SOMI: Four African Women

Somi - Four African Women

VERSE 1

My skin is black

My forehead long

My hair is wooly too

And my back is strong

Strong enough to carry on

After genocide and all my family gone

What do they call me?

My name is Gatsinzi

 

VERSE 2

My skin is pink

It used to be black

My mirrors and my magazines

Made me cry

Discarded western bleaching creams

Eat away at my skin and self-esteem

What do they call me?

Beauty queen

SOMI: Ginger Me Slowly

Somi - Ginger Me Slowly

VERSE 1

Ginger me,
With pillow talk and pretty things, oh
Ginger me,
By candle light and long walks by the lagoon
Ginger me with intellect and wine
Ginger me Boy with kindness and cool

[CHORUS:]

(Yes oh)
Ginger me slowly
Yes oh
Ginger me slowly

VERSE 2

Ginger me
With poetry and roses in the afternoon
Ginger me
With trips to Monaco and to the Nile
Ginger me
With power and humility, oh
Ginger me boy
Ginger me with your love

[CHORUS:]

SOMI: Shine Your Eye

Somi - Shine Your Eye

When I close my eyes I remember the bright city heat pressing against the knuckles of my searching toes and squinting brow.

I remember kind strangers and brave adventure; the beauty and revelation of dirty drums found deep inside of me and the knowing that my heart’s hand had always rested its palm against their homesick skins.

I remember non-vegetarian pepper soups, month-long rainstorm lullabies, and sleepy traffic thick with hot metal bodies and impromptu window snacks. I sigh… stroking through a sea of dissonant horns and agile bodies that careen between cars hurling both barter and abuse.

Unassuming streetside glamour – heavy hipped women in red and gold; a body of water full of reeds and houses on sticks expands under a concrete stretch to Victoria Island. I remember being told to “pronounce yoruba with my mouth wide open” and to shine my eye.

The fake tears of Nollywood flicks; the fierce intellect and ambition that spat in the face of stereotype; the sighting of East African backsides that saw me too. I remember hungry boys pouncing on car windows and I remember looking away…