Frozen

Today is December 21st 2022. This is the first and last essay/blog post I am writing this year. I have been writing and steadfastly sharing my professional and personal journey for more than five years. However, since last year, December 28th, I have stopped writing.

I may have had other things on my mind. I may have needed a break. 

The truth is, on December 28th 2021, my dad passed away. 

At the moment, as I was feeling the sadness that (I suppose) is appropriate to feel after such a heartbreaking event, I told myself I was ok. Really, I was ok. During the two months before he was laid to rest, I kept myself busy with the funerals preparations and everything that comes with organizing funerals back home. Then after that, I focused on work. I needed to work, I had projects I had planned to launch, and I told myself that this  life event was not going to stop me from moving. So I kept on moving. 

I dealt with and focused on financial emergencies, professional ones, family ones. So many fires to put out ! Life, right ?

I told myself that I was not the first person to go through such a loss. Other people went through it and they are doing ok, so I am ok.

I told myself I did not need to be too sad, because as per my spiritual beliefs, while he was not physically present, my dad was still close, albeit in another form.

I was not going to fall apart. My dad would not have wanted me to fall apart, he would have wanted me to move on, to keep on going, so I did. I even told one of my friend at one point, that I did not have the luxury of falling apart. Too many things around me depended on me being up and moving. I had to support my mother, whose world had just being turned upside down. I had to keep being a mum to my children who still needed my full presence. I had a budding company that needed my full attention. I had debts that needed to be repaid. Life was not going to wait for me.

I kept working, I kept socializing, I kept laughing, I did everything as if my dad was still here on earth. 

I am even tempted to say that I kept on being happy. I reconnected with my mom and my brother on a higher level, and I felt that those connexions were what my dad gifted me with, before leaving.

Then came the summer, which started as a two weeks break. My husband and children took a trip, and I had a nice staycation. I shut down my presence on all social media, I slowed down on the work side of my life. I told myself I needed to take a breath, so I did. 

Then, two weeks became a month. One month became two, then three. By the time October rolled in.    , my much needed break had fully become this limbo and this feeling of apathy that I did not know how to come out of. While I was taking a break, things were quickly getting away from me. Everything around me had become urgent, but I could not find in me the strength to care, or to do something about it. I was late everywhere, for everything. Those 2022 objectives were definitely not going to be reached. 

I was feeling alive, but not in life. 

Things were happening around me, to me, but not with me. I was going through the motions, without fully participating. That voice in my head kept telling me « do something, do, do, do, move ! ». I was listening, but I couldn’t act on it. I then realized that I did not even have the strength to write. I had many things to say, but I could not put them on paper, as I usually do. And to write what exactly ? I did not know how/what I was feeling exactly, I could not put words to it. 

Another voice was telling me: « be, just be, just be who you want to be at this moment ». I was more inclined to listen to this voice. Listening to that voice however, meant seeing life as I knew it fall apart. Listening to that voice meant staying frozen, looking at life passing me by. Listening to that voice sounded completely counter productive, it was going against everything I had ever learned. How could I stay frozen ? How could I not get out of this state ? How could this be more comfortable than being an active participant in my life ? 

This state of being also made me contemplate the notion of productivity, performance and earning. The « doing » part. I am still having trouble letting this go. Not because my identity was solely based on my work (I have grown into past that idea a while ago), but because I had never contemplated life without the notion of action, of doing. 

So far, to me, living meant doing. When I say « doing », I mean acting in a way that requires an effort. I had to make an effort to earn my living. 

Just « being »  implied letting go, following my instincts (which were leading me to mostly sleep, eat, read, watch tv and nothing else). 

We are mostly used to going through life while doing and having, without thinking much about the being. 

So I find it particularly interesting that the year I had to process the death of my dad, I also had to experience life as a human being. A human who is, and not merely a human who does or who has. So, I was led to contemplate life as a state of being. Not doing, not having. 

The lesson is brutal, and hard. 

Hard to unlink my being, from my doing, from my having. I am experimenting them one at a time. 

Who am I, if I am not performing ? If I am not being ? If I am not having ?

I have always believed that from my being (by honoring who I am at the moment) would derive my doing (how I show up for myself and for others, what I give) and my earning (what I receive). 

