We recently went to Guinea Bissau to research the guerrilla schools of the mangroves. Instead, we soon became ourselves the apprentices and the first lesson we had to learn was how to walk. If you walk straight, placing your heels on the ground first, you promptly slip and fall in the dams of the flooded mangrove rice field or you get stuck in the mangrove mud. You need to lower your body, flex your knees and stick your toes vertically into the mud, extend your arms forwards in a conscious and present movement. In the mangrove school the learning happens with the whole body.
Mangrove School
Sónia Vaz Borges
2022 00:35:16 Portugal, Spain, France, Guinea-BissauGuinea-Bissau CreoleColorStereo16:9HD videoDescription
About Sónia Vaz Borges
Sónia Vaz Borges, is an assistant professor in History and Africana Studies. She describes herself as a militant interdisciplinary historian and long-time social and political organizer.
Born and raised in Portugal, she is the daughter of Cape Verdean immigrants to Portugal during the colonial occupation. Vaz Borges has a passion for interdisciplinary history, with a great focus on the silenced histories of people, and people’s actions and roles during historic moments of socio-political change.
The liberation struggles and social movements around the world and the international solidarity, in relation to the fields of education and memories are some of her research interests.
Her militant interdisciplinarity is made through an anti-colonial, decolonial and militant research and writing. Her most recent book Militant Education, liberation struggle and consciousness. The PAIGC education in Guinea Bissau 1963-1978, was published in 2019.
The interdisciplinarity of her research practice can be found in various exhibitions and in film production.
Together with a collective of militant filmmakers, Vaz Borges co-authored two short pieces. They are “Navigating the Pilot School” (2016) and “Skola di Tarafe / Mangrove School” (2022).
Currently, Vaz Borges, is working on a research book proposal, grounded on her concept of the Walking Archives.