The Physics of Loosing A Father and When Ivoirian Girls Are Most Hungry ; Sojourner Ahebee

   


       

Painting by Ivoirian Artist Massogona Sylla

     Today I was speaking with my dear friend, Deidre, an American who I met years ago when I first came to Cote d'Ivoire. We left Cote d'Ivoire together at the start of the civil strife and she has since returned. She shared sad news about the death of an incredible woman who was very much a part of our lives in CI.
     I was sharing with my son, who is younger than my daughter Sojourner by three years, some of my memories of this woman and some general memories of CI I thought might interest him.  He has little memory of his life in his birth country.  Even the photographs and paintings dispersed throughout our home  that capture our lives there carry no compass for him. We both have come to rely on Sojourner and  her own memories and how her poetry resurrects fragments of our lives and the phenomenal people who still sit with us.

This is a painting of my husband as a child in Abidjan and me as a girl in Philadelphia.

* Richard Tehimou

Me standing with my husband's favorite musicians: Monk, Ella, Mingus, Miles and  Auguste listening to his beloved Billie Holiday. * Richard Tehimou

  Below is a video of the appointment ceremony of the 2013 National Student Poets, which include Michaela Coplen, Nathan Cummings, Louis Lafair, Aline Dolinh and Sojourner Ahebee; such an amazingly talented group of young people.  Sojo reads two of her poems at the start of this program.  My husband  would be so proud.