As I am writing this and as we are nearing the end of the year, I still don’t have the answers to those questions. I am still in limbo, so I have no advice, no encouraging words, or no lesson to share. I am still going through the motions, wondering when I will stop feeling stuck.

I am still struggling with the « being » part of life, not just the « doing » part of it.

So for the next season, I wish myself the energy of life. I wish to have good health, and I hope for all of us, the light at the end of the tunnel.

Answering the Baobab tree call

I woke up several weeks ago to the sounds of the baobab's call. 

I felt the master plants and the healing herbs calling on me.

I felt a part of me awaken, connections being made, knowledge coming to the surface. 

I woke up with the conviction that I knew, and that it was time to take another step towards this part of me. 

So yesterday I started the work. 

I felt like I was reuniting with old friends. 

Every time the name of a plant came to my ear, it was like a memory that came back from far away, from deep inside me. 

I found the benefits of each plant, as when one finds the arms of a former lover. 

A certain nostalgia. 

This sensation that one knew the person at one time, but that one must get acquainted with what this person has become over time. 

I am on familiar ground, but at the same time the experience seems new to me. 

I am acutely aware that the past, the present and the future are all one at this moment. 

I am full of gratitude for the past life in which I was one with these plants, and I thank my current incarnation for integrating this knowledge into my present experience.

The 11 shades of my free and autonomous spirituality

A spirituality based on love

A spirituality that builds and unfolds with the vibrations of your soul

A dynamic spirituality, which develops with the awakening of your consciousness.

A spirituality independent of dogmas

A spirituality whose rituals are the fruit of the connection you have with your soul

A spirituality that favors your autonomy of thought

A spirituality that has more questions than answers

A spirituality that recognizes your divine dimension, as well as your human dimension

A spirituality that puts your Being at the center of YOUR life

A spirituality that respects your creativity

A spirituality that reflects the best version of your Being

Just be yourself

Just be yourself.
A mantra that is so deeply imprinted in us since the advent of personal development, that we no longer know what it is.
It’s the most natural state in the world, but at the same time so complicated to achieve.

Be yourself
But who am I, When the masks I wear are an integral part of my personality and I don't know the difference anymore ?

How do we know who we are?

Being yourself requires courage
Being yourself is to trust in a future that never existed.

Miss C. asked me the other day: "how can you tell others to be themselves, when you know how difficult it is?"

And I replied, "because once you experience the fullness that being yourself brings, the difficulties don't weigh as much in the balance. And you end up understanding in the end that it's: be yourself or die. "❤️

About root-movements and spirituality

Spirit-uality: A word that can be scary to some.

When asked about it, this is my answer. “Are you a human being? If yes, then you have a spirit. Since you have a spirit, you are thus spiritual.”

We are all spiritual. Now, it’s up to you to determine what you want to do with that information.

Being conscious about one’s spirituality is determining if we want to activate that part of us, how we want to interact with this great spirit we have inside, and the space we want to give it in our lives. Me ? I am giving IT all the space !!! 😁

__________________________________________________________________________________________

Yesterday, Miss C. asked me about root-movements.

Root-movements are at the heart of Creation.

They are, for example:
❤️The beating of a heart
🧘🏾‍♀️The art of breathing
🦋A flutter of wings
🌺The blooming of a flower

These movements involve:
🎈Death and birth
🎈Closing and opening
🎈Contraction and expansion

They help us understand the different seasons of our lives.
They help us understand surrender and abundance.
They help us choose love over fear.
They help us understand that we are ONE and part of ALL.

Leaning into my feminine energy

Leading with my intuition and leaning into my feminine energy. What does it look like for me, today? 

To me, today, following my intuition and letting my essence lead means, changing my whole business model in the middle of the second quarter, letting go of pre-planned projects and going back to the drawing board. In 👏🏾The 👏🏾Fing 👏🏾Middle 👏🏾Of 👏🏾Q2😤

Some would ask: “can it wait ? Can you go on until the end of the quarter without burning everything?”

Well, no, it can’t. Because things are not working out the way they are supposed to right now. There is disquiet and unrest. Things are not flowing as they should, and my resistance to change things is making me loose sleep and money. 

Bear in mind, this is not about being anxious about extending my comfort zone, it’s more of a feeling that I need to change this boat’s direction completely. 

