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AFRICA IS THE COLOUR OF BLOOD
(For Africa & her Owners)
our history
is of the color of blood
a cauldron of legendary betrayal
the doleful transition
from royalty to slavery
from botched freedom to servitude
our history
is the clinging of merchants’ chains
of broken partnership
to sudden ownership
through middle passage:
escravos
badagry
mandinka
asante
till stanley met mutesa
but… he was no friend of ours
our history
is that of a hospitable man
who now run errands for his visitor,
the unsuspecting grandpa
who shattered his testicles
by forcefully sitting on them
our history
is the partitioning,
the renaming of kingdoms,
the redrawing of boundaries
after the dawn of 1884-
conrad. achebe. azikiwe. awolowo. lumumba. mandela
nkrumah. fanon. cabral. sankara. neto. ngugi. kenyatta
our history
is that of brothers’ wars. in-fighting
the desecration of the land
with the blood of its people
nigeria. biafra. rwanda. south africa. liberia. algeria.
congo. senegal. cameroun. sudan. zimbabwe. somalia.
our history
is the accent of hisses
from the drumbeat of failed revolutions
the aryan garrison of imperial honeymoon
the unwholesome migrations to the west;
our best brains in flight, in search of usefulness
our history
is the tearful muezzin of globalization
the fall-out of imposed pauperization
imf. worldbank. united nations. o.a.u
na dem own you
our history
is the unfounded resentment of africanization
unbridled love for westernization
christianization
islamization
ours are pitiable brains
bleached clean with the detergents
of foreign catechism
when my children are born
I shall tell them
never to be so hospitable
as to allow a visitor
serve himself in the kitchen
About the Author
Ifesinachi Nwadike is a Street activist, Editor, rapper, essayist, poet and playwright works had previously appeared in Ngigareview, Ake Review, ANA Review, The Sun Review, Praxis Magazine, Black Boy Review, African Writer and a host of other credible magazines. He is the Founding Editor of Ngiga Review and Co Facilitator, Ngiga Book Club. He lives and works in Lagos
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