Dear Daddy,
Dr. Roi Ankhara Kwabena passed on January 10th, 2008.
Dr. Roi Ankhkara Kwabena was born in the Caribbean island of Trinidad. He was a cultural anthropologist who has worked with all age ranges in Europe, Africa, Latin-America and the Caribbean for over thirty years. His positive cultural advocacy has ensured his suitability for a variety of specialist projects addressing wide ranging issues such as functional and Cultural literacy, therapeutic harvesting of Memories by elders and young people (including cross generational dialogue) Anti-Racism, Community Cohesion, Social Inclusion, Cultural Diversity , redefining the Heritages of Indigenous peoples plus confidence building for prisoners, excluded and traumatized students, Refugees, etc. Dr. Kwabena was renown for using critical analysis to examine the historical roots of racism and to assess the direct relevance this has on our lives today.
He was the 6th Poet Laureate of Birmingham, U.K. and appointed Writer in Residence at the Trinidad Public Library.
I never personally met Roi. Well, that is incorrect to say. Let me say that I never met Roi eye to eye, but the way he embraced my work was very personal. I met Roi via Lennox Raphael, another writer who happens to also come from Trinidad. Lennox has written for Roi's Journal Dialogue and had spoken to Roi about me and my work. Roi was excited and invited me to submit my work which he accepted without hesitation.
He loved what I had written about you, he loved the pictures I had of you. When I told him we should write a piece on Amiri Baraka, something to thank him for his service to Us, as a People, he jumped right on it and ordered, "Ok, you do it." I hesitated for a split second then smiled. He was right. I was the person to write it.
I emailed Roi before my departure to London. I anticipated meeting up with all the wonderful folk over there who were committed to doing what Marie Brown does so well in New York City. I had a few numbers and it was in this way I had come to hook up with Kadija from Sable. Roi returned my email after some time, explaining that he had been hospitalized--thus the delay, but yes, he would love to meet up with me.
However, I still had not heard from Roi during and after my London trip. I thought he was perhaps busy and that it was not quite yet our time to meet.
I loved what Roi was in the process of doing. He had many blogs, http://roikwapoetry.blogspot.com/ is just one of them. I liked that he promoted the celebration of our ancestors: Those that braved life before us and from whose lives we could learn from. I did not know that perhaps his affiliation with this concept could have been heightened, by some extent, to a battle with a fatal illness.
The other day I met up with a friend of mine. She mentioned that a neighbor of hers was dying and that she thought it would be a privilege for her children to witness such a vital part of the life cycle. It made me think of another friend of mine, someone closer to me than anyone else could be, who chose to have her lover/bestfriend pass on from inside the home they shared together. Although it was a tough experience, she seemed satisfied that she had allowed this part of life, a part that many of us don't like, into her home and confronted it, no matter the emotional wear and tear it had caused her. She is stronger from it, no doubt, and I suppose it is one of those experiences which in Trinidad they say, "If it don't kill it fatten."
I think about you in all of this. Not only because Roi really loved the story I had written about you, but because of your death. I remember vividly hugging you and knowing it would be the last time I hugged you. I made that decision right then and there. It was not easy visiting you in a home. The smell: of shit and that stale stench of abandonment. It was not fun for me to see all these broken faces that reflected the state of hearts within, as they looked hopefully at the elevator doors, only to break a bit more when they realized that I was not coming to visit them. They were abandoned in that way you had hoped to be, so that your bitterness would give you the courage to do what you wanted to do--move on.
There are a few things I wished I had asked you. Like, why did you want to become a musician? Or was it even a choice? I suppose I should know better than anyone else. And why New York? Why the U.S. as your new home? And why the bitterness towards Trinidad? I'll never forget the fact that you had never gone home in all the years I had known you--why the exile?
Yesterday I smiled at the fact that I lived a life in which I climbed stairs instead of hillsides. I wonder how much of my life, or yours for that matter, has to do with choice, circumstance, the random?
I had another conversation about death the other day in which it was mentioned that death was anything but life. That was in response to my insistence that death is part of the life cycle. But everything comes back again--albeit in another form. The molecules on my skin, the air we breathe, have at some point, been in a completely different form. We are in the end, all part of each other.
Yes, the person responded, that is true, but we'll never be here again, as us.
And that is true as well. The enigma. I guess the joke of it all is that perhaps we'll all fare much better in this death thing: it's the living that seems to throw us, it's the living that demands the decisions to be made that sometimes throw not only ourselves but those around us for a spin. It takes fucking courage to live a life full of LIFE.
And there are vasts moments of beauty which punctuates it as well, seasoned with successes and foiled by loss. It is true that death is the absence of life so in that sense, one's life should be filled with the dynamism of movement, breath and conscious choices.
I think about your last days. I think about the card I received only after your death--the one you had sent to me when I was in Hawaii that was returned to you and how, months later, I would receive it in an envelope posted from Brooklyn with your death certificate. To a wonderful Daughter it read...written in handwriting of your social worker because you had been unable to write.
I could feel as though I abandoned you. But I don't because we two had an understanding. Although I won't ever really know the answer to those questions I mentioned previously I think I know why you chose death: You were tired and broken. You were angry that the dreams you left Trinidad with had atrophied and that your family who were once ruled by your capriciousness had chosen "no more." We were your last vestige of power.
Roi didn't seem to have chosen death. He had so much to offer. I think what he loved about what I had written about you is that he, like so many others, could identify with you. Who could not? We all represent the possibilities of the other.
