Shailja Patel
Kenya
Shailja Patel This Kenyan poet, environmental and human rights activist Shailja tells it like it is, honoring the feminine earthbound and divine.
BIOGRAPHY
Kenyan poet SHAILJA PATEL was trained as a political economist, accountant and yoga teacher. She hon... More >
Drum Rider
I.The woman planted a drum on the grass before her.Twisted a soft worn khanga round her hips.As if she was going to wash clothes, chop vegetables;hike a child to her back to go to market.None of us really paid any attention.The woman harnessed her hips to the drum.Chest-high, foot-in-diameter msondo drum.Rocked it aslant between her straddled legs.Settled into position.Sunken chest erect.Shoulders, neck, at the ready.Mouth set over gaping gums.Khanga hiked up skinny strong legs.Feet grounded in the earthlike it was time to do business.Like she was goingto work.Suddenly, we are onPlanet Kidude.Where men scurry across the mat:place mics, arrange wires, jostle for camera views.Where the woman ignores them all.Because she did this for eight decades before there were cameras, mics. Decades she hoisted her drum trudged rich dirtthe length and breadth of Tanzaniato perform.Decades she fought offterror, insults, mockerythe soul-destroying silenceonly the strongest fire survives.Decades she t ravelled deep and deeperto the heart of her own rhythm.This is Bi Kidude.Virtuoso of Taraab, Unyago.Woman who at ninety-five,has walked more milesthan most of us have driven.Claimed a lineageof music rootedin the lives of the powerlessstories unfurled in language of street and marketpoetry buried in the bodies of women.II.I have never seen a woman ride a drum beforelike a goddess rides a tigerlike creation rides the cosmos.I have never seen a woman ride a drum like this.I have never seen an artistmale or femaleanywhere across the globeown their instrument likeit grew out of their belly,like it was weldedto their thighs.III.Then, there were the dancers.The dancers moved lazily.Dropped their cellphones, shook out their khangas.Gold at their ears, their necks, their wrists;gold gleamed in their mouths.The dancers slipped into movementas a bhajia slips into hot oil rises to the surfacestarts to sizzle.Now the dancers work their hipswith a precision of balance, controla potency of strength, of muscle isolationOlympic gymnasts would envy.They shake their hipsfor all of uswho have been taught, coercedto disown our bodies. For all womenwhose bodieshave been stolen from them.They thrust their succulent buttocks out with democratic largesse.Tease the old woman in the black buibui.Taunt the white-boy, dreadlocked tourist,who feigns coolnessbehind his wraparound sunglasses,while I watch his neck turn scarletdrip with sweat.The dancers work their hipsfor the waitressesat Africa House Hotel. Cagedin the most godawfulugly, cheap, confiningsweat-producing black skirts, white shirtsto serve drinks to tourists in shorts and bikinis.Because heaven forbid those who serveshould ever feel breeze on their skinsheaven forbid those who serveshould move their hips and torsosfreely in clothes that flowcolours that hum.We might forget they are servants.We mightsee them.The dancers shake their hips for the womenthose waitresses serve. Waxy-palebikini-clad tourists at Serena's poolside.Women who check their bodies dailyfor criminal fatoutlawed abundance of flesh.Women of the tragic sisterhoodof liposuction, surgical alterationsilent epidemic of anorexia deaths.Women taught that beautyequals self-annihilation.These dancers swivel their hipsfor the six-thousand girl children who todaywere held down, legs spread, hands tied,gagged, blindfolded, torturedbeyond screaming, violatedbeyond horror, circumcisedfor the crimeof a clitoris.They move their hips for every womaninfected with HIVby a man who valued her lifeless than his gratification.These women who circle Bi Kidudeas planets orbit the sun circle like temple snakessinuous panthersthe source where sound begins;they are shaking the bountyof women's bodiesback into the world.Their hips and butts are saying: YESS!!YESto largeness that does not apologise.YESto power, knowledge,that do not disguise themselves.YESto pleasure,claimed and vestedin our mortal beautiful bodies.IIII will never fear aging againbecause now I have heard Bi Kidudebelt outat ninety-fivewithout a mictobacco-stained waves of soundsandpapered down to coconut fibrestronger than cables of steel.I will never fear aging againbecause now I have seen Bi Kidude -whose face has never touchedan anti-wrinkle cream,an age-defying glycolic acid enzyme peel,who knocks back whisky, cigarettesfor every ounce of moisturizer I consume -hypnotise a hundred cameras.I have felt the power of this woman's neck,her shoulder musclessurge thunderdown arm to hand to drum;generate more electricitythan ten Madonnasa hundred Fela Kutis with sixteen-piece bandstake us back to the center of fertile creationwhere sound begins.IV.I believe in Bi Kidudethe way I don't believe in god.But if god were a ninety-five-year old, ebony blackSwahili woman,who claims to be one hundred and twenty,with a mouth full of broken and missing teethhands veined like banyan treesa drum between her legsa kijiti at her defiant, all-knowing lipsa shillingi-mia-kumi note flapping out of her neckline;if god chanted wickedly satirical shairiabout the dangers of the very deathstickshe sucks on;if god embraced irony, lust, contradiction heartbreak, imperfection;if god flaunted her struggles like a velvet cape,rearranged the atoms of the worldwith the rhythm of her gutthen maybe I would believein that god.That god who is only a namefor the genius in all of usthat makes us our own imam and prophetour own divinity.I would call the faithful to prayer:Bomba Kidude! Kidude Saafi!And they would holler back: Saafi!They would holler back: Saafi!They would holler back: SAAFI!And we would all begod.
