UBUNTU

I am because we are

UBUNTU

“Umuntu Ngumuntu Ngabantu”

(A person is a person because of or through others).

None of us comes into the world fully formed. We would not know how to think, or walk, or speak, or behave as human beings unless we learned it from other human beings. We need other human beings in order to be human.

- Desmond Tutu, God Has a Dream, 2004.

You know that feeling when you get this sort of high existential awareness and are like hyper aware of you being? I had one of those recently. I’ve had many like it before, but this one was a little different.

Every other time, I saw a little more of myself. I understood another layer of my person, but this time, I saw fragments. Borrowed pieces of a self woven together to form me.

Ubuntu is an African philosophy native the Bantu people of Southern Africa, particularly the Xhosa and Zulu people and it’s derived from the Nguni word, “Abantu” meaning, “people”. It is perfectly depicted in this one powerful phrase;

“I am, because we are”.

Ubuntu honors the truth that no one is shaped in isolation. Like the saying goes, It takes a village to raise a child. But it’s deeper than childhood, it’s the entire process of becoming.

We are not formed alone. We are formed through the people we love, the ones we lose, the ones we learn from. Every interaction leaves its mark.

These interactions they make us.

And so, it makes a lot of sense that when I looked in he mirror that day, I didn’t just see Oluwaferanmi.

I saw Christiana’s eyes, eyebrows, smile, voice, laugh, skin, lips, hair, playfulness.

I saw Babatunde’s face structure, ears, wit, introvertedness and cerebral tendencies.

I saw Eri’s wisdom, freedom, security, and individuality .

I saw Ekene’s love, warmth, strength and courage.

I saw Ovunda’s elegance, style, understanding, freedom and acceptance.

Under all of the layers of good stuff, I saw the shadows too. The trust issues and trauma others had lent her, the rejection and brokenness of friendships gone wrong, the anxiety from years of uncertain, unstable relationships.

I saw it all, the good, the bad, the grotesque.

I saw them all. Hidden in the pieces they left. Pieces I pulled together to form me.

And I realized; I am a mosaic of the people who’ve passed through my life. Some stayed, some didn’t. But all of them left something.

That’s Ubuntu.

Not just the celebration of togetherness, but the truth that we are made through and by each other.

So no, I didn’t just see me.

I saw us.

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And with that, the biweekly theme “Ubuntu” comes to an end.

Safe to say, I’m not a thematic writer. This was a fun experiment, but writing for me is mostly spontaneous. The muse shows up when she wants, and she doesn’t always care about structure.

So, no more themes (for now). Maybe there’ll be a series here and there. Maybe not. We’ll see😉.

References

Chapter Four: The African Ubuntu Philosophy