A part of me thinks I should buckle up and dive into a new model, even if I have to halt or disrupt things for a while. 

Another part of me is tired of the never ending leaps of faith, and wants me to power through, knowing that I might not reach my quarterly goals anyways. 

Leaning into my feminine would mean trusting my intuition and implementing the changes I am led to, while waiting and trusting that the answer will come. Be myself and let what is mine manifest, and what is not mine crash. 

Not leaning into my feminine energy would mean to push. To find a way out of the discomfort by doing. By working on my current projects until one of them sticks. 

What would you advise ?

Expansion & Contraction

Sometimes it’s our refusal to follow the natural movement of our soul, which can be that of expansion and progression, or that of contraction, that leads to our discomfort and unrest.

These two root movements are natural impulses of our soul which, like all elements of nature, invite us to hibernate and then to bloom, to breathe in and then to breathe out.

You will recognize your expansion or contraction impulses by the feeling of fullness and completeness they bring. The decision to expand your comfort zone, or the decision to stay still, will give you that feeling of being in the right place at the right time, happy with who you are and what you have.

Fear and social conditioning will incite us to resist these root movements. We will either make ourselves smaller than we are and resist the expansion movement, or we will want to go faster than the music.

This resistance will affect our physical body and eventually cause those pains we feel.

Breathing issues, anxiety, back pain or period pain. Our body will tell us.

The discomfort will help us realize that we need to expand our comfort zone, take that leap of faith we've been hesitant to take, change our perspective and viewpoint on an obstacle, consider an alternative or speak our truth.

The stronger our resistance, the stronger our pain.

I invite you to question and explore your frustrations, disquiet and pains. Look for possibilities of expansion or contraction, and ask yourself where are the unexplored spaces of freedom in your life.

You are the blueprint

Don’t look for the blueprint, you are the blueprint.

This is for the days when you are lost and confused.
The days when the voices in and out your head are going in different places.
When the smoke is so thick around you and you are losing your sense of directions.
The days when you want someone to tell you what to do, where to go.

Come on, where is that magic formula?

Well, you are the magic formula.
You are the blueprint.
You are the compass.

You came with the directions etched into you soul.
You came with a specific set of indications and directions inside your heart.

A moment of silence and you will find your way.
A drop of water and you will meet your truth.
The crackling of a fire and you will walk you walk.
A handful of earth and you will find your purpose.

You can bask and rejoice in that knowledge.

Don’t go searching for the blueprint outside of your realm.
You are the blueprint you are looking for.

My body is calling

When the body calls

I think I am still,
But I am not.
My legs are tingling ,
My arms are shaking,
My pelvis is swaying,
My neck is turning in circles,
Life is calling.

And I agree to the alliance.
I whisper promises,
Anxious and elated at the same time.
I anchor and root myself
I say my prayers in the water
I lose myself in contemplations
I let the elements carry me.

My body is calling,
Life is reminding me of my weaknesses, and
My soul remembers my power.

May we hear the messages that our bodies are sending,
And when it’s time to remember, may we answer the call of life.

Creativity is our super-power

When people ask me what our life purpose is.

My answer always is: Creativity.

Creativity is the Universe’s answers to our questions. And we wrap these answers in love and beauty, and offer them to the world.

Human beings are in perpetual search of meaning, of evolution, of light.

Once we experience Light, once we let it penetrate and pass through our pains and traumas, once our senses are aligned with our essence, the answers come to us.

Each ray of Light is a source of information that our mind and body will translate, for us and for others.

A bouquet of flowers, a child, a business, a smile, a drawing, a word, all of these are manifestations of the Light that we have let pass through us and that we spread around us. It is the power of creation. It is our creativity. It is our super power.

🎶Let The Sunshine In, Galt MacDermot

Joy, as a form of resistance

Let me give you a bit of a truth about me. I am a news junky. Getting the news from multiple places in the world helps me understand how the world goes round, the state of the human condition. At one point, I had a membership with Lemonde, Jeune Afrique, Mediapart, El Pais, the Washington Post and The NY Times. Yep. All at the same time. It was that bad. Now I just have three of those memberships, so I am still a news addict.

One thing I had learned early on from my readings however, was not to let myself get suck in by what I was reading. Instinctively, I had managed to remove myself emotionally from the onslaught of news I was subjecting myself to.

