an essay once entitled, “hope keeps and collects me.”
I will never think this small again.
hello. It is a Wednesday in March. I have emerged from moving, graduating from The University Chicago, then slamming face-first into the comatose resting that working like this requires of me. I have for you some reflections on the end of a three-month campaign to feed my family, the Limba Tribe of Sierra Leone.
First, the big one.
We bought the tractor bitch!! I’ve been waiting to put this piece out until I had shipment notification and this hoe is getting in a cargo box on Friday I could scream. I’ve wept multiple times. Oh Lord, the peace I feel. Thank you, God. Thank you God!!! And (as I am always in the habit of publicly thanking my teachers), thank you to my ancestors that have gone behind and before me. Thank you for counseling me and encouraging me and mobilizing on my behalf. I am so glad I didn’t die as a teenager like I wanted to. Thank you to my father who organized the infrastructure of moving a massive piece of equipment across an ocean and through customs safely.
Thank you to the past me, the self that existed in October 2022 when my dad called me and asked for $50,000. Because that’s really how this happened. I was sitting in my car, dreading going inside my parent’s in-between house (we were housing insecure and staying with a lady from church), eating my emotional support fries from In-N-Out thinking about how much sobriety sucks and how bad I wanna go back to the club, and that man called me on some casual shit and was like “I really need a tractor. Can you get me one.” As if I can just do any fuckin thing. Write a grant, he said. Like he was asking me to pick up milk on my way home. Once you go to college, African parents think you learned the ability to make money rain down from the heavens. Absurd. I said, “…I mean, maybe.”
I decided to test the waters with crowdsourcing. I was so desperately broke. I just left my very lucrative job as a dancer to help my family avoid complete and total homelessness, I had a degree to get and I needed six thousand dollars1. I had recently been inspired by a mutual of mine asking for help and receiving it in full. It warmed my heart. I decided I would make one video asking for aid with my degree so I could at least begin to get a “real job.”
And then I received $17,000. Seventeen thousand dollars from people sending me one, two, three dollars. I had no idea that you all liked me enough to care significantly about my well-being. I don’t have words to tell you how deep I felt that— seen and loved and cared for. I called my dad. I was like, “I… think I actually can get this money. You said $50,000?” And he said, “aaaaaaactually we need rice combination harvesters as well so… more like $100,000? That cool?” I’m like, oh yeah sure no problem. Easy fuckin peasy. Just like a nigga to keep you stressed for no reason.
Anyways. It was at that time I made my first “hey soooo telling poor people they shouldn’t have kids is literally eugenics” and that got… such interesting internet attention. I called him to complain at least twice in the same week. It was some “and another thing!!” ranting. Ooh that green-eyed goblin and her trash ass western imperialist takes. It’s one thing to get wild shit from unidentified ass internet hoes— I have a special anger reserved for people that have an audience predisposed to agree with their opinion being irresponsible and mal-informed. I was so mad. I remember calling my dad to complain. I said to him, “Daddy, everyone is telling me I don’t know what I’m talking about because I grew up poor in the United States. You grew up in the countries these people are talking about.”
Him: Yes.
Me: You grew up with no electricity, no running water—
Him: Not even shoes.
Me: Yes!! At any point in time were you like, “I wish I wasn’t alive?”
Him: Not until I came to America.
Me: Wow.
[We sit in silence for a moment]
Me: Do they realize how many people would die if they got the world they think they want?
Him: Not a clue. You know they don’t know what they’re doing.
I was gonna leave it alone. I really was!! I have this masochistic urge to make the internet as hostile to me as possible and I just. I wanted peace. I said all that to him and he was like, “…so you’re… not gonna write an essay?”
I said… well. maybe one essay.
Here we are three months, six podcast essays, and twenty-two videos later. One hundred and fifteen thousand, four hundred eighty three dollars and twenty one cents later. Abundance in full. Ordained, blissful steps toward sovereignty. This is the rest of my life. I did not realize just how much good I can do. I did I not realize how much hope I can sow. I am on my hands and knees, planting the world I wish to see. Sailing towards the horizon. A new world is coming like the dawn.
I expected this grand moment of triumph. When I was planning for this, preparing for this, I expected these moments where I felt the weight of my labor and was satisfied. I thought I would feel my success like the way my bag is full at the farmer’s market— heavy and bursting with the fruits of someone else’s thoughts, plannings, prayers and actions. I was so wrong. Success is not a feeling. Gratefulness is.
I posted the first fundraiser video on Instagram in December of 2022, unknowingly launching myself into Instagram virality. Two thousand to fifty thousand followers in a handful of weeks was… nuts. This whole ride has been so wild and we’re still just starting out. I wrote this sentence in caption: “This is the beginning of my life’s work.” Negro, from your mouth to God’s ears. At the time, I didn’t (and could not have) realized how true it was— and how foolish anticipating some great, big, i did it!! moment really is when there’s so much to be done. That’s what it felt like, realizing we hit the goal. Gratefulness for what’s been delivered to me and broader, clearer, steadier eyes on what comes next. I have taken my first step towards something marvelous and frightening: life of forward movement; a life spent in public; a life of active, living hope in the face of outright evils. This is arguably one of the most difficult paths I could choose for myself.
