Kola Boof- Blurring the lines between fact and fiction (articles for Sudan Mirror)

Kola Boof is a woman who is shrouded in controversy and even the facts of her life are often disputed. There are some who claim that she is delusional or that she has fabricated events in order to attain publicity but she refutes these claims and maintains that for various reasons there are many in the media who have a vendetta against her. However what cannot be denied is that she is an extremely talented writer.

In order to justice to her art it would probably be better to simply read her works and stay away from the issue of her personal life. But when reading her works the themes which she claims have dominated her life prove to be extremely relevant. Notably issues of race and women’s sexuality.

Kola Boof was born in Northern Sudan as Naima Bint Harith. According to the Sudanese authorities she was born on March 3^rd 1972 but she herself claims that she was born in March of 1969. Her father was an Egyptian Archeologist by the name of Harith Bin Farouk and her mother was a Somali by the name of Jiif. Her racial origins were to play a big influence on Kola’s life. Her father was Arabic and Muslim but was vehemently opposed to the oppressive Khartoum regime. This was to prove a huge influence on Kola and she always identified more with Black Africa and claims Sudanese as her nationality. However her parents’ opposition to the regime was to prove to be lethal and in 1978 they were killed by the regime. She claims that her paternal grandmother did not wish to take care of her because due to her mother’s skin colour she was much darker than the rest of her Father’s family.

She was put up for adoption and eventually was to find a new home in the United States with an African American family in Washington D.C. She has very fond memories of the African American community and says she was made to feel very at home in America. She still lives in California with her husband and two sons. Her life has been one of much variety. At one point she was a star of North African cinema and she claims that it was in Marrakech that she first met Osama Bin Laden. She says that they had a relationship but that this was against her will and that eventually she managed to escape. She refuses to use the term sex slave to describe the situation she was held in as it serves to disempower her. However claims have been made that her relationship with Bin Laden was as much a fiction as her stories.

It is too easy to become distracted by such controversies and to ignore the quality of work that Boof has produced. What is immediately notable in her poetry, memoirs and fiction is that issues of race and gender are at the forefront of her concerns. To her Black women are the most beautiful and powerful creatures on the planet and she rails against all injustices perpetrated upon women and black people. She renounced both Islam and Christianity, the two traditions in which she had been raised and adopted a Nilotic religion. She also insists on appearing bare breasted in photographs on the covers of her book claiming that it is the tradition of African women not to have to cover themselves and that men force women to hide their bodies as it gives men more control.

She prefers to describe herself as a Womanist rather than a feminist and her work is very much influenced by themes effecting women. In the story Day of Vow she details the story of a young South African woman who was raped by the son of her white employers. Boof brilliantly chronicles the thoughts and emotions of the protagonist Zorina as she describes the class and race structures of modern-day South Africa and the way in which Black women are oppressed because of both their gender and their race. However rather than simply pointing an accusatory finger at white South Africans she intricately narrates the complex prejudices held by people of colour in South Africa as they attempt to advance themselves in a world where all the rules have been made by whites and where it seems the only way to advance is to surrender oneself completely to the will of the white oppressors.

Themes of race and gender frequently occur in her poetry also. Given the nature of her childhood it is easy to see why race and identity are such an influence on her work. This led her to become politically active also and she claims that she was an intelligence agent for the SPLA. This however like many facts of her life has been verified by some and denied by others. She did however write a poem to commemorate the late John Garang and it was read at his funeral. This poem is quite typical of Boof’s work in the themes it addresses such as race and motherhood. It is reprinted below.

"Choll Apieth"
(black is beautiful)

a Poem by Kola Boof

_____

In the river crossing and coming through us

The egg has not drowned/Our mother’s long war

--hand of Nhialic, The blood

In the river crossing

and coming through us

Behold today/ that cattle have no tongues

And that the earth is cold where Macardit tangles

in the raid of horses/ charging in our wake.

--we have lost our best son

--we, who bring the morning her spears

--we who are like birds/tired of the Crashing

And have seen the Sky

itself

fall against our dreams

Choll Apeith, warriors!

In all my conversations:

the ones who are victorious...the ones

who are praying

Knowing that Papa Garang shall rise again

In the eye of our fists--the chant of our shouting

The Yoke of New Site/golden as sun and birth

This victory of the everborn's heartbeat...steadily rising

Be it on one foot--Garang

(be it on one foot)

Our hero of the landscape

In the river crossing and coming through us.

In all my conversations--

Come through here...river

Bloody Cross and our father rising from it

to deliver this Everborn;

bring us your cattle and your courage--

bloody womb; our mother, the Goddess Sudan.

Enchant us this victory.

His place with God/And no more flesh.

Everborn the victory...and no more flesh.

Garang...Garang

our best son!

And no more flesh.

Bird of the Sky--black as all black put together.

And no more flesh.

We who give birth to you again--and no more flesh.