The author
Maud-Salomé Ekila is Congolese and lives in Kinshasa. She is a journalist reporter and director.
She worked for several years for Congolese television and radio stations as well as on several channels broadcasting in various French-speaking African countries, in France, in Belgium and in the USA.
For 2 years, she will manage the private television channel Télé Haiti, of which she was also the editor-in-chief in Port-Au-Prince.
She makes historical and current affairs documentaries.
Originally from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Maud-Salomé Ekila is a militant pan-Africanist and devotes a large part of her work to the duty of memory, the fight for respect for human rights and the fight for a more equitable society based on sharing and solidarity. Her work focuses primarily on Africa and on Afro-descendant communities around the world.
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Through her works, she promotes the self-determination of African societies and the learning or rediscovery of identities erased by colonization and slavery.
She campaigns for a reconstruction of black Africa based on unity and deep respect for its identities and cultures.
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Since 2012, she has been working for Doctor Denis Mukwege for whom she is in charge of communication and spokesperson.
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"Kesho" is her first audiobook.
Why did you produce KESHO, 13 Histoires et Nursery Rhymes of Africa?
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"Becoming a mom changes your life.
Motherhood changes the body, and especially the mind. As a Congolese journalist, Pan-Africanist and activist, I have always wanted to find those parts of history deliberately erased from the books. A history torn and removed piece-by-piece in an attempt to do away with it, in particular, the many cultures and spiritualities of the African continent.
This need to rediscover our specificities, our identities, our songs and our lullabies has grown with motherhood. I quickly realized that it was not easy to get hold of children's books or soundtracks of nursery rhymes from Black Africa. Our many writings are themselves difficult to find, thus conveying the false idea that Africans operate only on a tradition of oral transmission.
Fortunately, Africans and Afro-descendants from all over the world have managed, as best they can, to conserve our rich cultural heritage, sometimes paying for it with their lives. For thousands of years, our ancestors have preserved these treasures, generation after generation. They sang us nursery rhymes and imparted values and memory to us through fairy tales and other forms of storytelling. It is important to remember this: "A people without memory is a people without a future.”
It was therefore obvious. The lullabies I sang to my daughter had to be compiled into a book so that other moms and dads could find them. So that those who have been deprived of their roots, whatever the reasons, can find pieces of them and never lose them again. May moms and dads from other cultures and continents experience these wonders of African heritage, these wonders of the world. »