I recently came to question this ability I had acquired to remove myself from the news, when my social media feeds became a stream of black and blue squares. All days, every days, there would be uproar, pain and hurt from something we’ve heard on the news. And I started wondering if I too, should start putting black squares when the news required it.

Then I realized that what I was feeling was guilt. Guilt that I am not as sad as everyone else seem to be. Guilt that I was moving on while a lot of people where halted. Guilt that I was feeling ok.

A phone call with a friend and a re-reading of our cherished Toni Morrison put it all in perspective for me. A lot of us are out there fighting a white supremacist system and let’s be real, the system is fighting back. Daily killings of black and brown people, packed prisons, failed education, broken health. It never seem to stop. All days every days. And what do we do ? We stress over it. We fight against it. We condemn it. We cry over it. We make ourselves sick over it. We fear it. We create initiatives around it. We let ourselves be drawn to it and we drown in it.

And that’s their plan. To overwhelm us with sadness.

Frankly, what we are going through at the moment (and the moments before that) is a special kind of torture. A madness.

They want us to cry every day. And we do.
They want to exhaust us. And they do.
They want us to focus on the fight. And we do.
They want us to forget. And we do.

We forget the point of life. We forget that the point of life is to thrive, as Maya Angelou was telling us. We are stuck in survival mode. We forget to breathe. And that’s what the system ultimately want. They want us to forget about our own humanity. They want us to forget that we are not only about fighting and surviving, but we are mostly about creating, being happy and thriving.

The story I want to write is not about resilience and strength. We have enough of it. I am tired of it. I am tired of reading about survival stories. Really. We are strong and resilient people, I think we have proven that time and time again.

I want to write and read about fragility, ease, rest, and joy. Only. I feel most human when I am able to connect to my joy and creativity. And they will not steal that from me. Never. I connect to the divine when I connect to my creativity. And it’s that joy and creativity that brings me freedom. Financial freedom, political freedom, social freedom. Freedom to be myself. That is how I free myself and that is how I will free my children.

I will be joyful, I will be creative, I will be happy. And that’s what they fear the most.

Sometimes, life is shit

And we need to accept and to acknowledge that. 

I wrote about emotional avoidance on my social media this morning, and I think it’s the story that has brought me the most reactions inbox. So many of you replied !

And I was like well, shit ! Maybe I need to talk about this some more !

Sis, this personal development thing has done a number on us, hear me ? We have been inundated with messages about manifestation, staying positive all the times, being grateful at all time, that  it almost feels blasphemous to acknowledge that sometimes, life is just shitty and we are not having a good time at the moment.  

We have been spirituality bypassing our own emotions, and gaslighting ourselves into thinking that not focusing on our issues will make them disappear somehow. 

They tell us “what you put your attention on will expand”. Well, God forbid we put our attention on our messes ! We certainly don’t want them to expand! So we pretend. We pretend we are fully happy. We fake our gratitude till we make it real somehow. 

Look here, the relationship with our friends, our kids, our parents are broken but listen, we should be grateful we have a good job and a good health, right? Complaining just sounds petty and ungrateful. So we sweep our trash under the beautiful rug and ignore it, until the smell starts making us sick. 

What we don’t want to see is that we have to work through the mess to make it go away.

Yes we need to put our attention to our messes (I did not say solely focus on it), letting it expand maybe, and immerse ourselves in it in order to purge it from our lives. 

How are we going to get rid of our fears if we don’t acknowledge them and don’t talk to them?

How are we supposed to get rid of our pains if we ignore them?

How good is our gratitude if it’s tinged with bitterness and frustration?

Why don’t we realize that not acknowledging our hurts is lacking humility as human beings? It means not wanting to admit that little old us can feel anger, jealousy, pettiness, and all those messy sentiments that simply make us human. 

Yes, dealing with our trash and messes is painful. It can hurt real bad.  

But I personally don’t want to live in a stinking house, so let me go face my trash, sort it out and get rid of it for good. 

2021

In 2020, our masks started falling off.

In 2021, the world as we know it is changing very rapidly and things are moving quickly. All manifestations will be accelerated. Those who are lying to themselves or who are not living their truths will feel the setbacks faster.

