Born to exist
The women I know - Joseph Toonga
By Saron Tesfahuney

Well it's the title that caught my attention as I was
looking for things to see in the city Utrecht.
Born to excites was programmed at the What you see festival.
This performance got me thinking about the whole cycle of life.

Your mother Breaths to give birth to you
You being Born to breath
And should keep breathing to exist

Born to Exist forms Joseph Toonga's third part of his Nationally acclaimed, Hip Hop Dance trilogy that invites change and a sense of overcoming stigmas society holds towards ethnic minorities.
This third iteration is a response to Joseph's personal experience of being solely brought up by black women.

I spent days trying to give it words to my feelings of what I have felt during this performance it's a feeling, I wish I could upload here so you could feel it too because everyday I get a new layer of what this performance could mean.

But for now this is what I have…

Born to exist, The woman I know
A  home without a mom is a desert. but how difficult  is it for a mom trying to build you a home in a desert?
What made this play so powerful was the level of depth that gets exposed through krumping that elucidates a complicated thought and holds all the treasure that go beyond spoken language. With just as few words it has succeeded through the physical movement to build a bridge between body and mind. With the rhythm in their breathing they brought out suppressed emotions. 
Their struggle.
The silent one.
It got me thinking about the silent war that is going on.
What is happening in the Dominican republic?
What's happening in Congo?
What's happening in Tigray?
Should i continue?
I mean who is born with a right to exist and who is not?
Who gets to decide that?
Ayisha (one of the performers) come towards public  screaming “see me, see them, see us” I replied in my head
oh dear i see U
oh ohhho I SEE U
dont u see how visible you are
so visible that even I felt seen
it’s like a cat looking at mirror, and it sees a lion.
I SEE U. I SEE THEM .I SEE US.
and then after a while she came back and says “fuck you”.
I thought ahha, now we are talking. Two words and a whole world behind it, they DO see us, why else would they build a system to exclude us? It was a statement that gave me hope. Either we find way or we make one! But the ENDING. I didn't want the play to end. After 10 years of living here, this play made my pain visual. My body was saying to my brain “you see, I am not crazy”. the struggles that I go through everyday to live in westerns systeem the reason I didn't want it to end was because I was still missing the last puzzle. I only saw the struggles. And I missed the celebration of those women.
I hope Joseph will come back. But for now all that matter is i see me in u, u see u in me we see us in each other that's all that matter see how powerful we are remember the ancestors we stand on we don't need to be seen if we know who we are and we gone be alright bc we are black diamonds.

P.S. Everybody wanna be diamond but no one wanna get cut.

Saron is a Cultural Artist Educator in theater & a Storyteller! Born and raised in Asmara, Eritrea.

ተዳሎ - እንድያሞ