“Nimekua Hapa Motherland” is the title for the next quilt of Iciline Brown for Leamington Art Gallery and Museum.
Iciline was born in 1936 in Jamaica and came to the UK in 1957.
So what does that title mean? It’s complicated but has it’s roots in Zanzibar and Tanzania, and nimekua hapa is Swahili and is said at the end of the poem, “Picture Perfect” that Iciline’s daugher, Monica, who wrote in a book called Journey Back to Zanzibar. It means I was here, or I grew up here. Monica was involved in a 2007 BBC production of Who Am I, and through DNA traced her family ancestry back to Zanzibar.
“Motherland” is what a lot of people from Jamaica like Iciline called the UK, and when they came over here after the 2nd World War – the Windrush Generation – it’s where they thought they were coming to.
Anyway, more will unravel and will be stitched onto the quilt. I’ve only just started to transcribe Iciline’s words and it’ll take a while to finish that. I just thought I’d share the title and the thinking behind it.
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