Yesterday’s show on Ujima was a bit scary. Paulette had asked me to host the entire show as she was expecting to be on course. As it turned out, she was around, but I did the whole show anyway despite not knowing anything much about several of my guests.

The first half hour featured two fascinating ladies: Pearl, one of the elders of the Afro-Caribbean community in Bristol; and Dr. Olivette Otele, an academic from The Cameroon who is an expert in the slave trade. I was expecting Pearl to be talking about cricket, but as it turned out she treated us to a lovely folk tale about how Anansi stole the stories from Tiger. Olivette and I talked about several things, including Maroon communities because I knew Nalo Hopkinson would be interested in that.

Next up were my good friend Lesley Mansell from Bristol North NHS Trust, and a young lady called Subitha from Volunteer Bristol. We talked mainly about women’s health issues.

The first hour of the show is available here.

In the second hour I was joined by various poets and performance artists. Isadora Vibes has been on the show before and is always good value. We also had a young lady called China who is (amongst other things) a political activist clown. And we were joined by Jackie from our regular team who is also a poet.

You can listen to the second hour here.