Transcription of Oscar Mokeme for the show Interdependence, #95
Dr. Lisa: I always enjoy being in the studio with a fellow healer, and today’s guest is Oscar Mokeme, from the African Center for the Sacred Arts at The Museum of African Culture. He’s the co-founder and executive director, but he’s also so much more. He is a healer, and, in fact, has been introduced to me as such. Somebody that suggested to me that he be on the show, and this is what they said. They said you need to have this person in for that reason. We also have with us Lila Hunt, who is the marketing director at the museum.
Thank you for coming in today and talking with us.
Oscar: Thank you. Thank you very much.
Lila: Thank you.
Dr. Lisa: Oscar, the museum has had several different names and has been in at least a couple different places, but it’s had some staying power here, in Portland. You’ve had a lot of support, from what I understand.
Oscar: Yes.
You told me yesterday that it felt as though Portland needed this, and needed the museum, and needed you to be here. It called to you.
Oscar: Yes.
Dr. Lisa: Tell me how that all began.
Oscar: Well, it was a long time ago when I was in college, and it was 1982, I think. I was on spring break, going back from UK, and somehow, I lost my train ticket traveling from London to New York, New York to Boston. In between New York and Boston, I couldn’t find my train ticket, and a man offered to pay for my ticket. It happens to be a guy who owns the Mexicali Blues, Mexicali Blue, and his name is Pete. So Pete paid for my ticket, and we became friends.
After my divorce, he asked me to come to some Old Port Festival in Portland, Maine. I’d never heard about Portland, Maine, ever in my life. I took a trip and said I’ll come up. Then I felt this synergy in Portland and Maine, that is a pull, like I had to be here. There’s something here.
What Pete shared was he collects Mexican art, and I shared my passion and love for African art, and we talked about collecting art and what they represented, and he kind of stated that Portland, Maine, is an art cultural city, that I will love it. When I came, I knew that I had an incredible collection of African art. I thought that could add to the cultural nature of what is here already, so I stayed. I felt the state of the spirit of Maine invited me.
Dr. Lisa: The African art that you have is from where you lived before you came here.
Oscar: Well, yes. I started collecting from Igbo culture, and then I spent in Nigerian culture, and then I began to travel throughout the West Africa, exploring old families and old artists. I’m mostly interested in ritual and ceremonial implements and objects. Then from there, extend to Central Africa, Southern Africa. My collection covers Sub-Saharan Africa. I didn’t really work a lot in Northern Africa because the North seems more Arabic in style and culture and traditions, so mostly Sub-Saharan Africa. My quest was to visit every community, every village and find something every town and cultures within Sub-Saharan Africa, so the collection started to grow.
Originally, the idea was, when I was 16, I had this essay I did for the World Health Organization about preserving a culture, and that earned me a fellowship to travel Europe and visit centers and museums. While I was at the museum in London, I went into African art. I felt those were not properly displayed, or informed. I was a 16-year-old, but I’m going to build a museum someday. That madness is what led to my addiction in collecting African art and hoping that someday I want to build a museum.
Dr. Lisa: So the madness of being a 16-year-old with this addiction to African art has now brought you to Portland, Maine. Are you continuing to collect African art?
Oscar: Absolutely, absolutely. I prefer to collect from the villages and from communities in Africa because when I do that, I get to learn who made those objects, what they were used for, who, what chants, what language, what form, what families owned them, and what are that art that is related to that particular objects and how they’re used to communicate ideas. Because typically in African cultures, what we look at as art are not meant to be art in those communities. They’re meant to be medicine or tools used to communicate ideas based on convention of what society that made them. Those psychological containments embodied in the art are deeply what my passion and interest is.
Dr. Lisa: I want to talk more about that because I find that very interesting, but I want to ask Lila, why did you come to be interested in the museum, and why did you make this your work?
Lila: I’ve always been interested in Africa, and I’ve wanted to travel there for many years. I was introduced to Oscar at a Tanzanian fundraiser and we just shared our love for the African art, and called me in and it was great. It was very interesting and I love the museum, and I think it’s very powerful with all the pieces, and just having Oscar as such a healer, also. That drew me in.
