.

Because these things have been repeatedly going through my mind since I have been here I have been trying to make sense of them the best way I know how…by attempting to make poems. I am not quite ready to share them yet, but you will see them, if I am blessed you may see 1 or 2 of them in print.

See you soon.

February 1, 2014June 13, 2017

Brief thoughts on Langston and Africa

I thought about Langston Hughes all day today, thinking about what he meant to me, how much I still don’t know about him and his work…I also thought about what it means for me to be here in Bamako, Mali, a poet and trying to make sense of myself here.

I came across this poem doing what I do with a good portion of my days, surfing the net, reading, researching etc and I came across this on ChickenBones:

Africa
Sleepy giant,
You’ve been resting awhile.
Now I see the thunder
And the lightning
In your smile.

Now I see
The storms clouds
In your waking eyes:
The thunder,
The wonder
And the new
Surprise.

Your every step towards
The new stride
In your thighs.

– Langston Hughes

This poem resonates with me as look at out into what is now early morning Feb 2nd and think about the future of Africa. Although things are dire in many countries, there are many countries where the people are thriving, that energy is palpable. I feel it when talking with people about their country and I see it in all of the building that is going on. I also saw and felt that creative spark in talking to the young people at the American International School of Bamako, who I had the opportunity to spend the day with a few days ago.

This Hughes poem despite its age does what so many good poems do, it speaks to its reader where that reader is found. It takes a poet of extreme vision to simultaneously be timely in one’s own day and transcendent 47 years after your death…

Thank you Langston Hughes, you give us all who claim to poets something to strive for.