It’s a brand new world. You are the painter, here is your brush. Create the world you want to live in. 

What we need is spiritual re-engineering

What beliefs about me and about the world do I hold, that are holding me in a perpetual state of unease and latent unhappiness?

What has brought us (the world, our environment) up to this tipping point is obviously showing us that our systems are not working. It seems like the world is crumbling down, but I don’t think it is. The world and nature are just reestablishing a certain balance. 

The beliefs we held are no longer truth. 

Our truths  no longer match our realities. 

This has created an identity crisis. We are not who we thought we were. Who are we then? What do we believe in?

Since our beliefs create our reality, at this crucial juncture, it’s important that we consciously (re)affirm the beliefs that are going to create our future reality. 

Who do I want to be?

How do I want to feel?

What do I want to hear and see?

Want do I want to create?

How do I get there?

What was my truth before today? How does it match my reality? How does it not? How can I use love and empathy to make my truth align with my reality ?

To find answer to those questions? We’ll have to go through some serious spiritual re-engineering et re-examine our core beliefs.

What do I believe about myself? What do I know about myself? Am I happy? What does happiness looks like to me? What beliefs/habits are keeping me from reaching the state of happiness I am envisioning?
What do I believe about the world? What do I know about the world? Am I happy in the world I live in? What frustrates me? What makes me angry or happy? Why does it make me angry ? What are my fears? What do I need to believe, experience, live in this world for it to look happier? 

I believe truthfully answering those questions will help you kick start a new set of beliefs that are going to be the foundation of the new world you want to see and live-in. 

Step into your light

The more you step into your light, the more you are attractive. 

The more you recognize yourself, the less you have to fight to be recognized. 

The more you are yourself, the less you have to fight. 

Let your light shine brightly. 

See me

You are telling me, when you see me, you only see love and light.

What I hear, is that you don't see me. You are not connecting to my whole being.

Because the light you see in me, was born out of immense darkness.

You only want to see the light, because that makes you sleep  better at night.

The light you see, is a reflection of the fire that burns inside me.

I am luminous, I know, there is a huge fire sustaining me, keeping me alive.

Come closer so you can feel it, see it.

Come closer so you can feel my shadows.

I need you to see my darkness. I need you to see me as a whole.

You really want to see me, you want to see the real me, get to bask in my shadow.

That is where I lie at night.

That is where my dreams and desires come from.

I need you to acknowledge my bitterness and my contempt. Contempt for you.

I love you, and I loathe you.

Black and white. Multidimensional. Intricate. Complex. Human.

Decolonizing "international development"

As I am writing this, my professional life is about to evolve, as my employment as a salaried member of an international organization is concluding.

The ending of this chapter of my employment is bittersweet, because it coincides with a time when we are witnessing and living big changes worldwide. The Covid-19 health crisis and the civil right movements uprisings are making us question our individual and common foundations. What do we want for ourselves as individuals, for our societies, for our children?

Those questions relate to my professional and personal life as I, as an African woman working in the development field, am wondering if the project I am working with has achieved what it had set to achieve. At the end of the day, did we make real impact? Over the days, my questioning has become: is international development really working? Since this my personal journal and I am talking to myself, I can be honest and share the resounding NO coming out of my gut.

And I think I can articulate some of the reasons why (for the purpose of those specific musings, I am putting aside humanitarian aid brought by natural catastrophes).

The concept of development implies moving from an incomplete state to a more evolved state. It implies progress from a perceived negative space to a perceived more positive one.

The concept of international in this context, implies that the perceived development is universal.

International development is thus an effort from countries that declared themselves advanced, to put less advanced countries in the path of what we all consider progress. The universal goal here, is to reach Western style industrialization. It suggests that some people need help and others are providing that help. Some people have less, and other have more. It suggests that those who have less are supposed to want more. The base of international development is perceived inequality.

The logical process when one party decides to help another one into attaining a better state, is that the benefitting party at some point, does not need help anymore. Right?

Unfortunately, in my opinion, international development is a never-ending circle of human, material and financial resources thrown at “less advanced countries”, without the needle ever moving to the positive side in a significant way. The “less advanced countries” have stayed mostly “underdeveloped” since they have been granted their “independence” from their colonizers. Sometimes, their economic situation has even gotten worse.

