I enjoy everything about writing. It doesn’t matter if it’s a poem, a news article, an academic paper, copy, or this blog. I also edit and translate texts of different genres between English and German, hopefully adding Swahili, French, and many other languages in the future.
My academic background is in Social Sciences and African Studies, though I read way beyond any disciplinary limits. I have worked in academia, arts and culture, and political education. I’m not a graphic designer or content creator, but I do know my way around video, image, and audio editing. The main field of my work lies in research and journalism, and as of 2025 my first academic book chapter was published.
I have looked at the amazing project WriteFreely, which I hope to self-host and offer for other writers one day, experimented with building a static site myself with Jekyll and Hugo, and started learning HTML along the way.
That my blog exists in this form is due to Garam Salami and his blog.1 I hope that I can gradually shift my interactions from corporate-owned Social Media to either the fediverse, or content-focused platforms like this blog in the future.
The Design Philosophy
This should have been a static website. Publishing from the command line, just choosing the right template and only ever editing markdown files is a much more seamless process, and more resource efficient than anything else, except having no website at all.
I like the way in which I can arrange graphical elements, but my aspiration for the look of this page is a digital book, like Jeremy Keith’s Resilient Web Design.
Equally important sources of inspiration can be found in V.H. Belvadi’s Manifesto, the Low-tech Magazine, and this introduction to Minimal Computing.
Ecograder and Website Carbon can help you examine how sustainable your website is, and which dimensions should be optimized.
Recent Posts
- Reading Note: A Global Cultural History of Black and Blue(s)Imani Perry (2025): Black in Blues There is a certain poetry with which Black life and experience have become identified, to the point of entanglement.Feeling blue, having the blues, the dissonant harmonies, build-up and release of tension, and the dance of rhythms that have been carried over the deep, dark blue of the middle passage.… Read more: Reading Note: A Global Cultural History of Black and Blue(s)
- Reading Note: I was Wrong About Red Africa…Kevin Ochieng Okoth (2023): Red Africa Red Africa is a thoughtfully composed and valuable introduction to the history of Marxism in Africa. Even though it is written with contemporary politics in mind, readers will get an overview of the most important events concerning African liberation. The contemporary perspective is at the same time the book’s… Read more: Reading Note: I was Wrong About Red Africa…
- Afropessimism is for the HoodI often think of Lewis R. Gordon’s passing his university campus, and the white people that saw too many Black people this day. They saw him, on his arrival, and on his way back, already constituting a multitude, an invasion. Blackness, void of character or individuality. Outside of the class character that structures its experience,… Read more: Afropessimism is for the Hood
- Reading Note: Outlines of a Marxist Theory of Communication and MediaSeth Siegelaub (2022): Prefaces to Communication and Class Struggle Volume 1 and 2 At the root of labor lies communication—the act and process by which it is facilitated and organized after its initial inception. In Siegelaub’s words, communication is “the articulation of the social relations between people.” Analog to the mode of production, Siegelaub historicizes… Read more: Reading Note: Outlines of a Marxist Theory of Communication and Media
- Reading Note: A Little Red Book For AfricaBankole Awoonor-Renner (1946): West African Soviet Union Nearly one hundred years before the ascension of Ibrahim Traoré and the Alliance of Sahel States, Bankole Awoonor-Renner wrote in a little red book about the West African Soviet Union, a federation spanning from Madeira to Congo. In this very timely collection of letters from the year 1937… Read more: Reading Note: A Little Red Book For Africa