Anna Konuche

“They came in droves, abandoning the tatters that were our country. We did not think about mending the tatters, all we thought was: Leave, abandon, flee, run—anything. Escape.”
― NoViolet Bulawayo, We Need New Names

“When things fall apart, the children of the land scurry and scatter like birds escaping a burning sky. They flee their own wretched land so their hunger may be pacified in foreign lands, their tears wiped away in strange lands, the wounds of their despair bandaged in faraway lands, their blistered prayers muttered in the darkness of queer lands. Look at the children of the land leaving in droves, leaving their own land with bleeding wounds on their bodies and shock on their faces and blood in their hearts and hunger in their stomachs and grief in their footsteps. Leaving their mothers and fathers and children behind, leaving their umbilical cords underneath the soil, leaving the bones of their ancestors in the earth, leaving everything that makes them who and what they are, leaving because it is no longer possible to stay. They will never be the same again because you just cannot be the same once you leave behind who and what you are, you just cannot be the same. Look at them leaving in droves despite knowing they will be welcomed with restraint in those strange lands because they do not belong, knowing they will have to sit on one buttock because they must not sit comfortably lest they be asked to rise and leave, knowing they will speak in dampened whispers because”
― NoViolet Bulawayo, We Need New Names

“guess it was supposed to be this crazy new dance, daggering is the name of it. I thought it strange and wrong, but after a while I found myself clapping because that’s what everyone was doing. When a new, quieter song came on, Tony turned me around and”
― NoViolet Bulawayo, We Need New Names

“The idea of land ‘ownership’ as such was an alien one. A white farmer once told me of his grandfather going to see a local chief about buying some land. ‘Buy land?’ said the chief. ‘You must be crazy, you don’t buy the wind or the water or the trees.”
― Peter Godwin, When A Crocodile Eats the Sun