If you are reading this, then my voice has finally become a memory. Perhaps my body is lying quietly somewhere beneath the earth, but I hope my words are still moving among you. Do not remember me only for the day I died.

Dear Godwin Muwanguzi, tell the masses to remember me for the days I refused to surrender.

Remember me as the boy who came from the eastern part of a continent whose history taught him very early on that silence can sometimes become another form of violence.

I was raised by a widow. She had very little, but somehow she gave me enough to believe that I could become something.

She taught me resilience without calling it resilience.
She taught me dignity without lecturing me about dignity.
She taught me that one can have nothing and still give the world everything.

From her, I learned to stand, and eventually speak up, not because I believed I was better than anyone else, but because I could not remain silent when people were being forgotten.

I spoke about injustice,
spoke about human rights.
spoke about displacement,
inequality,
violence,
identity,
dignity,
freedom
and the invisible wounds people carry long after the world has stopped looking.

I spoke because someone had to, and sometimes that someone was me. Sometimes it was my comrade Brother Godwin Muwanguzi and me in the little havens we created at Emerald Hill on the outskirts of Lusaka, Zambia. 

I was not a perfect man,
I had contradictions,
I had anger,
I had fear,
I had wounds that I did not always know how to explain.

I could be difficult,
I could be humorous
even when the world around me
was unbearably serious.

But I tried to remain human,
I tried to remain compassionate.

I tried to treat people with respect, even when I disagreed with them, and I tried to give my voice to those whose voices had been taken away. I feared many things in this life, but perhaps my greatest fear was becoming a man who could see injustice and simply walk away.

I did not want comfort at the expense of conscience,
did not want applause without purpose,
did not want a legacy built merely on being remembered.

I wanted to leave something behind
that could make someone stop,
think,
question,
feel,
remember.

Perhaps that is why I wrote.
Wrote letters when speaking was not enough,
wrote poetry when ordinary language could no longer carry what I felt.

Godwin edited,
I created installations when words alone
could not make people understand.

Galleries rejected me.
I turned empty spaces into questions.
Answers, I discovered myself. 

I turned objects into witnesses,
and indeed I found peace in them.

I turned silence into language
because I believed art should not merely decorate walls. 

I believed art should disturb us.
It should make us uncomfortable when comfort has become dangerous.
It should remind us of the people history forgot.
It should give memory a body,
give silence a voice.
It should give the wounded somewhere to stand.

And so I kept creating. 

Godwin wrote and wrote,
his fingertips burnt with anger,
his brain wore out,
his face became pale. 

Even when people did not understand,
even when doors remained closed,
even when my work was questioned,
even when my voice was inconvenient,
even when I was tired,
even when I was afraid,
I kept going
because there was always
another story that needed to be told,
another person who needed to be remembered,
another injustice that deserved to be named.

Another letter that needed to be written,
another poem that needed to breathe,
another installation waiting to become a witness.

If I ever seemed obsessed with justice, perhaps it was because I understood one simple truth: An injustice against one is an injustice against all. I never believed that suffering belonged only to the person experiencing it.

When one person is silenced, something in all of us becomes quieter.
When one person is denied dignity, humanity itself is diminished.
When one person disappears, a family carries the emptiness.
When one person is forgotten, history loses a piece of itself. 

That is why I could never completely turn away.
Maybe that was my greatest battle.
Maybe I was an unfinished battle myself.

A boy carrying questions that had no easy answers.
A man fighting battles that could not always be seen.
A writer trying to understand a world that often made no sense.
An artist trying to transform pain into something that could be witnessed,
and perhaps I never solved that problem. 

Maybe I was never meant to.
Some problems are not meant to be solved. They are meant to be carried until another generation is strong enough to take them on. 

So, when you bury me,
do not bury my questions.
Do not bury my courage.
Do not bury my compassion.
Do not bury my words.
Do not bury the part of me
that believed tomorrow
could still be different. 

Take those things with you,
carry them.
Give them to someone younger.
Give them to someone afraid.
Give them to someone who has been told
that their voice does not matter. 

Tell them that once there was a boy from the eastern part of Africa who refused to believe that silence was the only option.

A boy raised by a single woman.
A boy who discovered that words could become weapons without becoming violent.
A boy who discovered that poetry could become resistance.
A boy who discovered that an empty room could tell a story,
who believed that art could remember what history tried to erase,
who feared many things, but refused to allow fear to become his master. 

A boy who gave more than he kept,
who tried to be selfless,
who was sometimes loud because silence had become too expensive.
A boy who spoke through letters,
spoke through poetry,
spoke through installations,
spoke with passion,
with compassion,
who worked diligently even when nobody was watching. 

A boy who laughed,
a boy who loved
who hurt, a boy who hoped.
A boy who never stopped asking:
What kind of world are we leaving behind? 

And if, somehow, I am still writing on my deathbed, let my final words be simple.

I did not win every battle,
did not change everything,
did not save everyone.
But I tried, God knows I tried. 

Perhaps that is enough.

I leave this world knowing that my life was never supposed to be measured only by the years I lived. 
Measure it by the lives I touched,
conversations I started,
by the questions I planted,
the courage I awakened,
the memories I preserved,
the people whose stories I helped carry,
every person who stood a little taller
because someone finally told them:
You matter. 

My body may return to the earth from which it came.
But my words belong to you now.

My poems belong to those who need them.
My installations belong to those who enter them and feel something they cannot explain.
My letters belong to those who still believe words can change things.
My questions belong to the future.
And my unfinished battles belong to the next generation.

So please, when the soil touches my coffin, do not let the moment become only an ending. Let it become a beginning.

Do not mourn only the boy who died.
Remember the boy who lived.

The boy who came from the eastern part of Africa.
The boy who was raised by a single woman,
who chose courage over silence,
chose humanity over indifference,
believed that justice should never belong only to the powerful,
that compassion was not weakness,
believed that art could speak when people could not,
who believed that memory matters.

The boy who believed that every human being deserves dignity and understood something until his final breath: An injustice for one is an injustice for all.

If that belief survives me,
then perhaps I did not die completely.

If one person continues the conversation,
one artist continues the work,
one writer continues to write,
one young person refuses to be silent,
if one forgotten story is remembered,
if one human being chooses compassion over hatred
then somewhere, in some small and invisible way,
I am still here.

Do not look for me only in the grave.

Look for me in the words,
look for me in the poetry.
Look for me in the empty spaces I turned into stories.
Look for me in the questions,
look for me in the courage to speak. 

And whenever you see injustice and feel the temptation to remain silent,
remember me, then speak. Not because you are fearless. But because you understand that sometimes courage is simply being afraid and speaking anyway.

That is the boy I was.
That is the man I became.
And that is the legacy I leave behind. 

Bury my body
but do not bury my voice.