Why ‘akoo maku’ as a name for a clutter clearing business?

So you might be wondering - why akoo maku as a name for a clutter clearing business?! I landed on the name talking to my mother, who suggested akoo maku (literal meaning in Arabic - there is something, there isn’t) to conjure what’s present and absent in our lives and homes.

Akoo maku is also a play on a very common, typically Iraqi greeting - ‘shaku maku’ - which translates into ‘what’s here, what isn’t here?’…in other words, ‘what’s happening, how are things going?’

Perhaps one of the most profound things I learned from a childhood growing up in Iraq was the value of hospitality. Whether you had a lot, or next to nothing, offering hospitality to friends and strangers alike was held in the highest esteem. Over the years, this early experience of hospitality informed so much of my life and work - it became a kind of practice I brought to community work, to cultural activism, to neighbourhood organising…

In many ways, when we start to clear what’s cluttering our daily lives, we create space to become more hospitable - more hospitable to ourselves, to other people, and to what wants to come through in our lives but keeps getting sidelined. I believe in hospitality - in how we honour the person, or people, in front of us. I believe the ways in which we receive others, and ourselves - matter. Perhaps the invitation of akoo maku is to pause long enough to ask: what’s here, what isn’t, what no longer needs to be…and what am I yearning to welcome in…?