WAAA - We Are All Africans

"To be African is always be expansive in your mind and your heart and your spirit not to be limited. Also really just to be confident knowing that you really embody this deepest most profound love that exists. Because if you look at the history of how we've been oppressed and how we continue to be oppressed. The compassion that we're able to show to the oppressor is unbelievable. It's magic, pure magic."

 "La meilleure façon de me définir pour moi, c'est de dire que je suis une marginale ou de dire que je suis en dehors, que je suis à côté. Je ne suis pas dedans et ce n'est pas du tout inconfortable pour moi. Je suis ma zone de confort, c'est d'être dans à la marge et à côté et pas au centre donc. Je me souviens qu'il y avait quelqu'un qui disait que  je disais disait toujours que mes parents sont du Mali, de la Guinée, du Sénégal et que j'ai grandi en Côte d'Ivoire et que je disais que je suis 100 % de tout, 100 % du Mali, 100 % de Guinée, 100 % du Sénégal, 100 % de Côte d'Ivoire. C'est exactement ça. Je suis 100 % africaine, 100 % européenne, 100 % une femme , 100 % pas sûre d'être une femme 100 % pas sûre d'être si européenne que ça. Je suis 100 %, je suis une personne complète.”

“What it means for me to be Black and queer and trans or non-binary or all of these names make me legible I suppose in a western framework of gender and sexuality. But increasingly the longer that I'm here and the deeper I ask myself further and more ancestral questions about identity and sexuality and desire and kinship, the more those categories dissolve. But I cannot ignore the political reality of needing to be visible and legible to my own community (…) I know that there were poets and artists and queer people and trans people in my life that made me feel possible, because they identified themselves and lived in public ways and published obviously pursuant to all kinds of issues of safety and openness and visibility and representation. I really want to be the kind of person that makes other people feel possible. That makes other divine, beautiful, complicated, gorgeous queer young Black babies feel like they have, and can, and must carve their own space and take up their own space in the world, on the continent, in the country everywhere.”

“I had to make a shift from saying, like, oh, I am from Sierra Leone because literally people just didn't know where it was. They had no idea. And there is only so much of like a geography lesson I want to do in an introduction, like, all right, let's simplify this. I am African. So, I remember making this shift that first year in the United States where I was no longer Sierra Leonean first. I was African first. And I was black first. You know that these two identities really shaped my experience in a big way, and it was stark and difficult to manage.”

" Je me sens aussi africain dans mes choix économiques quand je parviens à prendre une décision pour moi même, pour un groupe, de consommer quelque chose ou d'acheter quelque chose qui est africain. C'est une action économique, évidemment, mais qui est portée par une conviction politique."

"I just think it was I really think that the path that I was taking, my ancestors were not too pleased. And it was just like, yeah, you need to come back over here because we have to get you together because you're falling off of your path. It was like a summoning home."

"Nous proposons de ne plus demander aux gens d’où ils viennent mais de qui ils viennent. Parce que je pense qu’il y a un délire mondial autour de la géographie. Le projet de l’humain c’est justement de se détacher de la géographie. L’être humain s’adapte dans toutes les géographies. Ce n’est pas la géographie qui est importante, c’est l’humain."

This episode is a candid chronicle on finding oneself, breaking free from generational curse and religion.

"I never felt comfortable. I couldn't recognize myself. And I guess maybe there's more to being companies or maybe there's more to being me because I never feel quite right. Even at church, they were preaching stuff and I was like "ha I don't know. That doesn't make sense". And I've always been curious. I've always been outspoken. So when I would ask a question, people would tell me, no, you just have to believe or that's just the way it is. And for me, that just wasn't enough. I'm like, OK, I guess I just have to go and try to find some answers and trying to look for things because what I see now is too small, too restrictive. I feel like I don't fit in. So maybe if I go and I find something that is more like me. I didn't know where I wanted to go. I just knew that where I was wasn't that for me. So the first thing I did is that I left the church."

Dans cet épisode, Emna nous raconte son cheminement spirituel des montagnes de Tunisie en passant par la Belgique, l’Éthiopie, le Niger, le Burkina Faso et le Sénégal ou elle a posé son âme pour le moment.

"Being Nigerian, being Igbo, we are proud. If we have dirty laundry, we don't air it. For so many years, it was like my mother died and because I am so resilient, I was able to just transition so smoothly. I moved into this new home immediately with my birth mom's brother and his wife. But they were like, no, we are your parents now. You call us mom and dad. It wasn't until years later that people in the community realized, wow, we didn't even know that you weren't her biological parents. Because everything was just so taboo coming from being born to parents unwed. You just don't talk about it being born to someone who was a Catholic priest. That's just sheer taboo. It's blasphemy."