Hear My True Story
Welcome to Hear My True Story, where ordinary moments become extraordinary through the power of authentic storytelling. Each episode dives into real-life experiences, blending laughter, tears, and triumphs that resonate with the shared human journey. Here, stories connect us, revealing the strength in vulnerability and the beauty of our collective truths. Tune in, and let the magic of true storytelling inspire and unite us all.
Hear My True Story
Poetry, Education, and the Fight Against Injustice
What happens when you mix youthful creativity with a passion for social change? Meet Taban Asha, a young Ugandan poet who started her artistic journey with songwriting at just eight years old. In our latest episode, we celebrate her vibrant spirit and poetic talent as she humorously shares stories about her unique name and the playful ideas she has for naming her future children. Taban reflects on a pivotal English assignment that sparked her love for poetry, leading to her first flowery verses and a lifelong dedication to the craft. With an infectious energy, she also offers a peek into her educational background, highlighting how her studies have shaped and supported her poetic pursuits.
Join us as we explore the dynamic evolution of poetry in Uganda, enriched by Taban's personal experiences and the mentorship of Peter Kaga, which transformed her initial doubts into confident expression. Balancing the demands of education and creative writing, Taban discusses overcoming procrastination and using poetry as a response to social injustices. The episode culminates in a heartfelt performance of a poem inspired by tragic events, recorded in the humble setting of a friend's closet. This episode is a testament to the resilience and resourcefulness that fuel the art of poetry, providing listeners with an intimate look at the challenges and triumphs of young Ugandan poets. You won't want to miss these powerful stories and performances that truly speak out.
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The episode you're about to listen to is a special collaboration between Ugandan Art Speaks Out and the Hear my True Story podcast. In this series, young poets from Uganda, east Africa, share their personal stories, dreams and what inspired them to become poets. At Hear my True Story, we team up with like-minded podcasts to bring these untold stories to the world. We hope you enjoy this wonderful episode brought to you by Hear my True Story and Ugandan Art Speaks Out. This is your favorite time of the week with your number one podcast, hear my True Story.
Speaker 2:What are you doing? Do you look pink? I said it's pink. You like pink? That's the right word. Pink, yes, it's the word. What does it mean? I have no idea what it means. I hear people use it.
Speaker 3:I also hear people use it from the UK. I don't know what pink means. It's a slang.
Speaker 2:It's a slang. It's a slang, I think, beautiful when you're lighting and stuff glowing. That's the glow I'm internally screaming. Black is beauty. You're living in. Black is the beauty. So, asha, I've seen you perform valentine's, the valentine's package. What was it called? How? What am I forgetting it?
Speaker 3:how, um oh my goodness, the name of the show. The name of the show. It was something along the lines of will you be my valentine? I really don't recall. Peter would kill me. I don't recall that Peter would kill me. I don't recall.
Speaker 2:But that you know you have this energy. I mean you can scream, you can actually really scream and you're acting. Someone is pulling the rope but actually not pulling it, but someone can see that like she's dead the next minute she's dead. If she stays like this, she'd be dead. I mean you are at IU, are you? Yes, minute, she's dead. If she stays like this, she'd be dead.
Speaker 3:I mean you are at, are you? Are you? Yes, wow, your memory.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, are you? Are you doing journalism? No education, education. Yeah, I think I missed you give someone else been for that, yeah, but that was really amazing what you put up.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much.
Speaker 2:I missed watching you on the light experience. I would have really loved to watch you in those. Let's talk about you. Who are you? Your feelings when you started doing poetry? What inspires you to do poetry? I mean, I need to get into your mind. Let me just get into this. My name is Taban Asha, taban Asha, taban Asha. You don't have another name? No, that's.
Speaker 3:Okay, yeah, taban Asha Like a cool name.
Speaker 2:I have tried, but you know, I'm called Linda Dina, so people keep asking me what's your other name? You guys don't have any other names, it's just Taban.
Speaker 3:Asha Right, and it's so funny because I used to think my name is so weird as a kid. I just realized it was a cool name. Later on in life I was like, oh my goodness, don't do that to your children.
