Letter to my Maternal Great Grandfather
unruly concertina: a tiny experiment
This morning, after a sleepless night of lower back pain, I finally got the chance to start exploring simple book structure prototypes for my next ancestral book project, ‘Letter to my Maternal Great Grandfather’. Sadly, I don’t know his name (yet) as my mother is in spirit and I have little contact with her side of the family, all of whom live/d in the Punjab. Hopefully, I may find his name one day.
My mother told me that her grandfather – my great grandfather – had gone to work in Kenya on the railroads, for the British Empire. He managed to return home with enough money to build a two story farmhouse for the family. This is where my mother was born and where her family continue to live. He set us all up for generations. He’s part of the big mash-up that means I got to be born. My great grandfather was most likely an indentured labourer, perhaps very skilled, recruited by the British late eighteenth century to work on building the ‘lunatic line’,
‘…the infamous 600-mile railway that linked Uganda and Kenya with the port of Mombasa on the Indian Ocean.’
My great grandfather probably saw this as his only chance to escape poverty and make a difference to his family. Punjab had been ravaged and raped by the British Empire, with taxes of up to 90% extolled on farmers. He was likely packed into an overcrowded ship, sent on a three year contract of indentured servitude and promised payment and a return journey at the end.
Many men didn’t make it home. Either perishing under the gruelling and abusive work conditions that the British imposed, or having their wages and return journeys witheld. Either for a few more years or for good. Many men also stayed on in Kenya, bringing their wives and family over. My Mum said that we still had family over there though she declined to give me names or places.
Experimental concertina makings for my Letter to my Maternal Great Grandfather book project. Love the size, the bindings. Well worth experimental time especially as I usually launch right into a project. The concertina form feels right for this book, pages folded into each other. Unravelling them feels like unravelling a story, a family line. Making sense or not of a lunatic line. Echoes of railway lines unfolded.
Prototype materials: old eco/rust dyed paper/card. red thread - embroidery floss. waxed cotton thread. drop cloth. old silk ribbon. ecodyed strip of cloth. just stuff hanging about. nothing new.
Like my last ‘Letter to my Great Grandfather 1’ book, I’m imagining into the spaces they may have been. Asking questions, asking my great grandfathers what and how they may want me to create this story? An ancestral collaboration. I don’t know if I do ‘contact’ them at all, it’s not about that. Rather it’s a feeling back into the family line and connecting with the space where they be ancestors now.
There’s a deep alchemy in this creative process that I just don’t understand except to say, something happens. Something shifts. Something heals.
I’m feeling a weird anticipation, a shroud of strange sadness filling me as I feel into this book project. Unsettled. There’s work to be done. Right now, I’ve a pile of old, vintage and handmade papers layered with leaf mulch and earth resting in the garden. Rain-soaked, gloom-sky-soaked and hopefully moonshine-soaked too.
Soon they’ll be unearthed. Dried. Printed, marked, written upon. Sewn together. A letter to my maternal great grandfather to say Thank you. We are here because of you. Thank you.
