I Am From Dusty Streets

Our friend Moses Masitha spoke at NWLife Church yesterday. As he began his message, he talked about the importance of our stories. He said, “When you ask where someone is from, to simply answer ‘Renton’ or ‘Kent’ does not adequately answer the question. We are a collection of stories. I am not just from South Africa, but I am a collection of experiences and stories.”

He went on to say, “Our stories, brought together, is community. In the grander scheme of HIS story, all our stories matter.”

Moses then shared a poem he wrote to describe his experiences—his story…

I am from dusty streets and football from sunrise to sunset

I am from stories told by the fireside on blistery winter nights

I am from separation and loss of belonging

I am from the unspoken shame of beloved half-siblings

I am from abundance and laughter

I am from the disappearance of Christmas gifts and unacknowledged birthdays

I am from a place where we share beds with a sea of cousins

I am from a place where playing house means liberties taken by playful cousins

I am from the terror when 2pm strikes and father has to go to work

I am from the shame of the uniform he wears – a respected pariah in his community

I am from the fear I see in mother’s eyes when the clock strikes 10pm and the man in uniform comes home

I am from where we switch off the television set, scurry to bed and feign sleep

I am from bruises, beer at football matches, and laughter when the pain fades into distant memory – only to come back tomorrow again

I am from a place where we are followed every where in convenience stores

I am from a place where we don’t walk certain streets at night

I am from a place where I am a minority during school hours and labeled a coconut after school

I am from a place where we are politically free – yet labor in economic poverty

I am from a place where neighbors share meals and my friends is my father too

I am from a place where the police used to kill their own people

I am from a place where trust used to exist

I am from a place where we hear teachers are sleeping with our classmates and drink beer with our police officer fathers in the heart of night

I am from a place where people of my race are “monkeys” with “heads the color of wood”

I am from a place where my language and culture are remnants of regressive tribal legacies

I am from a place where our status as the first black family to live in leafy suburbs covers the reality of our going to bed on empty stomachs

I am from a place where there are books, books all around us, many unread, some stolen from the library because I did not qualify for a library card in my all-white neighborhood

I am from infidelities, broken promises and hiding behind social status

I am from sexual perversion – lewd magazines neatly tucked under brother’s bed

I am from fractured communities, educated hope, and faithful friends

I am a collection of dreams, a new future

I am from a place of angry students

I am from a place of excluded students

I am from a place where peers drove cars our fathers could only dream of

I am from a place where racial wars stirred us daily

I am from a place that told us we don’t belong here when we arrived at university

I am from a place where Jesus stepped in

I am from a place where different races sat side-by-side talking past each other

I am from a place where we co-exist in compartments

I am from a place where racism, reconciliation, deep brokenness and respect live

I am from a place where young men occupy all streets rolling a blunt bemoaning their hopelessness

I am from a place of fatherless homes, marriage-less families and teenage pregnancies

I am from a place of child-headed households

I am from a place where HIV & AIDS have devastated our hopes

I am from a place of academic failure, then success

I am from a place where heroes come from dusty grounds

I am from a place of song and laughter in the face of brokenness

I am from a place of ever-present death

I am from a place where children of farm workers rise to the highest political position in the land

I am from a place where God lives, because God is.