Chapter 05 of 07 · Belonging
Connection to Land
Berlin, Brandenburg, and the lands we carry
Memory of homelands held alongside the rivers, forests, and pavements of our new geographies. Land holds memory. It teaches patience, care, and renewal. For many queer migrants and refugees, connection to land can mean remembering home, cultivating new roots, or finding moments of belonging in unfamiliar places. These photographs explore the relationship between people, soil, seasons, labour, and hope.
The soil remembers what the paperwork forgets.
Not all toil is pain. Some of it is rhythm, memory, ritual.
Ewe ndugu yangu, amka kumekucha Chukua jembe na shoka Twende…
She walks in gumboots like royalty through dew. Napier and grass part for her so does the wind.
We have tilled the soil of memory, We have planted laughter, rage, sweetness, the sharp things and the soft things.
ALKEBULAN: Ode to the Motherland Alkebulan, mother of our bones, you cradle sunlight in your valleys, whistle resilience through your rivers. You echo back in the drumbeats, the gourd’s hollow thump carrying our cries. Your name was stolen but never silenced, carved into cheekbones, cupped in cowrie hands. I sing you in broken tongues, multilingual, fragmented, yet whole. You rise in the scent of jollof, pilau, injera, the tangle into our braids, our prayers, our grief, our laughter. You are every beat skipped in exile. When I say ‘home,’ it is your shadow I mean. You are root, rupture, and resurrection.
Damu na ardhi vimefungwa. Kila mbegu hubeba kumbukumbu, kila mzizi hunywa historia. Ardhi iliyo chini yetu hukumbuka majina waliyojaribu kufuta. Blood and land are bound. Every seed carries memory, every root drinks history. The ground beneath us remembers names they tried to erase.