Speaker 2:You shouldn't do that Because me, when I give birth, I'll have them like serious sentences for names. I'll give them serious sentences Because what I've gone through I don't want my children to go through the.
Speaker 3:I want to traumatize my children and give them random names like tree, tree, yeah, just so they can be confused as well. I also don't know why Stormier, okay, wave Water, some, let's see. In the beginning it was my best friend's idea, but then I thought about it. I was like that would be amazing, like my kids would be confused the whole time because people would ask them why is your name tree? I, I don't know. They also don't know. Just yeah, they can't go away with it.
Speaker 2:Just cool parents. I get it, I guess, as I understand it. So how did you get to poetry? Where did you start? What inspires you? I mean, I have all these questions.
Speaker 3:I'm like I started oh my God, how do I get to poetry? I don't even, to be honest, I don't even remember watching someone. I don't remember seeing someone and being like oh my goodness, this is amazing, I need to try it out. No, because I was. I was quite young when I started writing me. I considered writing in general, not just poetry, because I started writing little songs when I was eight and I'd give them to my auntie, but I don't know what happened with the songwriting.
Speaker 2:I can't write I don't know what I was doing at eight years. I'm still. What is it called? Suckling? Suckling my thumb? Yes, I'd go to my bedroom and close my sock there and suckle my. I have to brag as an intelligent kid I was.
Speaker 3:It's like northern. So, yeah, I started writing little little songs. I'd give it to my auntie and she's like this, this is cute, and started calling me my songwriter, my songwriter. So I think I grew into whatever it is the stage before puberty and I was like, no, this is not my life, I can't be writing these things. I'm not a nerd, I'm cool for that I can't be doing this.
Speaker 3:But then later on in um, my primary six, as 11, then our english teacher tasks us. It's like you know I don't. He was called Mr Richard. Yeah, mr Richard. He's like I want you guys to write poems, three different poems about different things.
Speaker 3:I had never in my life written a poem, but we had done poetry like I'd seen, let me say, a structure even from MDDs where they make a word. P3 is doing a poem, this is yeah. So I just got that from that knowledge and I wrote about flowers. It was a poem about flowers and it had so much rhyme and my teacher was like this is actually really nice.
Speaker 3:You know you have a future doing this and, to be honest, the things we tell kids matter because it's like the moment you told me you have a future doing this, just started seeing your future, like, and here you are, I need to do this, I have a future doing this. And here I am. Here I'm because I write from plays, short stories, plays, short stories, then poems as well, but I have to say poetry has skyrocketed, like it has gone beyond all the other things that I can do. I get your point, yeah, so, yeah, I started writing, then serious writing, because, okay, I was writing but I wouldn't consider it serious writing. So I joined secondary Chibuli Secondary School. It's a Muslim school, so I'm not trying to come to my, my muslim institutes because I've been in muslim institutes, even in my university I'm not trying to come for them or anything, but the truth has to be said.
Speaker 3:They need to work more, and I don't know what we should call this, but some of them call them maybe into your zoo. I don't know why they brand it that way. I don't understand. But the culture in Muslim institutions is not that. Like you'd see, gayaza poetry is not something new. Nabi Sosa poetry is not something new. Like, these kinds of co-curriculars are not something new. When you come to Muslim schools, it's more of it's sports.
Speaker 2:It's sports religion, it's class, its sports it's sports religion, it's it's class, actually the core values of the institution. Anyway, that is true, yeah so, anyway, I don't really.
Speaker 3:I still kept on writing. I was still that, my extraordinary self, my extra self, so I'd write. Um. A few opportunities, of course, would come in here and there where I would have to showcase my writing, whether it's poetry or writing plays. Sometimes I'd compete in writing plays and all that, yeah, and I Then, I remember a new teacher comes, mr Aliku, and he's interested, he's like this is amazing, what you're doing is really amazing, it's great, your writing is good, it's mature and all that. And I thought, ah, I am a poet. I had labeled myself a poet because, you know, a teacher is trying to not break my my morale.
Speaker 2:I mean from the word go. You're having all these titles, you're a songwriter. Your aunt is calling you a songwriter. Who they're calling you poet? Now you're seeing your future.
