MY CHILD

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)