So, what is the use of “international development”?

To be frank, we often (conveniently) forget that the field “international development” is a legacy of centuries of colonization, where a euro-centric view of the world was violently imposed on populations of thousands of people. To support their process of industrialization and to satisfy their expansionist tendencies, Western powers enslaved, colonized, and assimilated Asian and African populations. In the fifties and sixties, a semblance of independence was granted by colonizing countries to colonized civilizations. By that time, Western countries’ industrialization was advanced, and their form of progress was universally “adopted”. Euro-centered religions, philosophy, way of life, cosmology became the standard for the rest of the world. The rest of the world, whose organic growth and evolution was interrupted when the first clergymen set foot on their territories, then had to play catch-up to industrially advanced countries, in order to reach the euro-centered goals of “progress” and “development”. Of course, they would not be left alone in their efforts to become advanced. Of course not! Who better than the colonizers to show them the way?

That is how the field of “international cooperation and development” was born. It was a way for colonizers to keep expanding their influence, in countries where they could not do it through physical violence anymore.

What do we expect from relationships that are based on such inequalities?  The people I have been working with, are mainly persons of good faith, who genuinely believe they are helping and are genuinely willing to give their best, so that population from less advanced countries could one day maybe get there.

I do not believe however that the way things are done right now will help them achieve that purpose in the long term, for multiple reasons.

1)     They put themselves as the subject of their projects. It is about them “doing good”, and the way they see things. As stated above, international development is based on values and point of views that are exogeneous to most cultures in which the development is brought. The doing, the action is theirs. They are usually the ones providing the help, implementing programs, working on activities. When you look at international organizations’ websites, they all speak to what they did, what they accomplished, making themselves the center and the subject of the projects, and the recipients, even though their pictures are plastered all over the websites, are like an afterthought. Shouldn't it be about the recipients?  Moreover, when one is always put in the position of being the endless receiver, it can bring a sense of powerlessness that often translates in apathy and non-action. As long as African populations will feel like they must conform to the standards, norms and indicators dictated by the West, the programs and projects created in Brussels or Washington will not acquire the profound and long term buy-in necessary to have positive long term impact. I personally have witnessed different international assistance projects focusing on building things like schools, small hospitals and or toilets in remote villages in my country. The thing that usually happens after Aid workers are gone, three months, a year, five year after they are gone, is that what they have built has stayed unused, not maintained, or left to crumble. Why?

2)     They do not question the assumption that people need their help, nor the assumption that they have the solutions. Often, there are chances that local solutions have been thought of or developed. In general, locals know what they are missing, and they have solutions on how to solve those issues. For example, we all agree that education is important and necessary, but is western style schooling the necessary answer in a rural village in North Cameroon? How will the access to books and other school material be resolved? How long is the school going to have teachers before they decide to move to a bigger city? Hospitals have been built, electricity has been installed in remote areas, but what about maintenance? Those issues stem from the fact that we all live in different planes of consciousness. I am acutely aware of that when I travel from the US, to France, To Tunisia, To Cameroon. I often feel like I move from one world to another every time I travel.  Why do we somehow expect that a solution that has been cooked out in one world, in one reality, will work in another reality? When thoughts, representations, and projections are exogenous, implementing programs with the hope that they will sustain the test of time is in my opinion at best naively optimistic, and at worst a symptom of bad faith. When international institutions create projects, activities, programs with little to insignificant input from the people who will be receiving the aid, then I believe hoping for long term success is useless, because once the program is implemented on the field, there is no buy in and no ownership. Like many other industries, the international development field suffer from lack of representation of the people receiving the aid, in decision making positions and spaces. Most of the time, donors from international organizations decide where the issue is (whether it be demographical, economical; political, etc.) and how the issue should be handled, and when the receiving populations are represented at a high level, their representatives are usually puppet like figures, either because of personal greed or because they have little choice in how things are proceeding.