Speaker 3:Your teacher told you, and this is your future, like yeah yeah, and along the way, like I'd written things and that one I had written for there were competitions in school, like I would write for my house or write for my school and then the end of the day you win a cup.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I win something and I'm like damn this, this is me, this is my genre, my bad b era, but anyway. So when I joined my form six back, it was very funny how I even got into poetry for real because my mom paid for me to do a tailoring course. I didn't want. Actually, to date I don't want. Even when I look at my friends who are making something for themselves through fashion and design, I'm like good, good for you, not for me.
Speaker 3:So my mom voices me and she kept on giving me transports to go to that school where I was doing the tailoring stuff. So I did that for a week. Then I remember my bestie tells me you know what? I have a friend of mine. She tells me they usually go to National Theatre. They do this poetry stuff, they do acting and all that and that's your type of stuff. You should go. This is Form 6. Back I didn't even like stop, I didn't hesitate, I was like ah, transport, is there, even Transport to go to school? So I started going and I did my first, my very first show in Form 6 VAC with Kagai Pizza. That was Chitara Nation versus VAC. But like when I joined I realized I was nothing because I met all these other different people who had been doing poetry.
Speaker 2:You actually realized the error was not your error. It was not your bad bit error. You've been lying to yourself all along. People were so good.
Speaker 3:I remember this girl, bridget. Oh, my goodness, I used to think my interpretation of poetry was it has to be precise you tell a story in a few words. I didn't know that poetry can be an epic because, like, when I did education I did English and literature I realized that poetry evolved from being an epic a whole let me say a whole novel of poetry. So I didn't know these things and I'm seeing this girl is writing a whole story and it's coming off of her head. She's just like giving lines and lines and pantalons and I'm like what have I been doing? Like I was ashamed to even recite my poetry no, you were.
Speaker 2:Just what is it? You were the one eyed man among us, the blind, wherever you were.
Speaker 3:Yes, this kids where I was were nothing, is it? You were the one-eyed man among us, the blind, wherever you were? Yes, yes, I have come to the ones that, yes, these kids where I was were nothing. I was the boss. It's like, oh my goodness, that girl she speaks good English, writes poems. I came where a girl speak good English and write like, oh my God, it was amazing. I had never seen that. I did not know that the poetry culture was that amazing in Uganda was amazing. I had never seen that. I did not know that the poetry culture was that amazing in uganda?
Speaker 3:I really didn't, I existed people do not know that people do not?
Speaker 2:people really don't. They need to know it. Yeah, I don't know how, again, to do that, I don't know, but this is the way. So I hope I really pray so so yeah, anyway.
Speaker 3:So I get with peter kaga. He helped me, he nurtured me and I became better at what I was doing. I, I, I wrote better, I. There was transition in my poetry and I saw that. I don't even think I ever told him that, I don't even think he ever saw that so we need to give him his flowers.
Speaker 3:Yes, we need to give him his flowers. Because there was transition from the kind of poetry I was writing to what it became when I met Peter and that is how I grew into the kind of poetry that I'm writing, even to date. So I took a break from poetry, being doing education. I feel like these are the excuses I tell myself to not accept that I was procrastinating but I was doing education. There were so many course units, I was geographically, my campus was far, so it all became a lot. The workload kind of not really. It's a lie. I was just procrastinating and anyway. So 2020 election time, I'm just like, and I'd taken so long when I stopped going to National Theatre with Peter. It's like I even took so long to write. I would write once in a while, but not really really like how it was with Peter.
Speaker 3:There was that pressure, but beautiful pressure to write yeah so anyway, and now here I am and I'm just watching the news, and it is so much the people that are being short, because I saw this, um, this girl she had gone to to work the woman was having the fruits and stuff.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the one with the fruits and whatnot, and she was short.
Speaker 3:It's terrible and it was terrible. And the thing that came to my head was this this could be my mom, because my mom, my mom, has raised us. She's not like a big scale Anna, she's a small scale Anna. And she tells us before she made like the little progress that because she calls it little, because our parents are always being noble, and what not the little progress that she made with her life. Now, where she started from, she was like me. I used to move around with. I used to move around in taxi park with with these, um, bottles of juice. I used to literally hawk my juice. I'd make juice and hawk it. So when I see this girl and I'm like a few years back, this could have been my mother, you know, it could have been my mother woken up. I want to go look to give my, give my kids something doesn't come back and she doesn't come back alive turn.
