The following poem (My Heritage) is by Amii Omara-Otunnu.
Photos: Wikimedia Commons
My Heritage
I’m a musician
At high noon
Primed to sing
To light the path
To praise the deeds
Of those who spread love
But I’m a bee with stings
To bleed to shame the haters
Fracturing the human race.
In case you are blind
In case you are deaf
To my heritage
I learnt my craft
Along the Nile Basin
That husbands the mighty river
The lifeblood of civilizations
That cradled human life
To flower into human dignity
On a grand scale without divide-and rule
Where on its glorious march
I was baptized
With its ecumenical water
Then fed on the gospel
Of the Creator’s grace
Making us all
In Her image.
In the same Nile Basin
My forbears held
The moon
In reverence
The same moon
I watch in awe
The same moon
Other people gaze at
Wherever they are.
With stern duty
The elders tutored us:
Obong dyang ma malo
Lubo ma piny,
That as social products
Our inheritance deserves note:
Like mother like daughter
Like father like son,
We must be in harmony
We must treat as sacred
Our common heritage.
Over the centuries now
I’ve been a Janus-faced cactus
Ecumenical to the core
That’s defied neat category,
Defiant even in adverse climate
I’m abundant with rich medicine
For the wellness of the universe.
When on the off chance
I meet Pan-European bigots
And their Euro-Negro acolytes
Fed on the diet of supremacist racism
Infected with evolutionary myths
Who ask the tribe I belong to
I grimace to them with laughter:
I belong to a family
I belong to a clan
I belong to a people
I belong to the human race
I belong to the cradle of civilization
But I don’t belong
To the ashes of evolutionary myth
I don’t belong to any pure tribe,
My heritage is the light of humanity.
To all the people basking
In the relic of evolutionary myths
Come to the Nile Basin for a lesson
To open your mind and soul
To the ecumenical melodies
To the cleansing dances of life
Generously offered by the mighty river.