Rest in Peace Roi.
the lab
Dr. Roi Ankhkara Kwabena was born in the Caribbean island of Trinidad. He was a cultural anthropologist who has worked with all age ranges in Europe, Africa, Latin-America and the Caribbean for over thirty years. His positive cultural advocacy has ensured his suitability for a variety of specialist projects addressing wide ranging issues such as functional and Cultural literacy, therapeutic harvesting of Memories by elders and young people (including cross generational dialogue) Anti-Racism, Community Cohesion, Social Inclusion, Cultural Diversity , redefining the Heritages of Indigenous peoples plus confidence building for prisoners, excluded and traumatized students, Refugees, etc. Dr. Kwabena was renown for using critical analysis to examine the historical roots of racism and to assess the direct relevance this has on our lives today.
He was the 6th Poet Laureate of Birmingham, U.K. and appointed Writer in Residence at the Trinidad Public Library.
I never personally met Roi. Well, that is incorrect to say. Let me say that I never met Roi eye to eye, but the way he embraced my work was very personal. I met Roi via Lennox Raphael, another writer who happens to also come from Trinidad. Lennox has written for Roi's Journal Dialogue and had spoken to Roi about me and my work. Roi was excited and invited me to submit my work which he accepted without hesitation.
He loved what I had written about you, he loved the pictures I had of you. When I told him we should write a piece on Amiri Baraka, something to thank him for his service to Us, as a People, he jumped right on it and ordered, "Ok, you do it." I hesitated for a split second then smiled. He was right. I was the person to write it.
I emailed Roi before my departure to London. I anticipated meeting up with all the wonderful folk over there who were committed to doing what Marie Brown does so well in New York City. I had a few numbers and it was in this way I had come to hook up with Kadija from Sable. Roi returned my email after some time, explaining that he had been hospitalized--thus the delay, but yes, he would love to meet up with me.
However, I still had not heard from Roi during and after my London trip. I thought he was perhaps busy and that it was not quite yet our time to meet.
I loved what Roi was in the process of doing. He had many blogs, http://roikwapoetry.blogspot.com/ is just one of them. I liked that he promoted the celebration of our ancestors: Those that braved life before us and from whose lives we could learn from. I did not know that perhaps his affiliation with this concept could have been heightened, by some extent, to a battle with a fatal illness.
The other day I met up with a friend of mine. She mentioned that a neighbor of hers was dying and that she thought it would be a privilege for her children to witness such a vital part of the life cycle. It made me think of another friend of mine, someone closer to me than anyone else could be, who chose to have her lover/bestfriend pass on from inside the home they shared together. Although it was a tough experience, she seemed satisfied that she had allowed this part of life, a part that many of us don't like, into her home and confronted it, no matter the emotional wear and tear it had caused her. She is stronger from it, no doubt, and I suppose it is one of those experiences which in Trinidad they say, "If it don't kill it fatten."
I think about you in all of this. Not only because Roi really loved the story I had written about you, but because of your death. I remember vividly hugging you and knowing it would be the last time I hugged you. I made that decision right then and there. It was not easy visiting you in a home. The smell: of shit and that stale stench of abandonment. It was not fun for me to see all these broken faces that reflected the state of hearts within, as they looked hopefully at the elevator doors, only to break a bit more when they realized that I was not coming to visit them. They were abandoned in that way you had hoped to be, so that your bitterness would give you the courage to do what you wanted to do--move on.
There are a few things I wished I had asked you. Like, why did you want to become a musician? Or was it even a choice? I suppose I should know better than anyone else. And why New York? Why the U.S. as your new home? And why the bitterness towards Trinidad? I'll never forget the fact that you had never gone home in all the years I had known you--why the exile?
Yesterday I smiled at the fact that I lived a life in which I climbed stairs instead of hillsides. I wonder how much of my life, or yours for that matter, has to do with choice, circumstance, the random?
I had another conversation about death the other day in which it was mentioned that death was anything but life. That was in response to my insistence that death is part of the life cycle. But everything comes back again--albeit in another form. The molecules on my skin, the air we breathe, have at some point, been in a completely different form. We are in the end, all part of each other.
Yes, the person responded, that is true, but we'll never be here again, as us.
And that is true as well. The enigma. I guess the joke of it all is that perhaps we'll all fare much better in this death thing: it's the living that seems to throw us, it's the living that demands the decisions to be made that sometimes throw not only ourselves but those around us for a spin. It takes fucking courage to live a life full of LIFE.
And there are vasts moments of beauty which punctuates it as well, seasoned with successes and foiled by loss. It is true that death is the absence of life so in that sense, one's life should be filled with the dynamism of movement, breath and conscious choices.
I think about your last days. I think about the card I received only after your death--the one you had sent to me when I was in Hawaii that was returned to you and how, months later, I would receive it in an envelope posted from Brooklyn with your death certificate. To a wonderful Daughter it read...written in handwriting of your social worker because you had been unable to write.
I could feel as though I abandoned you. But I don't because we two had an understanding. Although I won't ever really know the answer to those questions I mentioned previously I think I know why you chose death: You were tired and broken. You were angry that the dreams you left Trinidad with had atrophied and that your family who were once ruled by your capriciousness had chosen "no more." We were your last vestige of power.
Roi didn't seem to have chosen death. He had so much to offer. I think what he loved about what I had written about you is that he, like so many others, could identify with you. Who could not? We all represent the possibilities of the other.
Rest in Peace Roi.
the lab
Comments
But yes, I do think we fare better on the other side. Perhaps we come here to the earth plane when we need a little challenge and to get some grit under our fingernails.