Haban gani? What's the news? Monday will begin the first day of the Kwanzaa celebration, which will run until January 1. Over those seven days the estimated 4 million people who celebrate the 45th anniversary of the holiday will once again familiarize themselves with the seven Nguzo Saba principles of it and ponder each one of them.They will also ponder this year's theme which is Kwanzaa and the Seven Principles: Sharing and Sustaining the World.Last year I wrote a series of Kwanzaa themed posts that took each one of the seven principles and explained how they applied to the chocolate trans community and our cis African descended brothers and sisters.Just as a refresher course, here are those seven principles that are celebrated each night:
- Umoja (Unity): To strive for and to maintain unity in the family, community, nation, and race.
- Kujichagulia (Self-Determination): To define ourselves, name ourselves, create for ourselves, and speak for ourselves.
- Ujima (Collective Work and Responsibility): To build and maintain our community together and make our brothers' and sisters' problems our problems, and to solve them together.
- Ujamaa (Cooperative Economics): To build and maintain our own stores, shops, and other businesses and to profit from them together.
- Nia (Purpose): To make our collective vocation the building and developing of our community in order to restore our people to their traditional greatness.
- Kuumba (Creativity): To do always as much as we can, in the way we can, in order to leave our community more beautiful and beneficial than we inherited it.
- Imani (Faith): To believe with all our heart in our people, our parents, our teachers, our leaders, and the righteousness and victory of our struggle.
