Malawi!

In the office every day there are emails and pone calls and time and energy being spent on the GREAT MALAWI INTERPLAY Adventure. That means that every day we are in the spirit of Africa. For me this is a return to Africa. In 1978 I traveled to Sierra Leone with a group from the States to participate in Operation Crossroads Africa. In the little village of Taiama I encountered traditional African arts, Muslim prayer, Christian church and the coming out ceremony of village girls. The masked Bundu Spirit prevailed in raffia and dance as the village took flight in dance. I was technically there to help build a cultural history museum protecting the traditional ways. Even then I could feel African practices and western technologies and values colliding. But what I took away was so much more.

I am pretty sure that African ancestry took root in me. So when I saw Masankho come through door into my class at Pacific School of Religion in the nineties, both he and I felt a strange recognition. Grace! My Brother!

In truth that journey to Sierra Leone troubled my Euro-American waters in the deepest way. I was depth charged, depth changed. As much as by the African Americans who were my travel companions newly sprung from the black power movement in the US as by Africa itself. It took me until early 2000 to begin to reconcile the difficulties I inherited in that first trip.

To be returning to Africa in partnership with Masankho, to be going back with much more integration and practice around my racial, sexual and the spiritual identity in InterPlay WILL CHANGE EVERYTHING ONCE AGAIN. Africa in some way is home, mother, and like the goddess, a forgotten Mother at that. I look forward to kissing her feel with my InterPlay community.

More to follow... Ashe Cynthia