Speaker 3:It was terrible. And then it just like because me, while I can write a poem in one sitting, my best poems have come from me writing. I write a stanza, I write a stanza, I just like keep noting them down not some on my phone, not some somewhere else and then I converge it all into a poem at once. So I was just sitting there and the very last lines of the poems are the ones that came first to me. I just sit there and I'm like, huh, now Ugandans are scared of going to work because their places of work look so much like a graveyard. And I'm like, hmm, so two days I wrote the whole piece, I put it together and when I read the piece I cried. I'm just like an emotional junkie. It was amazing. I cried and I was was like, oh my goodness, this is, this is the best thing I've ever done, and I'm like it can't stay in the book.
Speaker 3:I had a friend of mine. He's called ndelea, he was doing photography and singing as well, lucky. So I called lucky and I'm like I want to record. I see you, do you do little um covers for songs? I want to record. He's like okay, okay. So I'm thinking this guy because he would send me covers of songs. I'm thinking, this whole time this guy has been like working in a studio.
Speaker 2:He's a studio, something like that.
Speaker 3:I reached. First of all it was my ex's place, but he's my nice ex, I like him, he's a nice person. So, like I reached and I'm like, like you didn't even tell me this is what we're doing, the recording from. He's like, yeah, it's, it's what's convenient. And I'm like, how are we doing the recording from here? So you see that closet, that's why we're recording from. So I'm okay, I'm all about creative, but this is more than creative. This is so ghetto. But I'd always, anytime I reach a bad situation, rock bottom. I tell myself this is going to sound so nice in the success story and be like I know, I did this and this before I got here.
Speaker 3:So we just put, we cushioned the walls with mattresses and I started recording. So I started recording. This guy is like I don't feel the emotion. He was using his phone. I'd forgotten about that his iPhone oh that's a vent.
Speaker 3:He was using his phone and he's like okay, yeah, so I need to hear emotion, I need you to record this poem, like how you wrote it. And I'm like okay, fine, let's start, we record, we record. So that very night he told me Asha, this thing is amazing. I'm like okay, fine, let's start, we record, we record. So that very night he told me Asha, this thing is amazing, I'm done with it.
Speaker 2:And you can't wait here.
Speaker 3:I'm like, okay, you send it. And the moment he sent it like this, I was like, oh, my God, this is so beautiful, this is amazing.
Speaker 2:You're back to your era. You're back to your era. I'm like, oh, you're back to your air.
Speaker 3:You're back to your air. This is what my teacher was talking about in P6. This is my life. This right here, is the blood that flows through me, oh my God. So I sent it to my contacts, my friends and all that. And the first thing that made me feel so nice was my cousin brother forwarded a voice note of a friend of his. His friend was, he used to run a PlayStation test. You know those guys, yeah, and I don't know a lot about his education background, but, to be honest, he's not someone who would consider a poet, not even think about poetry at all. And this guy was telling me OMG, this is your. This is the little girl who came because I'd done campaigns in my high school, who came wanting to do posters at my place. Yo, this is amazing.
Speaker 3:I feel, she's talking to me like the thing about the poem is it was a political, it was a risky piece. To be honest, up to date, people keep on telling me you never pushed that poem. But yes, I never did because I was so scared. I was like this sounds like an outright attack to whomsoever is governing the country. It's an attack. And no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I was just trying to be creative. I wasn't trying to do that. That is not what I was aiming at. But so, yeah, my cousin also put it up on his podcast. He's like you know, I know you and he really does. I lose things, I lose pictures, I lose my, I lose very important things because I keep losing and changing phones so you lost it.
Speaker 3:I thought you had shared it to your friends, maybe you forgot it.
Speaker 3:I had shared it, but like they don't owe it to me to keep it, they don't so my cousin put it on his podcast as a way of preserving it and he tells me, like that, that episode was really aired. People really enjoyed it, people liked it, they. They say you should do more, and yeah, of course, I stepped into my procrastination era again and and then I lost contact with Lucky. And yeah, studio sessions are for paying for and I want, the next time I do this, I want to do it like in a good, in a professional way, with good sound and all that and blah blah, not like in some ghetto way.