3)     They do not use a holistic approach when creating solutions. In my opinion, one of the key reasons why international development programs fail is because the donating forces have failed to understand the people they are looking to bring aid to. They try to understand systems and the reasons why different systems fail, and try to come up with good solutions that at the end, will just act as band aid because like with a blind spot, they do not often have the “whole picture” approach. A key to being aware of those blind spots is empathy, human connection. I have read many political economy analyses written by “experts”, that are supposed to steer development programs. Programs with indicators that do not consider the cultural, historical, and psychological context in which they would like to operate. Including psychological and cultural factors in analysis could help apprehend issues such as corruption, which is often what international organizations consider a big hindrance to their work. This would help understand the complexities and paradoxes of the countries they work in.   Economists and other experts may tell me that those factors do not matter, or that they do not have a space in their calculations. My question is, how do you expect to make an economic and political difference if you do not know the people you are seeking to impact? If you do not know what they feel, think, want, aspire to? We tend to create the same static goals or indicators for everyone when we all have different dynamic histories. How can development be “international”? This means that the field of international development tries to get every country into a normative system, disregarding the subjective experience of the humanity within the spaces it works in. In a world where the concept of universal progress has been imposed, African societies have not had the chance to imagine and reinvent an organic and distinct model of being and participating in the world.

I feel lucky that traveling around the world has brought me to the place I am today. I feel like I can acutely apprehend the different paradigms I have lived in, in countries I have spent a few years in. So, I have recently been thinking about my African paradigm, different from the Western one we are all living in.  

Maybe I am naive and utopian. Maybe I am dreaming about a world where my perspective as an African woman would be leveraged better.

Sometimes I wonder, what would happen if there were no international development projects coming from the West:

Will children receive an education if western schools are not built? What would an education based on African values, culture and cosmology look like?

Who will be our healers, if we did not have sanitary and health assistance from the West?

What would our economy, our politics look like, if there were not mirroring almost exactly western systems and views of modernity and progress? What if we take away the modernity lenses, modernity being the equivalent of what is considered the current Western state of industrialization?

Why

Why are sisters around me mentally breaking down? 

Our mums learned the hard way and taught us that this was a man’s world, ans in order to make it, we had to become one.

We had to fight, to defend ourselves to have a place in this world.

 We had to show the world that we could do it all and be it all.

We had to be as good as men, so we became one.

We learned to achieve and to excel at everything.

All around me, I have this picture of women who have it all and who are striving. They are striving, they are leaders of their profession, they are multi achievers. They have climbed the professional ladder step by step, after earning multiple diploma. 

When they are self employed, they usually strive to be the best in their industry. 

They have families, partners, children.

They are making their families and their mothers pride.

See mom, I am doing this. I made it.

I am living the dream you had for me. I am a mom, I have money in the bank.

I am fighting and I am winning.

I am independent. Yes, I won my independence from men.

I am one of the guys now. Respected, listened to. I made my way.

Really ?

I am independent

But am I free?

Why is it that I don’t feel fulfilled?

Why do I feel like something is missing?

Why do I feel like I am missing a piece of myself?

Why is my hair falling of?

My is my skin breaking out?

Why does my breath suddenly hitches?

Why is my throat beginning to itch?

Why can’t I hear the message?

Why can’t I hear myself?

Why can’t I see myself?

Where am I?

Who am I?

I am woman

I am wife

I am mum

I am daughter

I am sister

I am friend

I am

Yes, of course.

But who am I?

That’s how my journey began.

Can we really do it all and be it all?

Where does that idea come from anyway?

Do I really want to be it all?

Do I really want to do it all?

Why is it important for me to show people how strong I am?

What about when I am not strong?

Why would I be considered less because I am not all?

Am I weak because I just want to stay home and sleep when I am on my period?

Am I weak because frankly, some days I want to stay in bed and let my husband do it all?

Am I weak or lazy because I am seldom the cooking for my kids?

Am I weak because I barely know how to take care of those kids that I have?

Am I weak because I don’t want more responsibilities at work or at home?

Am I weak because I don’t want kids?

Am I weak because I am happy where I am and just want to enjoy this moment?

Am I weak because I do not want more?

Am I weak because I want to stop running?

Am I weak because I want to stop fighting?

Am I weak because I want to stop doing?

Am I weak because I just …am?

Can I make it in this world if I just stop doing and I just be?

I just want to be

I just want to breathe

I just want to feel

I am not working

I am creating

I am not doing

I am being

I am not saying

I am listenning

I am not making it

I am living

I am not giving

I am receiving

I am not screaming

I am whispering

There

Unapologetically me. Completely me. It took me a long time to get there. Someday, i am not even sure i am there yet. And where is “there” ? 

