Mkunga Bui Bui Oracle Cosmogram: Anthology: Mkunga Bui Bui Oracle Cosmogram, #2

By Sankofa Ra

This is a creative storytelling anthology of the mkunga bui bui's knowledge capacity to heal and birth. It is a kaleidoscopic tapestry of eight short stories and eight poems. This creative piece is a demonstration of the African midwife's knowing, being, and doing as a traditional African healer of self and community. The mkunga bui bui's scope (eight legs of intelligence) of (1) initiation, (2) connection, (3) manifestation, (4) building, (5) adaptation, (6) nurturance, (7) investigation, and (8) influence construct her knowledge capacity to conduct souls through a successful journey of the cycle of life. This book is one of the four components of the revolutionary self-help toolkit, Mkunga Bui Bui Oracle Cosmogram. The toolkit is a transdisciplinary address to the long-time persistent high black maternal and infant mortality rates in the United States. The anthology book is the second book of the toolkit. The toolkit is a cultural solution for the African American community tangled within a white supremacist socioeconomic infrastructure. Mkunga Bui Bui Oracle Cosmogram is an infusion of numerology, Bantu-Kongo cosmology, and the mkunga's eight legs of intelligence. This toolkit consists of a narrative book, anthology book, instruction manual, and a cosmogram board with moveable pieces. The narrative book and anthology book are released in digital form first to bring attention to the toolkit and build demand for the complete product. Mkunga is the Kiswahili word for midwife. Bui Bui is the Kiswahili word for spider. Author, Sankofa Ra, is illuminating an ancient web of alignment for healing and birthing that predates Western civilization. This is the first of many books and products to come to document and own the narrative of the black midwife's science of healing and birthing that has been temporarily disrupted by the transatlantic slave trade, slavery, colonization, medical industrial complex, and white supremacy. The mkunga bui bui (also known as the black midwife, granny midwife, grand midwife, African midwife) weaves a communal web to unite the wombtress, man, child, and community in the African science of rituals, nature, and spirituality for healthy alignment. This self-help (divination) toolkit will aid the African American community to awaken to their individual life purposes, paths, goals, challenges, and legacies. This toolkit will be an instrumental guide for mental and spiritual dismantlement for five hundred years of white supremacist oppression in North America. It is intended for the African American community to use this progressive and communal tool for reclaiming ancestral wisdom, healing ancestral trauma, stand in one's earthly purpose, and birthing healthy generations. Awaken to the web of care the mkunga bui bui has been called to serve within in the past, present, and future. From the shadows to the frontlines.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sankofa Ra
• Release date: Apr 15, 2022
• ISBN: 9798886271096

Sankofa Ra

Welcome to Sankofa's web of African healing and birthing. She is a native New Yorker, born in the Bronx, and grew up in suburb New Rochelle. Greatly loved and rooted in an exemplary matriarchal household emanating southern hospitality, freedom of choice, family, community, self-care, and sisterhood. ​ A story like her's is a very common and uncommon one. Every summer visited the south to visit kinfolk, like most African Americans, with her master teacher great-grandmother Emma Mae Wright. Everyday learned yoga, nutrition, audience presentation, and a new book from her master teacher grandmother Marie Robinson. Her personal journey with eczema, greeting trees, spiders, healthy living, healing modalities, teaching, social activism, birthing, and thirst for knowledge has molded my mkunga bui bui calling.  Sankofa is a mkunga bui bui (spider midwife) purpose-bound to illuminate the web of African healing and birthing. ​ Graduated and received a bachelor of science degree in business administration from Marist College on the majestic Hudson River. Honored and fortunate to receive a master of arts degree in health arts and sciences from Goddard College during the COVID-19 pandemic. Sankofa also is a skilled doula, ayurvedic counselor, iridologist, holistic practitioner, sacral steam practitioner, and skin care  product producer. ​ ​As an educator, author, numerologist, reproductive advocate, mkunga bui bui, wife, spiritual advisor, doula, community activist, mother, aunt, sister, fabric artist, and indigenous African American wombtress, she is called to be a jegna (brave warrior for culture preservation) of my ancestral legacy of healing and birthing. As part of her calling as a traditional African midwife, she manifested a transdisciplinary self-help toolkit to address the long-time high maternal and infant mortality rates in my community. Mkunga Bui Bui Oracle Cosmogram is a toolkit consisting of four components: cosmogram board with moveable pieces, narrative book, anthology book, and instruction manual. 

