I often see, hear, and feel hints around me,
Of the ancestral homeland I have never met,
But know of
From the people, stories, and the traditions
Passed on;
Much woven into my DNA,
Evident
In the rhythm of my hips
And movement of my feet
With steps I knew
From childhood,
When encircled by elders
–Dark brown clapping hands ushered on
The skilled footwork of the coy child
Dance, dance,
“Eh! Eh!”
The child smiles shyly,
But honors their request,
With steps that mimic
What she has seen the others’ dress shoes do,
Alas savory smell of a hot soup wafts through the air,
Enticed hungry bellies hurry away from the impromptu dancefloor,
For the beloved dishes awaiting in the next room;
Tiny child hands eager for puff- puff and Fufu
Are re-directed to “wash first”
As the music plays on,
It is the now outdated Makossa sounds of the older generation,
But the tiny ones care not,
They find joy in the sounds,
And this is how they too come to learn,
Ancestral wisdom,
Unknowing the aged messages in the footwork
And the drumming;
The drumming,
in songs,
That helped generations of our peoples,
In Africa,
and in new worlds;
Music that links siblings
Oceans apart,
in this great diaspora
From the motherland.
Tag: Cameroon
Pre-Colonial Truths
Daughter of an immigrant,
Callouses of colonial bonds keep me tethered,
To a past always out of touch,
Wanting to know my people,
Longing for a home that has been fragmented,
I am perpetually in mourning,
Of what truths,
now post-colonial,
I can never know.
Rio dos Camarões
My family,
They are shrimp,
In a draining stream,
Being made ghosts,
Like their ancestors;
In a homeland
Intruders named
Rio dos Camarões
7/30/2018
In the Trees
I have family
In Africa,
In Cameroon.
Family,
Whom I will likely
Never meet,
With histories I may never learn.
Most likely to be erased
by active deletion and plunder,
replaced with rubble and shells, and unrecognizable human lives,
No,
My family,
They do not live in trees.
Post-colonial,
Christianized,
Westernized –“Civilized”,
And they simultaneously have lost, honor and shun their pre-colonial heritage,
And they speak English;
And Meta,
and Cameroonian pidgeon (some do),
And many other native tongues,
Mais, un grand nombres d’entre eux ne comprennent le francais (“But a large number do not understand French”),
In a country
C’est effaser l’angophone (“That is erasing engish speaking/ the english speaker”) .
And they are hiding,
In the jungle,
For their lives
Colonialism,
In different pigments,
Different uniforms,
Different flags,
But never dead,
Again rears its head,
Fled from their homes,
Their villages,
Their farms,
their fields,
Their land
Living now
as refugees,
Hiding behind,
between,
And in
the trees.
But not Ne Julie,
My aunt,
Whom I will never meet,
She says
She will stay
She is diabetic,
She is too old,
Too fragile,
To run,
To keep up,
to survive,
among the trees.
7/30/2018
She of Letters 