In this series of blog posts from the researcher-artists working in the MIDEQ Hub we will begin introducing some concepts from traditions outwith those which are more normally associated with the discourse of migration studies or intercultural communication in the academic literature.
In this conversation between Bonayi Hubert Dabiré and Alison Phipps, we hear Dabiré describe the objects he has chosen to bring to this element of our work.
He describes these first of all in his mother language - ‘sa langue maternelle’ - Bambara
He then describes these in French, his working language.
He speaks of the ‘calabasse’ - the calabash – Fiè; and ‘le tissu’ - Fani
The calabash he describes as being used for the millet porridge - minikè-fin - made in the mornings and the thread and cloth as traditionally made and worn by women, but now often manufactured.
This first short reflection on our chosen objects of basic human needs already points to the ways in which the objects are linked intimately to the land and the environment, and what grows and is readily available. As migrations occur, and we begin to explore other objects, it becomes clear how national borders are traversed like a loom, and there are a great deal of borrowings and improvisations, sharing of techniques of making and drinking. Equally, there is a sense of an often fierce sense of home or belonging attaching to the cloths or vessels, as to language.
For more research and information on weaving traditions and their migrations within the Volta region of West Africa, please see this link.
A research video has been produced by the late Christopher Roy on the traditions of thread and weaving. In literature reviews which Alison has begun it has become clear that these traditions are picked up in some research undertaken by anthropologists from the global north, but that the rich oral and knowledge traditions which practice, embody and share the knowledges of these objects are both highly gendered and largely invisible to the northern and western attempts to understand them.
Calabasse - minikè-fin
I did not know
Of Bambara
Ta langue maternelle.
I had not knowingly heard it before.
We lean into the phone
Close
Breathing the languaged air.
You laugh your gift of the precious words
You learned from your mother
I am lost.
You are found.
There is a thread of air
Pulsing in tonalities
between us
There a current of stored
Energy in the phone
That records
The moment.
Your hands cup
The calabasse
As so often
So often
So many times
Before.
The calabasse
Is made three times
In your words
In my ears
In our laughing hands.
(Alison Phipps)knowledge
Objects provided by Bonayi Hubert Dabire.
