DORAMODOU

Hello! Tnàmoufègnê!

Tnàmoufègnê? This is ‘hello, how are you’ in Susu, my family’s language in Guinea, West Africa. It’s a coastal language that I also use playfully with friends in other port cities like Abidjan, Valencia, Osaka, and Los Angeles since we’re all a bit watery in ways. My uncle Emanuel wrote the English-Susu dictionary. I’d like to help you pronounce Tnàmoufègnê, but I can’t. Susu is digitally marginalized. It’s almost available on ChatGPT, but not yet. Why? It’s a conversation for another day… one we will have VERY soon. Let me start here instead.

Memories of rain-soaked days and flip-flops, where leaves glistened and deep puddles formed and you sometimes waited under an awning for the blinding rain to lift, other times – because it would rain for weeks on end, you carried on about your business, wet. To be in rainy season is to be in conversation with the sky. Also the soil, the pavement, and the sea….

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