Dr. Lisa: Let’s talk about that healing aspect of things. That’s how I introduced this whole segment, as that you are a healer. I think somebody called you a Medicine Man when they got in touch with me.
It’s a very different sort of healing than I think we talk about in western traditions. Your healing and your abilities were something that came to you through your family.
Oscar: Yes. I think we believe that when God made us, He gave us different gifts and abilities, and within my family, there are different gifts that are given to different people. There are people who have the gift of knowledge, and the gift of understanding and wisdom, gift of prophecy, and gift of touching and singing and movement.
I think that the gift that was given to me when I was created was a form by God. If I became a human being, was the gift of vision and seeing and having that deep understanding as I see certain things. In most cases, I don’t know what I’m seeing, but when I’m in that state, I can talk about. I start talking about things, and it’s up to the people to hear what has been said and so I have that ability to be able to see certain things that people don’t ordinarily see, and feel people’s energy as I feel it in my body. I can touch certain aspects of the body, and I can be guided to see, do this and do that, and I can put that together and put it in those parts of the body and that person gets well. I think thinking of that aspect is to think from the end, to think from the harvest. The harvest in that aspect is a comprehensive wellness approach.
Dr. Lisa: Is this something that people seek you out for? Do they know that this is work that you do? If so, how do they know this?
Oscar: Through Dr. Lisa’s show.
Dr. Lisa: So they’re going to hear this interview and they will know and they will come find you.
Oscar: Yes, they’ll know more.
Dr. Lisa: But clearly, people knew about this before because they contacted me to say that you should come in and be a guest.
Oscar: Well, I don’t really have a marketing tool or advertise what I do because I think that the practice is such a, it’s sacred, and it’s not like a hamburger that you buy at McDonalds, and so people who have, somehow we get in touch and they experience that experience, will tell other people, and it’s just word of mouth telling different people, and they will come and say, “Well, somebody said I should come and see you.”
I’ve also had different workshops, and seminars where people can gather, and I will do a presentation. Some people try to test the water to see if this is real, and I’ve seen often when I do workshop there are physicians, and there are researchers in the audience. I’ve done healing the healers in Iceland. I’ve done workshops at Harvard, I’ve done workshops at Columbia, especially after the 9/11, and led about two-week session in New York, and so many places. Vanderbilt Medical School, UNE, working with doctors and physician assistants. This gets around, and people come to do seminars and to explore ways of gaining certain tools they can use in their own practice.
Dr. Lisa: What you’re describing goes beyond the more traditional idea of physical healing, and it does get into this spiritual healing. In fact, it’s the African Center for the Sacred Arts, so there is this sacredness, this spirituality. How do people respond to that when you say to them something like, in order for you to be healed, you need to work with your spirit?
Oscar: There are people who understand, and there are those who don’t. There are those who have tried so many practices, some modalities, and still are stagnant or stuck in where they are. Somehow, when they come to one of my presentation – it could be the New Moon ceremony or the Mask of the Month event – and then they can experience how I work with other people. Then it opens up that spiritual aspect of themselves that they have never explored. It’s a “wow” moment for somebody to realize their real spiritual being. Tylenol can actually stop a headache temporary, but when you connect to the source that gave you life, which is inside of us, that is where the healing begins.
A lot of what we see in medical practices are like bandages, where we put a coat over your wound, but if you can actually go to the source of the wound by tracking it, that is what the healers call tracking or journey, with a person to get to the beginning of it, and begin there to correct the corrosions to start from the beginning to where we are now. That brings about a wholeness in healing, a completeness.
People are often challenged when they hear about spiritual healing or transformation, and that is the only way we really I think we can heal and overcome certain obstacles.
Dr. Lisa: You also work with healing through art, and in fact you work with MECA, here in Portland and you have a very strong presence in the art community. How do you blend the art and the healing and to help people to transform through the art that you offer?
Oscar: Well, like I said, growing up with what we see as African art, they’re not art. They’re tools used in healing. That is syringes. They’re the laboratory where you go to get a blood test, so when you look at the art the way that … The art has a power. There’s an intention behind composing the art.
