It is no news that we Africans are products of our emotions; this is so evident in our thought process and mannerism, just like the colour of our skin- BLACK. Thus, I am not wrong to say, Africa is the home of poetry.
These unreserved emotional expressions are richly interpreted by our cultures and traditions- "the teacher far greater than that of the classroom system". It is the awakening of the conscious mind, the identification of self and the expression of an inner golden thought familiar to many but garnished and rendered in poetic forms.
This form of art culturally mastered in the home of poetry (Africa) brings out the rhythm, the flavour, the tears, the joy, the fighting spirit, the hope for survival, the morals, the spirituality and the search for the unknown.
However, the reverend lifestyle of the African continent was rudely interrupted by the advent of the Europeans into our tribes, kingdoms and empires in the early 1500's. The contaminated handshake gripping firmly the hands of the African continent was a systematic transmission of a strange lifestyle forced down our throat from the days of slavery up until the colonial era in the 20th Century.
The contaminated handshake, a disease from the West was a total replacement of our norms and beliefs, language, religion, politics, education and socio-economic lifestyle; this disease of over-familiarity abruptly influenced and watered the depth of the African mind.
"THE INTRUDERS!
We are the children of noble birth,
Offspring's an ancestral carriage, ageless pearls!
Once upon a time, we lived in towns that later grew into an elephantine empire.
The Oba remains Oba
Spiritual, philosophical and a sole administrator of all,
With a well organized hierarchy of warlords, councilors, diviners, chiefs and town criers.
Ogiso gha to kpere,
Ise!
Oba gha to kpere,
Ise!
In the said "Dark Continent"
Was a light
The beginning of creation.
Great civilization blessed with precious stones and cultural ethics.
How they marveled at the realization of our peculiar existence, a civilized nation.
They wanted to see, they wanted to see!
Soon came colonial expansion, a meeting held right in the German parlor.
Exploration began!
With die-hard miners mining!
Mining the essence of our pride, our manhood.
Oba gha to kpere,
Ise!
Our gracious existence was first sniffed at by the Portuguese, the dogs from the West;
These gods had no toes but deceit as a skill to trade.
Oh yes! Business is good when there are returns and turn overs.
So were my fathers for so long a tool, their fool.
Coming and Going
The intruders march past our tribes, kingdoms and empires,
With several gadgets of multiple deception:
Through the missionaries, the opium, the brain wash!
Educating our minds with "JUNKS NO LOGIC" (Technology).
Enslaving our true existence,
Sadly a bleak existence our present tenses.
Coming and Going
More from us and more virus in us,
An injection of white blood cells; A.S! S.S!
How our immune for survival is totally dependent on them, The New Age!
Finally in 1897,
The beast in them out ran our moats and warriors,
With a different kind of arrow unknown to us, they unleashed.
Ewo!
Unheard abomination!
My sacred Oba was exiled to Calabar to eat Afang soup with the Effiong's,
While the white oppressor crowned himself, The Oba of Benin!
Oba gha to kpere,
Ise!
The Oba remains Oba;
Though a diluted juice, more or less a punctured tyre of our ancestral carriage.
Yes, we remain proud in the nobility of our Oba!
Where is Queen Idia, the mother of our city?
She is still starched up with the Queen who lives in "Bulky Harm"
When shall I see my home, her endless cry out loud!
But the Queen is too deaf listen in Edo.
The new age is our robotic future
A colonial vulture feeding on our decayed culture,
An era were ogun and other wise gods are seen as dirt, motionless and speechless.
And the Holy Church, a holy matrimony of the same; pro-creating test-tube babies!
Tufiakwa!
Children of Erediawa, Shine your eyes!
The intruders are rude perverts exposing our private parts to a naked shame,
Sweetest Taboo!
And they won't give up not until the Ivory continent is an exact photocopy of their wet dreams.
I guess those days so brainwashed as blind were better of to see,
An era of wise gods, hard work and a good moral standing.
Take me back!
I want to go back!"
I know many might disagree with these claims that the contaminated handshake was rather a light to the African continent. Tell me, how will you feel when I claim to give you what you already have?
As African poets and writers, we are the most fortunate in the globe. First, we have the tool of an enforced language due to colonialism and that our cultural tongue, our mother tongue. These languages (foreign and local), a tool for the expression of our thoughts increases the depth and wealth of our literary works and these literary prowess have been noticed in the past decades.
"MY WHITE PRIVILEGES.
By birth I was privileged to be human like any other
And of the African sunshine I daily rise at dawn.