Book preview

First Leg of Intelligence

Initiation

brave warrior

Brave Warrior

Water bursts.

Be brave.

Catch and heal with fresh plants.

Mkunga be brave.

Moist body swollen in expansion ready to burst.

Be brave.

Chanting a vibrating ‘ooooooooooooooo’ to channel the universal womb.

Be brave.

Magic oil massaged into the mama’s skin head to toe.

Be brave.

Chant. Rock.

Come down.

Chant. Rock.

On all fours kneel down.

Chant. Rock.

Three hearts dancing. Two hands cupped.

Be brave.

In a trance. The doors open.

White, wet bubble peeking through the coiled bush of kinks.

Be brave.

In the blink of an eye and exhale.

Womb push. Organs, flesh, muscles become one mouth.

Open wide. Say ah.

Bubble morphs into a melon.

Shooting out through the catcher’s hands onto the white mound of towels.

Cord of life hanging out of the mother.

Be brave.

Spirit born anew earth side in the caul.

Ancestral initiation to the mkunga calling.

Be brave.

Be joyous.

Mkunga takes her long fingernail to puncture the sac.

The miniature, white, chalky human opens eyes.

Three deep yawns.

Three brave warriors.

Diagram Description automatically generated with medium confidence

The Initiator

Wet, warm, loving licks on the cheek of a body curled up in a deep trance underneath soft sheets as if back inside the womb waiting to be born. The body grumbles. The warm, pulsating human ball unravels to an ‘x’ formation. Like a rubber band springs back into the fetus position. Her cat resorts to thrusting his whiskers up the nostrils and like an amateur gymnast, rolls out of the bed onto the floor on all fours. Kheki bounces to the window to rest and lick his neapolitan coat—for his morning work is done. The 5’5" figure stretches her branches to the ceiling. Inhaling the sweetness of her vanishing sleep. With a resolved exhale, whisks off to her daily routine in the bathroom to prepare for school and her grandma’s hands.

Warm buttered toast, a palm size bowl of grits with a stick of cinnamon protruding out of the creamy yellow mound, one slice of crispy bacon, and a peach perfectly placed on a handkerchief next to her favorite bright red teacup of sassafras with the right amount of maple syrup. After eating (like the country princess she is), nimbly washes the dishes and cleans off the table to give the cook a proper thank you.

Guardian angel is on the porch humming away with green beans in the folds of her skirt, cleaning, and preparing them from her garden to have for dinner tonight. Rise and shine sweetness. Took you long enough. If it wasn’t for Kheki do’n his work to raise you from the dead, you’d still be there in the bed as if the world will wait for you. Says a mellow, soft voice from a majestic cloud of white hair so bright and luminous that its roots speak of the divinity that awaits anyone privileged to enter sagehood living a life not so kind to her complexion. The wears of the world melted away the harshness and replenished her soul when moving back to the land of her ancestors whose love, blood, sweat, tears, and joy is in the grass that softens the step, the trees that breathe in the sorrow to manifest fruits more valuable than gold, and the plants that talk back to her giving jewels of wisdom for the body, and a soil so rich that seeds grow on its own without toiling. Grandma empties the skirt’s contents into a well-worn bowl that has its own tales to tell. Arms embrace this figure to thank her for breakfast. With a smile and gentle rub on her granddaughter’s back, stand with your back straight, I can smell it coming and you must not bend her grandma speaks as she slips down between the thighs that witnessed the arrival of several babies—some surviving and some not so fortunate. Skin etched like the mountains, deserts, and lands that tell of a wombtress who knows the cycle of life. Weathered, gentle hands remove the head scarf. These weathered hands move so swift and light like a bumblebee unlocking the thick coiled ebony plaits. Massaging the scalp as if this was the gift of only elders to possess and do like goddesses. Drool finds its way imprinting a river on her uniform keeping her bacon grease stain above her chest company. Ah, my morning sunshine you are the best mess I love to love. Did you clean the kitchen? Yes, ma’am, she answers. "I erased all the messages to leave room for the new one to arrive today about