When I teach at Maine College of Art, I want the students to define who they are. Who are you? It’s from that aspect that you can then create exactly what you think it is that you are. You have to understand who you are completely and then explore those elements and whatever feelings and emotions that we have in us, and from that place, you can begin to see a way to communicate that process. With MECA students, and MECA community, we have a parade we call Ebune, which is coming up on May 5th, and it’s a procession of the Ram. This is probably about the 10th year it has been around.
What I do with that is to create a theme of healing. It could be clarity as a process, and people who are not clear about their journey can come to the workshops and they’re in the vocation of the Ram, making masks. I want them to focus on what is it that you’re not clear about. If you have one thing that you need to clear, what is it? That becomes a release, aspect of making something.
When we talk about rituals, rituals are sort of prayers that you have. The key to the healing is to be able to recognize and when you recognize what it is, and you’ll be able to name that thing, and then you can then remove yourself from whatever obstacle those things are, and that can become not essential, but of us, then you are healed from it. That ritual of making something and naming that thing and removing that thing from us becomes a process of healing.
When you look at a mask that is yellow in the face, it talks about that mask brings about healing, and then you begin to process what aspect of you needs to be healed through looking at that contact, and you make a contact to a particular spot in our body that needs to be healed.
If we lack strength or vitality, we’re not motivated, so we look at the mask with horns. Those horns becomes a contact point that activates and charges that strength and inner power of ours. I want them to connect that strength in them. Some people don’t really know they have this inner strength, or inner abilities to manifest what they desire. They want somebody else to do it for them, so when you use the symbol such as horn, and the color yellow to bring about their focus into themselves, a lot of things do happen.
People that, when we look at the mask, we did teeth. Teeth represents the rule of law, which is the greatest law is love, and you can ask them who do you love? They say my husband, do I will say, “Okay, do you love your husband more than you love yourself?” And it goes “Oh yeah, I give them everything.” I say, “So you love yourself less than you love your husband.” They’d be like, “Oh!”
So there’s a lot of confusion filters in. “Do I love this guy more and I love myself less?” A shift begins to happen in them. “No, I need to love myself more.” So if you love somebody less than you love yourself, you’re actually on the right path, because you’ve got to love yourself more and when you have much love for self, then you have plenty to give to your husband, to your children. But if you feel you love somebody more than you love yourself, then you don’t really have love. You’re just patronizing those people to care for you. You’re again being dependent on somebody else, thinking that is love. This is how this art are used to kind of change the way people look at things, and what they’re looking at will change.
Dr. Lisa: One of the terms that you brought up during my conversation with you yesterday was spiritual bankruptcy, that you feel that perhaps in this country, and maybe not specific to Maine, but perhaps in the United States that we do have a spiritual bankruptcy, a disconnection with the spirit. Why do you think that this has happened?
Oscar: I think because we focus more on material desires. There’s a lot of passion for materialism. If you see me driving a Rolls Royce, people will like you more. If they think you live in a very nice community, a village, such as Cape Elizabeth or Falmouth or Foreside, then there’s a classification of how you are looked at and perceived. Your zipcode talks a lot about who you are, the kind of car you drive, but then we forget the innerbeing, the being in us.
We don’t look at people who they are, what gifts and qualities, what is their connection to the source, what is their connection to the spirit. A thief can have a Rolls Royce. A thief, a person with nothing in them but evil intentions can live in a very nice neighborhood and still revered by people, but the very kind person who’s very generous, who’s devoted to the service and bringing glory to God’s name can live in a very different neighborhood, and people wouldn’t even recognize them, so that is a bankrupt of being connecting to the spirit.
When I look at this society, and not just America, the world is becoming that spiritual bankrupt in the sense that we’re all being driven by our material desires and not connecting to the spirit that thirsts and hungers for our connection, and especially connecting with each other. We’re not connected with one other. We probably think that certain people are better than other people, but we don’t recognize that all people have something to offer in the world’s society.
Dr. Lisa: What about the connection with nature? Is that something that you think has become less important over time to people who live in this country?
Oscar: It has absolutely become much, much less important, but it’s coming back with programs like this and a lot of publication. There’s a lot of people who are connecting. It’s like we’re reaching back to nature. Perhaps it’s the, it might be guilt or fear of the global warming, so to speak, that people talk about global warming, and everybody panics. There are truly people who are connected to nature, and this source of creation, and there are people who want to connect because they are afraid of what may happen.
