Posts

Where the Earth Remembers: Land, Lineage & Belonging

Image
“Somewhere, the land still knows your name.” By HerDithy Digital | Global Voices: Roots & Routes | June Edition Evans Kim To Belong Is to Be Claimed by the Land—But What Happens When the Land Forgets You? Not by title deeds or maps. But by memory. By ritual. By name. Land, for many African cultures, is not a commodity—it’s an ancestor. A keeper of lineage. A sacred archive of who we are, and who we come from. But in a time of global displacement, economic injustice, and mass political disillusionment, land has become both symbol and battleground. And in Kenya today, where Gen Z is rising against broken systems , the question of land is no longer abstract. It is personal. It is historical. And it is political. What If Belonging Is a Birthright—and It’s Been Denied? Nguyen Thu Hoai ๐Ÿงพ According to the Kenya National Land Commission, less than 20% of land in Kenya is formally documented , yet over 70% of land conflicts stem from historic in...

Weaving Tongues: How Language Moves with Us

Image
  “To speak is to remember. To remember is to belong.” By HerDithy Digital | Global Voices: Roots & Routes | June Edition When We Migrate, Our Languages Migrate Too Across oceans, over borders, through the whispered hush of goodbye at airport gates—our tongues travel with us. Long before passports, language was our first identity card. Etched on the walls of wombs and woven into lullabies, it carried the weight of ancestors, grief, livestock counts, lullabies, and coded survival prayers. Language isn’t just words. It’s breathwork. Memory. Geography disguised as grammar. So when we move, it moves. Sometimes with pride. Sometimes in pieces. ๐ŸŒ Today, over 7,000 languages are spoken across the globe. Yet according to UNESCO , nearly 40% are endangered—spoken by fewer and fewer people each year. The Matriarchs of Language: Mothers, Aunties, Caregivers Before school. Before church. Before cartoons. A child’s first language is shaped in the kitchen, on a hip, by a hum. It’s wom...