'blessing the boats' was healing journey for artist

Sekou Sundiata didn't set out to make a grand statement about life and death. At first, he just hoped the words might help him get better.

He'd had a kidney transplant in January 1999, after more than a year on dialysis because his withered kidneys, damaged by high blood pressure, could no longer pump his blood clean. But recovery sidelined him, too; the New York City poet and playwright's hands shook so badly he couldn't write. He couldn't read, either, and 50 pounds slid off his body as he swallowed drugs to keep his body from rejecting the new organ.

He couldn't work, but when Sundiata was invited to participate in an artists' reading series of works in progress, he took it as a challenge. With a deadline in front of him, he figured he'd have to find a way to beat down his symptoms. So he started writing stories, little tales about the people he'd met and the experiences he'd had as a transplant patient.

"I was just trying to collect these things, and I realized that I had many, many stories," he said.

By the time he read, and heard his audience's enthusiastic response, he knew he had something. But it was new. He'd never been an autobiographical writer before, but the more he wrote, the more the themes felt universal. In time, those therapeutic scrawlings became "blessing the boats," a solo theater show that opened in 2002 and has since been performed in more than 30 cities, including this year's Spoleto Festival USA. Sundiata will present a free "conversation" about kidney disease at 5 p.m. Sunday at the Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture.

Spurred mostly by the high rates of diabetes and high blood pressure — two health problems that disproportionately plague African-Americans — South Carolina is among the nation's leaders for the number of people per capita on dialysis, with the patient loads rising each year. Between 2002 and 2006, the number of people on dialysis in the Palmetto state spiked nearly 20 percent, to more than 7,000 people, according to the National Kidney Foundation of South Carolina.

Currently, about 580 state residents are waiting for kidney transplants. Without a transplant, patients can still live for years if they get regular dialysis treatments, which stand in for the kidneys by cleaning and filtering waste and toxins from the blood. But the treatment is like a job in itself, eating up days each week, often at an outpatient clinic where patients must sit still while tubes shuttle their blood from their body to the dialysis machine and back again.

"blessing the boats" blends spoken-word performance with bits of stand-up comedy and music and video recordings that outline Sundiata's experiences with the illness. The show follows a long, powerful tradition of using art to raise awareness about diseases and health disparities.

But despite the prevalence of kidney disease — one in eight South Carolinians has it — awareness remains low, and because hypertension does its damage quietly, many sufferers don't know they're sick until their kidney function is decimated and they need a transplant. Although Sundiata said he can't be sure whether "blessing the boats" has dented the creep of kidney failure, he is encouraged by the positive feedback he gets from audiences.

He has joined with the National Kidney Foundation and organ procurement agencies across the nation to provide literature about the disease during his performances and lectures, and people often tell him they were moved to sign organ-donor pledges after his show. But unlike in-your-face public service announcements and highway billboards, the education is more subtle, a lesson laced with humor, compassion and surprises.

"Art can — it doesn't have to, but it has the power to — allow us to imagine the other, or to imagine what seems like impossible," he said. "Art has the capacity to really make us see, when facts and figures only have us looking at something."

Reach Holly Auer at 937-5560 or hauer@postandcourier.com.