My colour for so long have been looked down upon and classed;
Meanwhile, we all are students of vanity,
With the supreme being; our teacher, our maker!
The privileges of supremacy are deceitfully wrong, unfollow!
Fashioned to make me less than I am,
In a world that I was born into like any other.
Animals claim superiority and domination over others; the lifestyle in the jungle.
And of the struggle to survive this inhuman act is the black cross;
Carried from generations to generation with such complex.
Will this white lie ever stop?
However, times have changed like the climate!
Most of all of us could pass for the West
Except for our skin that is as dark as their heart.
Now, I have my white privileges even though I am this black in their list.
It is the language they speak and of it I hear so well,
With an untamed tongue to tell these wrongs as long as I live."
Oral literature or Spoken Word Poetry have always been an African art for expressing deep lingering unreserved emotions; however, it was stolen from Africa and re-branded in America and sold back to us as a new form of art (L.I.E.S).
I get really sick when I read poems done by African poets painting Africa like the West using dictions more sophisticated than that of William Shakespeare; Yes it is poetry but I tell you most frankly, you can’t beat the West in the expression of their mother tongue, it is their art.
At this point what should be most paramount in our hearts is the local research of our historic facts and the preservation of those cultural heritage that we can still find after a contaminated handshake through poetry.
Poetry is a veritable tool for expression, so let's speak! We should be seen as 'repping' Africa and not raping Africa- a direct photocopy of the west. We should come up with works that bring back that nostalgic feeling and pride as true Africans.
"THE AFRICAN FEVER.
I love the African fever
And of this I don't want my healing.
It flows in my veins
It rains down on me
Dripping, dropping until I am so cold.
Even when I catch a cold
The sun smiles down on me
To shake off every alien fever.
At crow up until the moon shows,
A taboo I dare not break
As the god's, in wisdom their ever saying mouth.
The African fever, my endless fever.
On her stretcher I daily find myself
As only her oxygen revives me time after time.
I can no longer hide the her in me and the me in her.
As we are forever one.
Her cry in my dreams is deeply heard
As all of my immortal being cries out MAMA!
And from her ebony breast I daily suck a higher fever; The Required Immune Conscious Syndrome.
I know my brothers outside the distant shores do miss,
Her soup and her song
Her rights and her wrongs
Her rise and her fall
Her fall like the Victoria it falls
And for her rise the sun will stand.
The greenness of her green, Herbal!
The mountains, the valleys and the hills, Spiritual!
The people and the will, The Fever!
The rulers and their greed, The rebellion!
The hunger and the endless waste, Our Failure!
And on our skin the fever really shows,
And in our hearts the drum beats survival.
And with the drums rolling and rumbling in a resounding force
Another African child just caught the fever at birth."
I tell you again, the West can never give up their lifestyle to accept our's. Most of all us have ceded over and this has affected our style of writing. Just imagine Ogun eating salad or baked beans, the feeling is Tufiakwa!
This is a clarion call to all African poets and writers, a call to depth, a call to our cultures and traditions that binds; Africa might go into extinction by 2050 that is to say a direct photocopy of the West if we do not change our ways and do a soul searching. "Be African in thought but global in views and expressions."
Examples of what I mean;
“The Calabash, the immortal drunkard
The only friend to the palm wine
My ancestors know you as he who drinks sweet wine
But how much can I tell of you”
“Gone are those days across the clouds beyond
When Sango the son of Orayan, the terrible one
Is called upon and he replies with thunder”
“The iroko tree my dwelling place no longer stands on her feet
On her sacred secret peaceful place is planted a big shrine
Where large smelling mouths shout, Hallelujah
What a slap on my face!”
“The reddish muddy sandy land that grows green herbal vegetation.
The cultural temple of the world second to none
The children of great warriors whose descent can be traced to the nobility of the Oba
Oba gha to kpere,
Ise!”
In addition, the wealth of our literary works which affects our thought process and writing in general can be resurrected from a foreseen decay, if only we can pride in our culture and relate with the locals- visit our home towns and villages.
For more revelations on the Africanism after a contaminated handshake and need to save our continent from extinction through poetry read works done by Leopold Sedar Senghor (The father of Negritude), Davip Diop, Walter Rodney, J.P Clark, Oswald Mitshali, Wole Soyinka; Peter Tosh (Music), Tracy Chapman (Music), The Root (Movie), Twelve Years A Slave etc.
A lost African child who will find you? Poetry is an oath to depth and we African Poets should find this depth in the relics from a contaminated handshake.
Thank you for your time!
Much Love Like Rain. PEACE!
#GodsonOsarenrensArtandLiterature
#GOAL
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