Author/Artist/s:

Turakella Editha Gyindo

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Format: 

Video / Text / Photographs

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Time:

Summer 2025

The centre of this work is the wetland ecosystem surrounding Lake Nyasa in southern Tanzania. Within this ecology, a particular being emerges: Milulu (Eleocharis acutangula), a plant that grows densely across the shallow edges of the lake and its peat-forming wetlands.

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To the people of Kidingili, where my roots are from, milulu is a material and an archive.     When I visited these wetlands, they were held in a quiet and expansive stillness. Peatlands like these are formed over thousands of years through the slow accumulation of partially decomposed plant material. Globally peatlands store over 30% of the world’s soil carbon, making them one of the most significant ecological systems in regulating climate.

But to understand this place only through carbon would be to flatten it.

I think of milulu as a wetland being. This wetland connects ecological processes to social practices, material culture to ancestral memory. Milulu carries a dual life. It moves from lake to hand to mat to home. Traditionally, it is woven into mikeka (mats) and baskets. These mikeka are used in prayer, in ceremonies, in everyday acts of sitting and gathering.

Today, milulu weaving continues as an important source of livelihood, especially for women in communities surrounding Lake Nyasa. In this way, the plant is part of a living economy. It is seen in knowledge passed through generations, through hands, through repetition. These practices exist within what could be understood as a form of paludiculture, although such terminology rarely captures the depth of local knowledge systems that have long practiced this balance.

PERSONAL MEMORY

My relationship to this landscape does not begin at the lake itself, but through my grandmother - Bibi Mligo.

I grew up with her in Dar es Salaam, in Kijichi, at a time when the area was still open with less densely built life. As she grew older, she came to live with us, carrying Njombe with her through different social and community practices. Mats and baskets were always present in our home, both as decoration and an extension of her body, home and memory.      

As a child, I remember walking with her near the Kizinga River, searching for milulu. She would tell me stories of Lake Nyasa, of how her aunties entered the wetlands to get the milulu, she spoke of how the knowledge of when and where to go was as important as the act itself.

Now, I return to these memories with different questions.

What does it mean for a plant to carry both ecological and ancestral knowledge? What forms of knowledge are held by women whose labor is often unrecorded? And what happens to these landscapes when they are seen primarily through the lens of resource?

PEOPLE / KNOWLEDGE HOLDERS

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This project is grounded in relationships.

It begins with my grandmother, Mligo, now 97 years old, whose life has been shaped by the wetlands of Lake Nyasa and the practice of weaving. Her work is part of a lineage from her to those around her, including myself.

It extends to the women of the Kidingili community: Se’ Gadau, Mama Eniadi, Mama Bariki, Se’ Kyando, Dada who continue to work with milulu today.

Credits:

Peatland:

Lake Nyasa 

Artists and Contributors:

Research, Concept, Text, Images, Sound, Video: Turakella Editha Gyindo

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Song and story: Mligo

Local conversation partners: Aurelia Mligo, Se’ Gadau, Mama Eniadi, Mama Bariki, Se’ Kyando,Sofia Kyando

Yohana Gyindo, Oygen Gyindo

Curation and transdisciplinary research coordination, editor of Swamp Cosmologies: Suza Husse

Creative and technical support online publication: Kim Bode

Time period

Summer 2025

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A work commissioned by the art and research platform Sensing Peat at the Michael Succow Foundation for the Protection of Nature, partner in the Greifswald Mire Center. Sensing Peat is funded by the Andrea von Braun Foundation.