Speaker 2:So yeah, and but the ghetto paid off. You remember, yeah, the ghetto really paid off one thing that is certain we need to have a conversation with Peter, because every person I'm talking to political, I'm trying political because he's the one that has taught you all these things.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, oh yeah and I never even I never even used to write a lot into the political scene until I hear, I hear I actually just had the line. I didn't know it was a whole poem. I just had him saying the line just one time randomly and he's like my country is like a poor little kid selfie and I paused my body, took a screenshot.
Speaker 2:Wow, because I related the selfie that you were talking about.
Speaker 3:I related so, so hard and my dad, god, dressed him before he died. He was into the political side and all that.
Speaker 3:But I had told myself no, I don't want to be into politics, I don't want to be like him, but I guess I am my father's daughter at the end of that day. Maybe I'm not campaigning like he was, I'm not into the politics, but I'm doing it some somewhere else, because almost everything I write keeps on taking that turn. It takes that turn. I'm like let me write a love poem and boom, it's a love letter from uganda to her love.
Speaker 1:You need to have a debate with muhammad ray mawashi.
Speaker 2:She does not believe in genes. Yes, that's the expression I had. What?
Speaker 3:How can she know it? I'm stuck with Anubia because of my dad. What is she even talking about? What is she even talking about? I need to, I really need to. But one thing I have loved about poetry, above all the other things that I can do, is it shocks people when they hear the kinds of things that can come out of my mouth, the word play. I love that. I love that it introduces people to this usher, this ah, you didn't knowher. This, yeah, the cool kid, oh yeah, people had always told me it's a cool kid thing. Poetry is a cool kid thing, but it's really not, because when I was writing that poem about police brutality, I wasn't writing as a cool kid, I was writing as, as a, as a citizen who's hurt by what's going on in the country, like poetry. Poetry is now that I actually studied these things at campus poetry is the mother. People need to bow down. She's the mother. It's literally where everything began from.
Speaker 2:So, as we come to a conclusion of this, something that's really getting to me, I'm like why aren't people listening to these pieces? Why aren't people listening to you? What do we need to do? I mean, what exactly do we need to do? Because I don't know.
Speaker 3:It's just to be honest. There is nothing. There is and I'm not saying this like to be a what is it called? Pessimistic there is nothing you can do with with people whose mentors are rigid. You know and I'm not like shooting at you gunners that their mentors are rigid or whatnot, or blah, blah or all that. But there is a certain form of because while poetry is poetry, it's also entertainment. A lot of it is education, but it's also entertainment. So people are they, they are streamlined to this form of entertainment, like it's not just poetry that's lagging behind. There are other forms of entertainment in Uganda that are lagging behind. We see that there is some that's up there and then there is still some that's just struggling. And it's not that good things aren't happening. The good things are actually happening is that people choose to go with something that's easier to go with.
Speaker 2:You know, I've done poetry for since I was eight years old, but the first time I actually got recognition even other people like being like, oh, poetry was because I did it in audio form and then it gets back to us marketing ourselves, our friends marketing us, yeah, the people that we know, so that they tell people that do not know us, and in that way, we're going to reach miles, we're going to go far away, more than this. So we need to be as good as we are to ourselves, to our friends, and our friends will tell their friends and their friends tell their friends.
Speaker 3:And then we'll be very good. I also feel like we're growing. Yeah, we are, it's evolution, evolution, evolution.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we are, but it depends. There's gradual and rapid. Yeah, I like the slow burn. Yeah, it's organic, it's organic, you're growing organically. I get that. You're growing organically, not inorganically. You're like one day you're here, the next Asha. We could have gone ages with this conversation. We could have gone on as far.
Speaker 3:I don't know how to shut up.
Speaker 2:But I guess we have to do so. We have to do that, yeah. Thank you for being here with us.
Speaker 3:Thank you for having me. The pleasure is all mine.
Speaker 1:Okay, I'm going to go. We not only have voices for a podcast, but also faces for YouTube. Don't miss your next episode. Hear my true story. My True Story.