I’ve been to churches, I do services in church and different places. Sometimes you see a lot of people who come to church, and these are people who may come to my workshop, and I say, “Do you think this Jesus guy actually came here to save you?”
They’d be like, “No, I don’t think so.”
“So what are you doing in the church?”
“I’m just there to meet friends.”
“So you’re using church to make friends for your own self-interest.”
“I guess so.”
So, you see? People can sit in a church, and thinking they can make a change, or in the mosque or synagogue. It doesn’t matter how long you sit in a garage. You can never be a car, and in some way, it doesn’t matter how long you sit in that church, that spiritual essence cannot manifest unless you’re actually, truly sincere and honest that you want to transform that spiritual aspect of yours, and you don’t need to be in the church to manifest that. You can be in nature.
I’ve talked to kids in high school, and said, “Have you ever touched the grass or a tree?” And they say, “Oh, tree hugger.” So there’s a really struggle with, again, technology, influence of technology into our children’s life, and into our homes, distracts our kids and people from connecting with nature. It’s essential that we send our children, and not just our children. We go to the ocean. We go to the mountain. We spend time in the woods. We be in silence and reconnect with that essence and listen.
We don’t listen enough to really hear what the universe may say to use. We’re always talking. If you hear people praying, they’re always talking. God, give me this, give me that, give me that. They never listen to hear what is God actually saying to you. We’re busy vomiting the things we think we want, but we’re not listening to hear what the feedback may be. These are all spiritual bankruptcy in my view.
Dr. Lisa: Some of the work that I know you do through the museum has to do with food.
Oscar: Yes.
Dr. Lisa: I’m wondering what the relationship between food and culture and spirituality might be. Why has this become an important part of what you offer?
Oscar: It’s all connected. Some people way we’re vegetarians, some people say not a vegetarian. At times, I would take students to a farm or to Nigeria, and I say who’s a vegetarian? And that will show who’s not. What do you want to eat? They say they want to eat chicken, and I says, “Okay, you see that chicken over there? Catch it.” “No, it’s such a little bird.” But chicken we buy at Hannaford Supermarket is a bird.
If you are a vegetarian, the vegetables you eat are plants. These plants have life in them. And they approach them with love and respect, and let the grace they carry feed you. When you kill an animal violently because you want to eat them, that animal that you ate, the energy goes into us, and actually evokes certain, triggers certain violent aspect of our being in us. When you’re making medicine, you approach a plant, you speak to the plant, go tell the plant what you want to do, then you pluck it at certain time of the morning. That essence gives you the complete medicine that you need to work with to help somebody, but if you go to a garden and just pluck a plant, you actually provoke the plant. That plant is not giving you love, so this is that essence of planting your vegetables, gently plucking and communicating with your plants, and then cooking it in your kitchen.
A kitchen is one of the most sacred spaces in our homes. That is where you prepare the meal to feed your body and your mind, and your children. Can you imagine husband and wife partners who sit in that kitchen arguing while they’re cooking. That energy goes into the meal. This meal contains water. Water is powerful. Whatever emotions you’re expressing, water captures them. So you take this water that you’ve poisoned and cook a meal in argument, you put the meal on the table, you actually feeding on a poison, and there’s no love in it.
The sort of education I want to do with we’ll call it participatory edible exhibition. People have to participate in that meal the way it is exhibited is it’s cooked with love, with prayer that made this meal, whoever planted this vegetable may the hand they use be blessed. May the plant crop itself, the seed that germinated those plants, we give thanks for them. This meal is prepared serenely and very special and is served, and often, the meal is blessed.
It’s like having in holy communion in a church, and that is what we try to offer when you prepare a meal with love and conversation around it is discussed with love, it brings family together. It’s synergy of healing that takes place during those things, and my hope is that when people experience this participatory edible exhibition, they practice it at home. How to be mindful of the kind of food they buy. I was told you have to patronize to buy a food or crop that are carefully grown. If you eat meat, what farm do you buy your meat? The chickens you buy in the package, wrapped in plastic, where do they come from? How long have they been around? Even though you bite them, do you bless that animal? Do you offer prayers or just rip it up and put it in the stove?