« There » is a place where I let go of all my fears, of all my limiting beliefs. My fear of being a disappointment. My fear of being judged. My fear of being misunderstood. 

« There » is a sacred place where I can tap on my essence.  A place where my soul recognizes my current envelope. A place where I see my divine being, in all its glory.

Those moments are fleeting, filling me with indescribable joy. They last a moment then they leave me with a profound sense of purpose and serenity. I live for those moments. I live for that place where I am just me.

Stories of my life - The privilege of amnesia- part 6/6

1. 5. The privilege of amnesia 5/5:

I had this written as the privilege of history, but then I thought amnesia was more snarky and petty, and I am in a petty mood, so let’s go.

This specific privilege is key and one of the most important, for it may be the one to give us a way out of system we currently live in. It’s the privilege of amnesia from one’s own history.

Two years ago, I brought my sons to the “musée Grévin”, which is the French equivalent of Madame Tussauds, the wax museum. The “musée Grévin” has a section focused on French history. Once there, I spotted the sculpture of a slave breaking free of his chains. Below the sculpture, was written: « abolition de l’esclavage, la France patrie des droits de l’Homme. », meaning that the sculpture was celebrating the fact France abolished slavery, and they were the country of Human Rights. Huh ! I looked around, and that was it. Yay, we abolished slavery. And that was it. Nothing about the history of slavery, nothing about colonization, which should be part of this narrative, right? Did the abolition occur in a vacuum? There was nothing about why there was slavery in the first place, nothing about why it had to be abolished. And that, my friends, is how global history has been erasing white people’s less than stellar history for decades. 

This is a reflection of white people’s ability to refuse to critically examine their past and its overall contribution to the world’s somber story. In history books, in the media, everywhere, we celebrate Western history, western great victories, progresses, advances, discoveries, heroes. It’s not a bad thing.

It’s however problematic because it completely obscures other perspectives from that history, the history white people share with other groups, other cultures.

My children history books completely gloss over the story of slavery and colonization. White people are never painted as the perpetrators so many massacres in the world. I have friends in the UK, who are just this past week, discovering the history of the British empire for example. Imagine that ! A country that has a queen as a head of state, a monarchy for Godsake ! The queen of England currently owns the biggest diamond in the world, which originates from South Africa. They don’t have diamonds in England, so how did she get it? The British monarchy is an institution that has built its power on the back of generations of millions of black and brown people. And we all know about France, its colonies, and the current farce they call the “Francophonie”, right ? I know about this history, because I come from a country that is both part of the Commonwealth and of the “Francophonie”. If you don’t know about that history, well…amnesia.

So overtime, white people have carefully created a narrative, where they are the dominating force, where their culture is above all other cultures and we all live by that ideology.

Why is it problematic ? We have all seen and heard those white people, all over Europe, North America, telling us black and brown people to go back to where we come from. They are shouting through their roofs at immigrants, to go back to their countries, wherever they are, while conveniently forgetting that the reason why they can even get on that roof is because some immigrant broke their back building it.

Sometimes, those people also tell us “why don’t you get over it, that history occurred so long ago!”

Now, if history books had presented the immigrants, the black and brown perspectives of the world events, if white people were taught from the very beginning the multidimensional layers of history, instead of that monochrome picture that is painted in history books and in the media, I truly believe we would have had more empathy and a better understanding of the multiple crisis that are now plaguing white societies, including immigration. Today, we live in multicultural societies, while teaching one-dimensional history. Make that make sense, please !

World events don’t occur in a vacuum, actions have repercussions ! The West has not produced its wealth out of thin air. Ambalavaner Sivanandan, director of the Institute of Race Relations, who died in 2018, once famously coined the sentence: “We are here, because you were there.” Yes, it’s was a while ago. But you where there. And you are still reaping the benefits from the time you were there, and we are still suffering the consequences of it. So…here we are. 

Still, I am hopeful ! I am hopeful because I see you, my white friend, waking up…I hope you will wake up completely, and recover from your amnesia. Because all those issues you think you have today because of me, because of black and brown people, only you can resolve them. For us all to prosper and thrive, all you need to do is remember. Education is the key, use it.