'Twende Kilioni'
I have been thinking a lot about childhood in the past few years, mainly prompted by immense grief, a rupture, a shattering, the loss of a father, but within that grief, I tend to spend time tending to images "contained" in German archives of a place, a landscape, I am a ancestrally tethered to.
Along with that comes fractals of thoughts, like a coil of hair, tucked into three parts, mathematics, african hair braiding is pure mathematics, an encoded system of knowledge, transmuted, Black haircare is potent technology.
Braiding to weave a story through colonial ethnographic exercises, i noted that these particular style is known to us since childhood, as it is a many requirement in trusted uniformity for its modest aesthetic as a suitable hairstyle for school girls. The style of braiding therefor is known as 'Twende kilioni'.
in Kiswahili it means "going to the wake"
is it then happenstance, that the very surveillance of intimate grooming moments between kin, joys of collective grooming interrupted, captured by the colonial aperture, caught in the act, we are therefore braiding for the wake towards a collective social death under German imperial might.
Just an idea, a thought, by the way, if they are smiling in the photographs, don't believe it, it's veiling the violence
Btw the style is a simple straight back cornrows, can be as many as 8 rows to 18 rows, just plain going down the crown of the head, with either braiding style, kubinjua or not.
anyhow, I tried recruiting my friend Manka to braid my hair at the site of the Berlin Conference here in berlin, as somesort of speculative retributive experiment , or maybe playing with time, embodied knowing, reclamation of something not entirely sure what. But we did sit down, on the ground, in two locations at Wilhelmstrabe 77, and Manka braided my hair into straight backs. Thing is, we were documenting, but our beloved camera person fucked up the entire thing. I laugh about it now, but i was hella furious then
