Kehinde Oladeji, a recent Frank Jamison Fellow at Public Media Network, wrote her poem Rooted as one of her projects with PMN. During the journalism-based fellowship, Kehinde helped behind the camera, editing, and in crafting several stories. But her autobiographic poem rose to the top of her body of work with us.
Scenes for this video were opportunistically shot over the span of months. The team took advantage of interesting weather, nearby locations, and the kindness of businesses and organizations like Factory Coffee, Field’s Fabrics, and the Kalamazoo Civic Theater.
The central visual metaphor is Kehinde making the dress she’s wearing on the Civic stage. In Nigeria, her home country, she was used to going to the market to buy fabric to make her own clothes. In the United States, where she came for grad school, she continued the practice which led to her looking stylish and dramatic despite her clothes being “homemade.”
In the video, Kehinde is seen watching a video of herself from 2018 when she came to D.C. to present another poem during the Mandela Washington Fellowship for Young African Leaders. Her powerful piece was greeted by cheers from the audience which can be seen in this video. It’s worth watching it after you’ve seen this one.
We’ve included the complete poem below for those wanting to enjoy Kehinde’s words again.
Lem Montero
Rooted
by Kehinde Oladeji
When I was younger, I wanted to be a nurse. The idea of caring for the vulnerable appealed to me. Like tending to a garden and watching patched earth burst with life.
But I changed my mind.
My mother said I argued a little too much and should probably make a living out of it. How ideal! I was enamored by the black and white attire. Stand before a judge and speak…defend the defenseless. The weak. This also felt like gardening. A lawyer.
Now, I would be a diplomat. I would speak on behalf of my country, tell the world that at home we say “Can you kindly please excuse me” instead of simply saying “excuse me” because at home our language is clothed in bursting emphasis. Like the vibrant hues of a market at midday.
But you can tell that didn’t happen too.
Somewhere in between dreaming of all the things I could become, I found myself behind the wheels of a sewing machine. A tailor! I mean…A fashion designer. It seemed that I had been flung from the skies of my ambition and the wind had tossed me as unceremoniously as the leaves at fall. Fall…Had I fallen?
But Fall is beautiful. Have you seen the kaleidoscope of colors that emerge just before the trees divorce the leaves? In the making of garments, I learned about all the other things I could be. I figured that if my mind could conceive designs, then it could write, then it could stretch as endlessly as the spool of the thread.
What the mind conceives to be a fall often is an awakening.
When a child is pulled reluctantly out of its mother, it feels like a type of falling. But the warmth it misses is fast replaced by the touch and fullness of its mother’s bosom. And just as it begins to get comfortable, it is snatched again, and what is it given?
The vibrant array of tastes and textures, the full spectrum of nourishment that life has to off
But the child once thought the womb was the best place in the world.
Allow yourself the grace of falling. Because in falling, you get rooted. You sink your feet deep into the earth and discover its gold and bitumen. You test its waters, its depth and its shallowness. In falling, you know the soil that will shoot your trunk back into the sky, you will sing with the birds again.
Allow yourself the grace of falling, because in falling, you get rooted.
