The moon was smiling at Grandpa's homestead
I could hear my clansmen pounding the leather drums
Crickets chirping and owls hooting
This was the African night I longed for.
Grandpa laid asleep
His face up, while his back faced the earth
He was among the fallen heroes of the Hamlet
Sleeping six feet below a pile of sand.
Grandma sat on a wooden stool
Chewing on her youthful days
As she munched her chewing stick
Her eyes staring into the future as she thought about the past.
My child! She called out
Come sit close to me
Under the luxury of this moonlit night
Let me tell you a story
A story with which I'll write history
On the clean slate of your childhood memory
Let me tell you what my father told me
About his father and the fathers that were before him.
Once, your ancestors were giants
Men that wrestled with leopards and lions
Men that fought with tigers for tribes
These men carved the ivory mask of Benin
They made the furnace that fired the terracotta
They carved the Calabar statues with elongated arms
They danced to the tune of the Tom-tom and Kakaki
They lived the written literature of Moremi, Mutanda and more.
Your ancestors were great men
Their braveness the height of the Kilimanjaro
Their love for one another flowing like the Nile
Their strength like the raffia ropes of Ikot Ekpene
Their African spirit was wild fire in the harmattan
But like your grandpa,
They died forgotten as their red caps lost its colours
The day they died,
The African spirit fell asleep
What killed the African spirit
Was the question my innocent childhood lips could mutter
Change!
The white change
As the church bell rang from afar.
Grandma pointed at the crucifix
There lies the reason
That cathedral sent the African spirit to sleep
It made us cast away our sack cloth and follow the cotton cassock
We lost our fathers because a man came to teach us how to say our father.
And like sheep, we ate the wheat and weed from the pastures of the pulpit
And till today, like sheep, we obey the shepherd and not the master.
© Ifiokobong Etuk
(KING of the QUILL)
