Joy in the Dirt

I was born in South Africa, as were my parents and grandparents. We have descended from people who had been brought to Africa through indenture, a colonial labour system that introduced alien agricultural methods an workforce India, optimise monocultures like sugarcane. My very presence here is, therefore, entangled with colonialism’s domestication mastery over land, plant, (Indigenous indentured). never felt here. Why that? What about the indenture stories of people, land beyond empire’s control—my ancestral wild places? And there room within these places heal wounds across our ethnic racial barriers? lost? Could PhD2 research transcripts address some those losses? This paper contains poems emerged PhD interviews, fieldnotes, father's memoirs, letters archives. A poetic lens gave me decolonial language inspect archives questions mind.