When the Church Is the Clinic: Faith-Based Health Advocacy in African and Diaspora Communities
Exploring the legitimate and complex role of faith institutions in community health—from HIV prevention to mental wellness—centering African and African American church and mosque contexts. Public Health · Ubuntu Village For many of our communities, the first healer was not a doctor. It was a pastor — or a praise singer. Before the clinic opened, […]
The Drum as Sun: Ancestral Fire Rhythms for Leo Season
Ubuntu Village · Medicine of the Senses: Sound · Ancestral Wisdom The drum was calling us toward courage long before the stars had a name for the season. On July 22, the sun crossed into Leo, and the astrology apps lit up with talk of confidence, creativity, and solar fire. West African and Afro-diasporic communities […]
What Your Cells Remember From Uganda’s Red Soil
Ubuntu Village · Science Meets Spirit · Ancestral Wisdom & Public Health Long before scientists named it epigenetics, communities in Uganda already knew the body carries more than genes — it carries the soil, the songs, and the survival of every generation before it. Science calls it epigenetic inheritance — the study of how experience […]
The Holiday They Gave Us: Colonialism, Syncretic Survival, and the Road to Kwanzaa
Ubuntu Village · African Diaspora Culture · Cultural Reclamation Before colonizers gave us Christmas, our ancestors already knew how to mark the sacred turning of the year. Every December, a version of this holiday appears on nearly every continent. Lights strung in windows. Gifts changing hands. Carols floating through market air. For many of us […]
The Kenyan Genius Nobody Talks About: How Ordinary People Are Building Machines from Scrap Metal
Ubuntu Village · Community Power · Kenya A pile of scrap metal. A dirt floor. And a machine that shouldn’t exist — except that someone decided it would. Somewhere in Kenya right now, a machine is being born. Not inside a multimillion-shilling factory. Not in a university laboratory. Instead, it is taking shape in a […]
Science Doesn’t Need Permission from Spirit—and Spirit Doesn’t Need Validation from Science
Ubuntu Village · Science Meets Spirit · Ancestral Wisdom Science doesn’t need permission from spirit — and spirit doesn’t need validation from science. We’ve been taught to choose. Pick a lane: you’re either spiritual or scientific, a believer or a rationalist, someone who prays or someone who measures. But in African and Indigenous worldviews, this […]
Understanding Archangel Tzaphkiel: Divine Wisdom and Sacred Transformation
Before there was a name for the intelligence that holds the unformed, there were mothers. Yemoja, who governs the primordial waters of Yorubaland — and who became, in the crossing, mother of the very ocean that tried to swallow her children. Nut, arching her star-body across the sky of Kemet, who swallows the sun at […]
Your Donation Isn’t Charity—It’s an Investment in Our Collective Liberation
Ubuntu Village · Justice & Advocacy · Community Power The savior industrial complex doesn’t build power. It builds dependency. Every year, billions of dollars move from donors to communities framed as needy, and very little of that money comes with an invitation for those communities to help decide where it goes. That is not generosity. […]
Kenya Just Made History: What the New Traditional Medicine Policy Means for Ancestral Plant Wisdom
Sacred Plants & Spiritual Wellness · Ancestral Wisdom & Public Health · Kenya This is communities’ knowledge finally being met with the recognition it was always owed. Kenya has announced a formal plan to fold traditional, complementary, and integrative medicine into its national health system — with a policy, a research center, funding, and legal […]
The Violence of Visibility: What It Costs to Be a “Model” Nonprofit
Ubuntu Village · Justice & Advocacy · Community Power They want your story. They don’t always want your power. I have been photographed more times than I have been funded at the scale that would actually change what my organization can do. I have been featured, quoted, celebrated, and put on panels. I have also […]