The author
Maud-Salomé Ekila is Congolese and lives in Kinshasa. She is a journalist, reporter and director.
Pan-Africanists and grassroots activist in Congolese civil society, she is spokesperson for Urgences Panafricanistes, the citizen organization and movement of Kemi Seba.
She worked for several years for Congolese television channels and radio stations as well as on several channels broadcasting in different French-speaking African countries, Europe and the USA.
For 2 years, she directed the private television channel Télé Haiti, of which she was also the editor-in-chief in Port-Au-Prince.
She produces historical and current affairs documentaries and today produces and presents two geopolitical and current affairs programs on the media “Afrique Resurrection”
Maud-Salomé Ekila devotes a large part of her work to the duty of memory, to the fight for respect for human rights on the African continent and to the fight for a more equitable society based on sharing and solidarity. His work focuses on Africa and Afro-descendant communities around the world.
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, as well as for a new system of economic, political and social functioning more in line with African paradigms.
In 2012, she became communications manager for Doctor Mukwege for whom she worked for 10 years, mainly on Transitional Justice issues. During these years, she will coordinate a project to support victims and survivors of sexual violence. A professional experience which was characterized by intense work on the ground in DR Congo, her country, for which she has immense love.
“Kesho” is his first audiobook and 2 musical cartoons are extracted from it. She is working on volume 2 as well as volume 3.
Why did you produce KESHO, 13 Histoires et Nursery Rhymes of Africa?
“Becoming a mother changes your life. Motherhood changes the body, but above all the mind.
As a Congolese journalist, pan-Africanist and activist, I have always wanted to find these parts of History deliberately erased from books. A History torn out and removed piece by piece in an attempt to make the many cultures and spiritualities of the African continent disappear.
This need to rediscover our specificities, our identities, our songs and our lullabies has increased with motherhood.
I quickly noticed that it was not easy to obtain children's works, books or sound traces of nursery rhymes from Black Africa. Our numerous writings are themselves difficult to find, thus conveying this false idea that Africans operate solely on a tradition of oral transmission. Fortunately, Africans and Afro-descendants from all over the world have managed, as best they can, to preserve 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 transmitted values and our memory to us through tales and other forms of stories.
It is important to remember: “A people without memory is a people without a future.”
So it was obvious. The popular lullabies I sang to my daughter needed to be compiled into a book so 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 other continents be able to discover these wonders of African heritage, these wonders of the world. "