Water the ancient tech(know)logy has forever been a part of my life.
Created and birthed from water, made of water, I cannot live without wata.
Under an African sky I was born Pisces, Cancer rising, Scorpio Moon. Under a yt western sky I was born Aries, Leo rising, Sagittarius moon.
When I was born my mother told me I had wata in my lungs. So I spent the first few days of my life in an incubator, hooked up to machines, making sure that I knew how to breathe.
Making sure that I knew I was all human and not part fish, except I was both.
This was my first initiation as a child of Mami Wata.
My mother, though she did not know it in her womb, offered me up to Mami wata in return for my safety as I journeyed through this life. A stranger told my mother when she was pregnant with me, and angel perhaps, more like a messenger of Mami Wata’s.
I was born to Rebecca Lou (Louise), born in 1952 in teeny tiny dusty ass Lexington, Tennessee.
The 2nd youngest of 4, my mother is deathly afraid of water. She cannot swim and the simple act of sitting in the shallow end was a major feat and a testament of her will.
She never told me why she was so afraid of wata. I think it was one part ancestral and 1 part traumatic story that she was too embarrassed to tell.
It's a funny, strange thing how the world constructed by the west can make strangers even of your own children, but I digress.
Becky Lou made sure that her babies were going to know how to swim. She was very proud that our first swimming lessons were before we could even walk.
I remember being a guppy, and a minnow, and finally a dolphin as my swimming skills increased, but really, I was Mami Wata’s child.
There’s one particular story around me in the wata that still makes me beam with pride till this day.
I use to spend my summers as a child in Birmingham, Alabama with my paternal grandmother. The age gap between my father and his youngest brother is 20+ years. So he was a preteen and like an older brother to my toddlerhood. And in the tradition of African folx across the diaspora some of my caretaking fell to him.
Summer’s in birmingham are no joke, there is a humidity and a thickness to the air as our enslaved ancestors swirl during the summer months. The pool was always a part of my summer experience, something that my grandmother, father, and uncles did not have access to growing up during civil rights. The nickname (bombing)ham still rings true if you listen closely enough.
It was pool day, my uncle turns around to take off his clothes and when he turns back, I am GONE. He jumps in the watas thinking I have drowned, but I had already swam to the other side of the pool and was pulling myself out of the water and out onto the too hot pavement, about to do it all over again!
My mother’s arrangement with Mami Wata alchemized in me.
I could breathe with the lungs of my ancestors, underwater, no longer resigned to a watery grave for the journey home. grave for the journey home.
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