When I was young about third grade, my father told me that I belonged to a country called Kenya. Now, that was a part of three other countries called East Africa. That really blew my little mind. The idea that I belonged to a place, I felt special, chosen. Even when I had no clue what it meant to be a Kenyan. Later in life, I considered identities whose formation I had nothing to do with. They gave me the same special feeling. I’m a member of the Chara family, the Katoo clan from the Laveeda community born into an African spirituality, an accidental Anglican, a black woman. These are belongings that are supposed to give us our best human experiences. I grew up to choose some of my other belongings, especially those that have shaped my mind, like my scholarship. I belong to the field of theater arts, diplomacy, African studies. The convergence of these three fields is the story structure. Theater arts is about individual actors who play out their relationships on a stage. And diplomacy or international relations is about the state or non-state actors who play out the relationship on a global stage. Storytelling and international relations use the same terminologies. Actors, players, stage. In storytelling, someone writes the script, directs it, produces it. In international relations, most nations become background actors in a script they did not write, direct or produce. The stars on the global stage are the powers that influence our economy, our politics and our cultures. The big difference here is that the play on stage comes to an end. The play on the global stage does not end. It is real lived experiences that cannot be denied. African studies gives me the front door seats to watching my ancestors end their descendants on the global stage. So I come to you today with the idea that if we can see our world through the lens of story structure, it may just be easier to resolve our life dramas. The most traumatizing, especially the main ones that revolve around irrational belongings like race, gender and other belongings, spiritual belongings. Let’s start first of all looking at the global stage and understanding it better. We shape our world with the power of bias. The countries in it are the result of centuries of brutal narratives of invasion. Kenya did not exist until about 60 years ago. It was a part of a continent that had civilizations going back thousands of years. And through a global drama of slavery, colonization and independence, 54 countries were born. This is the violent history that created the place my father told me was my country. I did not choose it. But wait, neither did I choose my family of birth. I think nature also plays out illusions of belonging that hopefully give us a safe place to experience our being human. All these belongings are irrational. Irrational does not mean good or bad. Just void. A blank check on which we can write the values we want. Belonging only becomes valuable and meaningful when we decide to put value to it. Often someone else more powerful than us stage manages this quest for meaning and value. They can decide it’s more valuable to be, say, an American than a Kenyan, to believe in Yahweh rather than believe in Olo-Dumare. They can decide to take a bite off of your country so that today you are Ukrainian, tomorrow you are Russian. Our histories and unfolding experiences are productions of forces like government, religious institutions and the media, global narratives teaches us to believe what we are told to believe until we learn to question the narrative. I remember standing in front of a classroom of American high school students and playing the world association game. I did this often. And I asked them to say what comes to mind immediately. I said the word Africa and I would write it on the board and they would throw out words, poverty, disease, salvation, laziness, violence, ignorance and civilized. These were mostly black students. It’s a story that they’ve been told to believe about themselves as stage managed narrative meant to maintain the superiority of one people through believing in the imagined inferiority of others. Now, being black or being a black person was not a construct I and other Africans grew up with. I grew up with the ethnic identity construct. Like any identity, ethnicity too has been manipulated to provide a narrative of superiority. But it’s possible to neutralize it and see it as nothing other than an irrational belonging like any other. One that did this successfully, when they decided to remove the ethnic classification from their ideas. In the character of the human, Houttu O Tutsi, had been weaponized by the Belgian colonial regime long before independence and reduced to an ID that classified people. Years later, it led to a genocide. Those who belong to these communities have not stopped being Houttu O Tutsis and they are still proud of who they are. But these are no longer weaponized identities with the power to create a caste system. They no longer have to check the ethnic box like we have to check the race box in America. I think one has something to teach us here. Can say, but why should we neutralize the power behind race, gender or belief systems when these identities give us such intoxicating experiences of pride and place? Well, because these weaponizations come at a very high cost, it casts us into a drama of heroes, of villains, of victors and vanquished. One is good, the other is evil. In the art of storytelling, conflict is key. It drives the plot. The more intense a conflict, the better the story lies. We get caught up in this rising action, in this shocking revelation and we finally descend into the high through catharsis. Now, it has a resolution. It comes to an end. After two hours, the audience goes home to cook and to make love. In real life, we cannot script out definite endings to our narratives. We attempt to end wars as if the people involved perfectitious character playing out imaginary lives on an imaginary stage. Declaring an end to war does not bring to an end human turmoil that comes with long traumatic narratives of destruction and collision of competing identities. They are left reconciling new experiences and new narratives for years to come. What we can do in real life is invest in transition rather than in endings. On transition, there’s an interesting lesson to learn from old Africa about the gender dilemma. See, if I’m asked what my pronouns are within the African context, I wouldn’t have an answer because African languages, my own language included, do not have gender pronouns. At some point in the evolution of their consciousness about human nature, these societies quite likely determine that the gender spectrum was an infinity. So they removed the binary extremes that are obvious, he and she. If you want to say she went home, in Swahili you say, the person went home. A woman can call her sister-in-law my husband, my man, or my human. And a man can call his sister-in-law our wife. A female child can ceremoniously be transitioned into a son. A female monarch can dress up and sit as king. This fluidity of gender and its roles is complex to the outsider but makes perfect sense within these communities. See, old Africa evolved to view the human being as infinitely gender fluid. The gender and sexuality conflicts we see right now in modern Africa is a post-colonial phenomenon. In the same way, the idea of race will have to evolve and accept humans as infinitely race fluid, with the extremes of black and white as nothing but irrational belongings. And it is the same transition we have to make consciously with traumatic dramas that influence and that involve our belief systems. The attempt to end the war in the Middle East, keeps faltering as people continue to kill, put up wars, and become homeless. Why? Because it’s so much invested in the irrational identities that drive that conflict. I’ll leave you with three things. The theory of irrational belonging is anchored on three factors. One, all identity is political. It is controlled by those in power. Even in a family, you have the authority of a parent or guardian. All identity is commodified. It is packaged by those who seek to build wealth in place, such as institutions of religion and the media. Three, all identity is constructivist. We create it as we go. It is a story we tell ourselves. And this is where the power of change making lies. Knowing this factors gives us the power to script our most traumatic narratives and to construct the experience we want. My name is Mikawa Sayi. I am human. And in the spirit of Utu and Ubuntu, I am well because you are well. Thank you.