Umoja instead of Unity

Something that tends to happen in altruistic spaces is they are usually led by men who identify as white and, regardless of whose leading the mission, rarely do people talk about race in these spaces, the implication of someone identifying as white, or even whiteness as an identity at all. But the presence of it, with the continued identity being held by those who either identify as white or identify others as white, is still there.

So we’re addressing this head on by using the word Umoja instead of Unity (which is what Umoja means in Swahili). Because, yea, in many ways it could be easier to just call our work the Wellsprings of Unity. But we’re choosing to use Umoja because we want to directly address the impact of how these ideas of identity either connect us or separate us.

And, in doing the refining womb-aligning work of WellU, we have evolved these ideas to truly support connection. I mean, in some ways we haven’t needed to evolve the ideas. We just needed to acknowledge the implication and stand fully in it.

Like blackness for instance. One way that many people define blackness is simply having African ancestors. But there’s also the, also, generally accepted perspective that all of humanity comes from Africa. So in that way, wouldn’t all of hue’m’nity be considered black?

However, some ideas do need to be turned on their head in order to support the intention of an all-inclusive, sovereign wellness oriented connection.

Like whiteness, which is fundamentally – when held as an identity – an identity based in separation. To be white is not be colored or black. So this idea needs to be evolved in some particularly distinct way if it’s going to support connection. So, what WellU’s Counsel of Guides have done is we have taken whiteness out from an identity and turned instead into an experience that everyone can have from within of a celestial star like white light that shines ever more brightly when held in the blackness of the WombVerse.

So, in evolving these ideas, we use Umoja because it’s based in Swahili – a language that was created by many different African tribes and nations to be a bridge between them. So, in utilizing this language in our title we are holding the fact that we are calling in an identity that we can all share, that addresses the issues of racial politics head on.

And, just one more note on blackness. The reasoning of an African ancestry of hue’m’nity, while being a strong one, doesn’t have to be the only anchor towards a universally accessible identity of blackness. We can also relate to blackness as the black experience we all had while being created in a womb, the black soil by which our food is most nourished, or even the black cosmos of which we ascribe so many of our aspirations and dreams. Whatever reasoning you can find yourself within, we believe it to be accessible to anyone with the desire to find an identity based in connection and so this is why we choose to emphasize it by utilizing Umoja in our Fellowship’s title.