This being mindful of what we feed our body. Like our thoughts, it’s very essential in our healing. Just a word we say to ourselves, our food, the word you say are prophecies. These are thoughts, thoughts are energy. Remember, they say that God created the universe with word. Let there be light. He say that, and there came light. If you say to somebody, “I love you,” they can hear you, and they can feel it. If you say to somebody, “I hate you,” they move away from you. So these are words that have energy. If you say to your partner, or if you don’t say to your partner, “I love you, I care for you,” they’ll be wondering if you really do, even though you feel this in your heart, but if you don’t say it, the other person don’t, the energy doesn’t come out.
It’s what sort of words do you speak around your kitchen? What sort of words do you feed your mind? What sort of words do you feed your children? These are very important meal to feed our whole being, and that is why we do this culinary edible exhibitions, and we want more people to come to it.
Dr. Lisa: Lila, what types of events do you have going on within the African Center for the Sacred Arts at the Museum of African Culture?
Lila: Well, we have a bunch of monthly events coming up, and our first one is a coffee ceremony on April 30, at 9:30 in the morning at the museum. We will explore some Tanzanian art and then every month it will change to a different exhibition. We also will have children’s museum activities as another monthly event, and a mask discussion, like Oscar had said based on the theme or the expedition that we have in the museum.
May 7th, we also have a new moon ceremony. Do you want to expand on that?
Oscar: Well, the activity’s coming, that’s the Tanzanian exhibit coming at the Portland Museum of Art, so we hope to partner with Children’s Museum and the Portland Museum of Art to create different experiences. The exhibition will be at the Portland Museum of Art as an art display. We want to share Tanzanian culture and spiritually at our center. At the children’s museum, we want to have activities where the children can make masks and get involved and learning about this culture and mask-making to express themselves and who they are. We will be on the museum’s website and children’s museum will share that website.
Every month, we want to this new idea of Mask of the Month. Mask of the Month is where we pick a particular mask at the museum, it could be dealing with letting go, and people would gather who may have issues they want to let go, and they will explore that idea of letting go. It could be idea of a theme about limitations and restrictions, so we look at issues where people are stagnant. Is this limitation self-imposed? Are these restrictions self-imposed? Or is that something they inherited? Is that something they married into? And have ways and rituals to get themselves out of it.
The New Moon ceremony comes every month. When there’s a crescent moon, we have this program, and the idea is that we use the crescent moon to create an idea, an intention that you want to realize by the full moon. If it’s a healing, we start discussing the issue when there’s a crescent moon, using the lunar cycle to manifest a particular issue that must be completed by the full moon. If it’s a release, when the moon begin to go away, we begin to release and let go those things that doesn’t work for us.
Then, of course, the culinary dinner once a month. We’ll come to explore the idea of sharing a meal and preparing this meal, and having the communion and connecting with the spirit of the food that we eat as we nurture ourselves. Of course, first Friday monthly at work will be open to show people what we do. There will constantly be different exhibitions coming up and we have three main galleries: the contemporary gallery, the heritage hall is where we try to showcase art from different African communities that have made Maine their home, and then a permanent collection is a world-class collection of masks, which has no equal match as far as I know.
These are the sort of programs that we’ll be doing, and more programs will continue to merge. We’ll continue to have educational outreach program, where we go into schools or schools come in to us. We encourage a lot of schools, or people associated with schools, to reach out and bring our program to their school. We have lending library of resources. There are patch kits that schools can check out from our center, like you check out books in library and bring them into classrooms, so there’s lots going on. We also have travel exhibit collection of particular-themed objects that can travel to other university galleries or other museums, and I will continue to collaborate with a lot other non-profits and communities to enrich our world.
Lila: You can find out about all of our events on our website as well as our Facebook page.
Dr. Lisa: Well, I appreciate your coming in and speaking with us today. We have been talking with Oscar Mokeme, who is the co-founder and executive director of the African Center for the Sacred Arts at the Museum of African Culture, and also Lila Hunt, who’s the marketing director at the museum. The museum is right here in Portland. I encourage our listeners to find out more about the museum to engage in some of the events that you’ve described, and to go visit.
I think that this is an amazing cultural resource for the city of Portland. We’re very fortunate to have you here.
Oscar: Thank you. Thank you very much.
Lila: Thank you.