KEEPER OF SECRETS

December 2, 2013

“Water ebbs and flows. 

We must remember our body is mostly water. 

We ebb and flow too.

Our emotions are in constant movement,

We feel.

As creative souls, when we reach a lull, I think of it as seeds,

the dormant period before new growth.”

So begins a series of perfect moments with Dr. Karen M Wilson-Ama Echefu, Fulbright Research alumni, Professor at Calabar University’s Faculty of Arts, and extraordinary jazz vocalist.

She sings in the parlour of her modest home, scaling heights and depths, evoking my tears; giving voice to poet Gloria Anzaldua.

El camino de la mestiza I The Mestiza Way

“Caught between the sudden contraction, the breath

sucked in and the endless space, the brown woman stands

still, looks at the sky. She decides to go down, digging her

way along the roots of trees. Sifting through the bones, she

shakes them to see if there is any marrow in them. Then,

touching the dirt to her forehead, to her tongue, she takes a

few bones, leaves the rest in their burial place.”

…and Karen’s addition:

“Tell her she’s beautiful”

To be one in an audience of two is such a privilege and joy.

It’s by happenstance that this rare opportunity presents. I stop in on Ivor to wish him well on his three-month sojourn back to heart and home (and to collect pics from our visit with Hindu). He has a parcel for his neighbour, Karen, and thinks we should meet.

Gonna miss that guy, keeper of secrets, living life in a way few will ever know; mining the mysticism of a dimming African culture that thrives in the back alleys of present day Havana. Just as the legacy of French-Canadian foremothers and fathers instils tradition of tongue on generations of Quebecois, Havana’s Efik descendants retain lives and styles ebbing and flowing, transforming with time in the motherland. Havana’s Ekpe High Priest dons white; symbolic perhaps of the purity of unblemished belief. http://www.afrocubaweb.com/ivormiller/ivormiller.htm