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And like all women in the Klan
She married at a very young age
She had lived there all her life
She always worked very hard,
There is always something for her to do
Her household responsibilities were unlimited.
She just went on and on.
Working in the farm or
the garden at the backyard patch
collecting fire woods or plowing the soil
She rarely fall sick she rarely fall tired
and if she does.
She uses to cure herself with home remedies .
She is her own doctor and nurse
She knows what leaves could heal
What fruits vegetables and weeds
Can cure several kinds of ailments
She never saw a modern doctor
Never in her life stepped in a hospital.
She never believe in what we call modern implement
Or what she came to call 'oyinbo' things(white man)
In my childhood, I remember my grandmother telling tales
all these stories from her grandmother time
as we sat around her easy chair
while slowly her hand could pass through my hair
Looking for lice that always make me itch
I like the feeling of her hands on my hair
As she talk about her past telling us stories
About the animal kingdoms, the people in history
Tales from the tribe,
stories that frighten us and at times make us cry
as I grew up I learned that it is part of the culture
to instill fear or happiness on the children through stories
so that they may grow up knowing good and bad
Till today that culture has never changed
And I hope that it will never change.
I adore the tales by moonlight
Bridging the gasp between us and our ancestors
Story telling is an oral tradition,
it complemented a people who had little or no education
and therefore depend on audible traditions,
It is our way of life to breach the gasp
between us and our dead,
as we speak by the dialect of our birthplace,
a mixture of pidgin and native slang's
Here absence becomes a thought,
the presentation of a picture
across the endless Africa plains,
naked memories arose
from the contemplation of a thought
voices and faces of these the record bears.
Grandmother was very much at heart a traditional woman
The herder of flocks and sharecroppers
she was a cook and nurse for the family
ever since my grandfather died
the household responsibility where all hers
I always wanted to learn about anything and everything.
That granny taught me,
I have always wanted to follow in the
footsteps of what she believed in
Whether it was the story or whether it was history or culture,
The lust is still here today
I am still learning about things I needed to learn about
Things in history the heritage of the enslaved
to learn about my roots.
I love the arts in my culture more than anybody in my family.
I have always been there within the festivities of blacks
As the gong beats its testicle
I danced the steps I knew like everyone else
When I was in the tribe I live under the skin of the drum
Dancing with its rhymes
it is what I liked to do with my grandmother
more than anything else-
Exploring my heritage today,
The rhymes and the intonations
Of west Africans' speech
I suddenly thought how lucky I am
I am exited by my dialect
A mixture of English and 'pidgin' slang's
Using it in my poem take me home again
The home granny tell about
Yonder in time of yore
before the white man comes
I intone the language daily
To which the past found secure
I enjoy the similarity of the dialect
How the two entities fused
Interacting with my thoughts
My study of heritage past
Them in me, alive and well.
We live a poor life
So much poverty on people
at an economy level same as that of a city dog
yet so much wealth of culture,
happiness in arts in all it acts.
urdeen