I just didn’t know that anger and hope bloom in me the same way. I am angry and I am hopeful and in this world, they cannot exist without one another. We do not have to trade ourselves and walk on like chickens to slaughter while the elite destroy tomorrow for today’s bread.
If grief is the grease that has kept me burning alive, anger was the match to start the fire. And hope— hope is the cool salve that burns just the same in its healing. Hope preserves me to become new and burn again.
Let me tell you about this conversation I had that changed my life.
Dinner with a capitalist in Amsterdam
On February 7th, 2023 I was walking back to my hotel in the middle of the night, wandering through Amsterdam off an edible I made at a workshop earlier that day.
I had flown to Amsterdam in the middle of writing my thesis (which at that point in time felt more like my last will and fucking testament) to look at, document, and purchase a tractor for my tribe. But because I will enjoy myself, I arranged an outing for myself in which I made edibles with Amsterdam’s famous legal weed (which, side note: that workshop was actually so informative on the illegal and legal legs of cannabis trade and import in the Netherlands, but that’s an entirely different essay). My partner for the workshop was called Oscar and he was from Mexico. He was such a easy person to work with that we grabbed dinner after the workshop and had the most heavenly Turkish food I have maybe ever experienced. I also had a quarter of a reasonably strong (allegedly) THC-laced brownie because I am a child and I literally cannot stop myself from eating a warm brownie, even if I had no business being high lmfao. We walked together to this Turkish restaurant, eat a phenomenal array of bread and vegetables, and proceed to have a conversation that will stick with me forever.
Oscar, I hope you see this one day. You asked me questions that really made me think about why I believe what I believe. You made me want sit and listen to you in full knowing I would never return to the ideas capitalism has you believe. Speaking to someone different than me after all these years studying more radical politics helped me realize just how badly I want this world that I speak of. You made me realize just how much my understandings of money and fair payment, of economic retribution and justice have changed as I bloom into adulthood. You made me certain that there is no real choice under capitalism when the choices are participate or endure warfare from the state. Most importantly, you really helped me understand why I do what I do. (side note: this is why I loved the strip club so much! You learn so much just from getting to talk to people I never would have otherwise, even if you never agree).
So we end up talking about identity, Oscar and I. That usually comes up when I told people what I’m in Amsterdam for (what do you mean you’re here to buy a tractor?) and I answer their questions from there. We’d discussed climate change and economic policy and the blockades on Cuba, on what veneration of elders looks like, on how many different kinds of ways we could (and should) compensate people for their labor. And we ended up at a conversation of the self with very familiar words: you have great ideas, I just don’t think they’re likely to happen. And I give a great, big, Negro sigh.
Oscar: It’s not that I don’t hear you. I do. The thing is, why do I have to care?
Me: What do you mean?
Oscar: Like, sure I can see that this system has terrible roots. Many bad things happen and people still suffer. But I didn’t do any of that. I didn’t make this up. I am just trying to survive and provide for my family. And if this system allows me to do that, why can’t I support it?
Me: Well, because I believe there are systems where you can support your family and it doesn’t have to come at anyone’s detriment.
Oscar: But I’ll go crazy trying to think of something like that. Like, you! You have all this responsibility for problems that you didn’t create—
Me: Yup.
Oscar: —and ones you can’t fix by yourself—
Me: That’s correct.
Oscar: How do you bring yourself to sleep at night?
Me: Oh, I don’t.
[We laugh. I dip my bread in oil.]
Oscar: You are a young person! You deserve peace.
Me: That’s the thing. I am young. So even if I did not care and I thought I couldn’t do anything and that everything was hopeless, I still would not sleep well. The problems that we have are here either way and I will live to inherit them.
[We talk about individual solutions. Why can’t you just be wealthy and use your money to fix problems? I say, “I plan to and that’s still not enough.” Oscar works for TikTok, hilariously. He agrees that I will be good and famous one day.]
Me: Just… really think about this with me. I don’t know that I care at this point about what I deserve. I know I deserve goodness and peace and stuff like that, but (1) so does everyone and (2) there are some hellbent on providing themselves endless abundance at the cost of another’s peace. Deserving is so slippery. So like, where do we go from there? What do we owe each other, you and me? And then past that, I was born to communities I really owe something to. I know not everyone feels that way, but I do. So few of us [Sierra Leoneans] make it to the world’s stage— there are so few of us in general. This world we live in tries to kill us all the time. How do I not bend the world’s stage to bless them? When they ushered me here and kept me like Moses on the river? I just… can’t focus small. I don’t think I can save thee world— I just think I can save my world. And I think I can encourage other people to do what they can with what’s in front of them. And I don’t actually need you to agree with me, because my winning only makes your life better! All I need you to do is stay out of my way. Right?Can you agree to that?
