08/06/2026
“Uphila kuwe, Uphila nakum’.”
It’s Throwback Thursday, and with World Lion Day next week and a few hundred new followers (thank you for all the love, seriously🧡💛), I’m going to reshare Ingozi’s Project Khumbula feature today with a promise that Cabara’s is coming when the season is right for it.
I planted two pots of African marigolds for Ingozi and Cabara this year because they’d come up in oranges and yellows — for a decade in artwork and telling their stories, I’ve associated the color orange with Ingozi and yellow with Cabara and her girls: the colors of Africa’s skies when the sun rises and sets. I spent several months a long time ago building their entire family tree — every cub in the family from here in the U.S. to all across Europe and Australia, color-coding each one as orange or yellow. In what seems like a perfect occurrence of divine coincidence, the first two flowers that shot up were a yellow and orange pair, and then three buds came up the following week — one taller than the other two, all three flowers yellow, one for each of their girls.
Energy never dies, even when the body does. It just changes form, and the undeniable signs that those we love are still with us do always come back to us through nature, where we are all connected to each other.
Ngizokukhumbula njalo, Ingozi Ingonyama. 🧡
