Final Notes on Movement
Brethren, let us now hear the end of the whole matter: A. Movement is a dialogue in continuum: the body and the mind are always in crisis, trying to reimagine what they [...]
Month: June 2016
Who are you, really?
My most prevalent thoughts on this road trip were around identity; the things that inform who others say we are, who we claim to be. In Lokoja, we went up Mount Patti and stood [...]
I Offer Now My Body
I know a feeling of disquiet, moving from city to city. I know this feeling because in my dream a friend, long forgotten, came to me recounting a moment in our childhood. We circled [...]
A Concerto for All the Walks I Have Taken
1. I have always imagined the most potent way of reducing immapancy to be putting feet on the ground, and breathing the air of a place. So I began to walk in Umuahia. Early [...]
An Inventory of Thoughts (2)
Lokoja. First act was to wake up to a view of the city. Somewhere behind that view is the confluence of the Rivers Niger and Benue. Some time around 1914, a certain Flora Shaw [...]
To be a man.
I have been putting questions about prevalent thoughts on masculinity to people we have met over the last 36 days of the road trip. Although the responses have been in many ways predictable, I [...]
Men Who Wait on the Street
Walking on the Lokoja-Okenne road, I saw men with shovels and hoes, waiting. Only seven in the morning, they dallied beside the road. What moves me to remember them? The growing number of idle [...]
After the Full Stop
I think a lot about how most of our work on the trip has happened in the space between preconceived notions and freshly acquired perceptions. This space—referred to by Emeka as ‘the bracketed [...]
Home of Peace
Two heads are better As we proceeded further north toward Maiduguri, I thought about the things that could happen that would make people say: What were you doing in Maiduguri? You don’t like your [...]
There is a Fear That Binds
Uche: ’Pwo n’uzo Even before the van stops and we step out, I know I will not like it here. It is noisy and smelly and throbbing with testosterone, adrenaline. Boisterous men lead herds [...]