Hello! Tnàmoufègnê!

Tnàmoufègnê? This is ‘hello, how are you’ in Susu, my father’s language in Guinea, West Africa. It’s a coastal language that I also use playfully with friends in other port cities like Los Angeles, Accra, Valencia and Osaka since we’re all a bit watery in ways. My uncle Emanuel wrote the English-Susu dictionary for Indiana University, Bloomington. I’d like to help you pronounce Tnàmoufègnê, but I can’t. Susu is digitally marginalized. It’s almost available on ChatGPT, but not yet. Why? It’s a conversation for another day… one we will have VERY soon. Let me start here instead.

Papa’s memories of rain-soaked days and flip-flops, where leaves glistened and deep puddles formed and you sometimes waited under an awning for the blinding rain to lift, other times – because it would rain for weeks on end, you carried on about your business, wet. To be in rainy season is to be in conversation with the sky. Also the soil, the pavement, and the sea.

It’s wet season. I’ve been thinking a lot about wet seasons over the past few years here in NYC as they’ve established and intensified. The wet and dry seasons also mark how my family plans, though we are across three continents now.

Today is a fine day to introduce DORAMODOU, an evolving concept inviting your participation on these two seasons across the seas, of land and sky, and you and I.

DORAMODOU will be an ecologist’s exploration of changing seasonality.
DORAMODOU will be a newsletter about the wet season and the dry season, in turns. In metaphor. In reality.
DORAMODOU will be dedicated to cross-genre writing and artistic expression.

I will publish DORAMODOU based on seasonal calls and on commissions.  I will also publish long-form interviews.
If you want to jump into the winds and seas with me, sign up.

Wo nuwali. Thank you.
- Makalé