Waters of Nun: A Primordial Water Memory of Mosi Oa Tunya
Space. Blackness. A blanket of night pregnant with stars; empty with fullness. This is the domain of the primordial Goddesses Neith, “Lady of the House of Bees”, and Nut, “Great Sky Mother”, who hold the souls of Their children in the silvery river of the Milky Way, located 100,000 light years across planet Earth.
My ears become gateways for the transmitting and receiving of knowledge, wisdom, story. I think of sound and how that word is also connected to the energy center of the heart chakra, ‘anahata’, meaning ‘unstruck’ in Sanskrit. I am the servant of the consciousness that dwells in the Hands that weave this stitch. She of Ten Thousand Names.
I begin at the crossroads: the holy playground of Elegua; He who opens and closes the doors to all things, for all beings. I see celestial bodies un-spiraling; spiritual artifacts of a Black technology: a supercluster of galaxies, known as Black Music.
In the Mother-tongues of the Lozi and Kololo languages, Mosi Oa Tunya is the Indigenous name for the so called “Victoria Falls”, meaning “The Smoke That Thunders”.
Mosi Oa Tunya is shared by Zimbabwe and Zambia. These are the waters of my birth.
Photo by Nicole Combeau
Desiree Mwalimu-Banks • she/her • Place of Origin: Lusaka, Zambia/Current Residence: Harlem (New Yorker for 22 years).
Desiree Mwalimu-Banks is a Zambian-American, artist, writer, educator, mother, and priestess.She explores somatic relationships between indigenous identity, water ecologies, apiary culture, and the ecstatic within the sacred feminine and the African diaspora.Her practice integrates an ethics of deep listening, through ritual ceremony, performance, sonic journeying, and written transmissions.