[He nods.]
Me: Would you really feel all that differently if you were me?
Oscar: If I was you? No. I’m me, so I won’t ever feel that way. But if I was you, I’m certain I would think the same thing.
On not really being human after all
Today (the day I am writing this) is March 20th. It’s the first day of spring. I went to the farmer’s market and spent like $20 on a pound of these outrageously lovely mushrooms— they’re orange and delicious and they only come when it rains like this. I miss the sun, but I too am in a season of drinking up the water. Abundance is everywhere.
This podcast is called Threadings because I often return to, meditate on, think and write and talk about what it is holding me together. The process of taking inventory of what binds me, what keeps me, and what collects me is fundamentally good for me. Review, study, and gratefulness of what’s got me allows me to survive this world. Up until this place in my life (my adult years), I have been focused on learning how to not die. So it’s… rather odd liking life. Not just loving it, not just being grateful… liking my life. I am no longer bound by a persistent, reluctant call to endurance. The will to live used to permeate me like a fever I just could not break. I was angry enough with whatever was keeping me alive to just… keep going. I am still angry. I am just balanced and soothed by the peace hope brings. I always get what I pray for. I know I will win; I won this round and I’ve won every day I stepped up to this plate.
I’m going to spoil the ending of this grand beginning for you: we buy the tractor. We build infrastructure for money making and keeping with principles laid out by Marcus Garvey and by the indigenous communities we came from. We invest on the continent; we make it a place of homegoing and homecoming and homestaying. We begin tomato farming. We lay the foundations for more economic growth, using colonizer’s money to build bridges to a world beyond what we can quantify in a bank. What we sell belongs to the people and what we make belongs to the people as well. I believe I will live to see a day when the diamonds of Sierra Leone are not known for the people that killed for them, but the world we used them to build. Today, we learn to grow and sell tomatoes.
All this time, I have been searching for something I will never be: this elusive, perplexing idea of humanity. I have never felt human, not ever. My whole life was cycles of resentment in self-inventory, pricked by the way others often see me— how fast they are to pedestalize me, how far I fall from expectations, the demonization of not being who anyone wants me to be, the raising me back up onto the post. How can people, loved ones, intimate people convince themselves of my grandeur and then be disappointed when I am, in fact, finite? How doI stop feeling owned by the hopes and dreams and expectations of others? I have spent my whole life wanting to be small enough to curl up inside of my own chest. I never wanted notoriety or attention from the masses. I just wanted to be good enough. I have only ever wanted to be like everyone else, because I knew I was. I am an ordinary person in extraordinary circumstance. Why couldn’t anyone else see that?
I am here in the beginning of the rest of my life understanding how doomed I was in these desires. I wanted something that was never meant for me in the first place. Because what truly did I want? Who is “everyone else?” A non-existent conglomerate of normal people that feel more peace in this society than I do? Okay, then what is normal? And how does normal even serve me in a society founded on slow and fast genocides? What even is human?
Well. What is humanity if not the want to search for something?2
I am here in the spring and I am searching for a life where we all sit in a sweet breeze and thank heaven and earth we’re still alive. I am searching for a world where hope does not grow stubbornly up through cracks in the asphalt, but it blooms unmitigated, everywhere, dropping fruit on our heads, easily ripe. Sweet like the breeze. When I find what I am looking for, we will be living in a new world. I will gaze on at my hands and feet from a place of rest and respite and realize that I was never only human. We were never so small.
I am now in the spring of my life. I am threaded together by hope.
Ismatu Gwendolyn
PS. The passenger bus is still a thing but that takes a lot more infrastructure! Registering a business in Sierra Leone, profit projections, organization among lots of different kinds of people… I’m workin on it. When I have updates, I will come to you. Thank you all! Thank you all!! Thank you!!!!!
Jazz of the episode:
Send In The Clowns x Pat Martino
On the Sunny Side of the Street x Johnny Hodges
For All We Know x Ahmad Jamal
Lilacs in the Rain x Junior Mance
Dat Dere (Theme) x Bobby Timmons Trio
The Summer Knows x Bucky Pizzarelli
Down and Out x Joel Lyssarides
Tangerine x George Van Eps
Inflight x Lennie Tristan’s, Lenny Popkin
Golden Earrings x Jan Lundgren Trio
Land of Dreams x Ahmad Jamal
Gungala Serenata x Luigi Malatesta, Franco Bitcoin, Sandro Brugnolini
Blue and Sentimental x Oscar Peterson
My Wish x Hank Jones
Side note: it actually ended up being $14k. Out of pocket. Plus all the loans I took out. UChicago and all of higher education can kiss my pretty Black ass. But ya I got the degree or whatever
Paraphrased from Cameryn Farrow Johnson.
22 | dinner with a capitalist in amsterdam, $115k, and other things that changed my life