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