‘Kina’ tells stories of migration and return

Archives of migration, displacement, ritual and return find expression in ‘Kina – A Kinaesthetic Choreopoem for Otherwise Grandchildren’.

Emanating from the ‘Kraal of Origins’ at The Project Room recently, the Owela Live Arts Trust piece came alive in the sound of drums, the clang of hoes and in the grounding sand.

Based on a rousing, poetic piece by curator Nashilongweshipwe Mushaandja, ‘Kina’ is rooted in a series of encounters that centre the descendants of people on the periphery. They are the changed, often alienated mbwiti and ‘otherwise’ migrant workers and their progeny – people who settled far from home or who left, alone, to work in diamond mines or on the railways and who were altered and/or othered upon their return.

Workshopped and entrancingly performed by Justina Andreas, Bupe Chiwala, Fellipus Negodhi, Kuzajatu X Maamberua, Julia Hango and Tuli Mekondjo, ‘Kina’ is words in motion.

Embodying the realities, negotiations and traumas of forced and economic migration, primarily during Namibia’s apartheid and German colonial eras, ‘Kina’s’ devised and improvised choreography alternates between swift and slow acts of working, walking, dancing, packing, quivering, merging, stillness and covering in sand.

With scenography inspired by Tuli Mekondjo’s ritualistic shrines and cultural dolls, the artist whistles and whips a horse tail in an invocation of the ancestors, who she and Hango embody. Through this, as well as the smell of burning elephant dung, the music of Tschuku Tschuku, the clang of hoes and the beating drum, ‘Kina’ creates an atmosphere of ceremony, rite and rekindling and must be praised for its soundscape.

Trans-temporal and conjuring visions of arrival and departure in its fusion of African jazz, train sounds, migrant worker’s song, silence, breath, mbira and drums, the sound of ‘Kina’ is intricate and evocative. The music is in memory of Raymond ‘Sir Ray’ Mupfumira who plays the mbira that sounds throughout the piece.

The effect is transcendental, and the call is to return.

“Both of my grandfathers were migrant labourers. My maternal grandfather worked at Oranjemund and my paternal grandfather worked at the railway station which is why I remain with themes of migration, migrant labour and Okaholo,” says Mushaandja.

““Otherwise Grandchildren’ are us who are otherwise. Us, that are not quite this or that. Us, with precarious identities and identity crises. The in-between, the liminal identity, the post-colonial, the bornfrees, the mbwitis, the African migrants, the foreigners, what have you. We are the children, the offspring, the result of migration,” Mushaandja says.

“We never fit in anywhere. So that’s something that’s imprinted in my DNA, in my memory, in my lived experience. It’s still a very painful history that affects us in different ways.”

Though these feelings and realities of migration, isolation, rejection and othering linger, ‘Kina’ also speaks of the way back. It suggests hope and the possibility of returning to the source.

“Returning to the source is basically a return home, to the roots, to the ground and to the belly of the earth. Despite all the chaos, the identity crises and all the difficulty in negotiating what the ‘otherwise’ person is,” says Mushaandja.

“‘Otherwise’ is not just about being other,” he says.

“It’s also about the possibility of returning, of rebirth and of rising.”

– martha@namibian.com.na; Martha Mukaiwa on Twitter and Instagram; marthamukaiwa.com

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