Someone Else

Yankari Game Reserve

 

I’ll go back there some day, return and stand

underneath that row of gmelina trees,

I once dug at their roots with my own hands,

buried childhood treasures. Some memories

 

mixed in with the earth, inseparably twined

even then and more so now, turned to dust - 

as I too have crumbled, tumbled, groped blind

through miles of different grasses, chimneys, rust.

 

The town will have changed – in likely parallels.

Will she recognise my thumbprints, my footmarks?

Will I know the slopes of her surrounding hills?

Does the road home run straight past the Co-Op still,

the gmelinas still peel off their silver bark?...

I forget - that home belongs to someone else.

It has been a vague dream of mine for the longest time - to go back to the towns of the Sahel/Sudan Savannah in Northern Nigeria where I grew up. If you are a regular here, then you know me and my odd hankerings. Nothing new, just want to go home to Africa! :) That's one of the reasons why Fiji felt familiar, it combines many of the features of the Sahel towns of the previous century with a bit of modern internet and a different terrain.

The Net is a mixed blessing, because the satellite images are accessible, but I couldn't find anything there in the maps - my school has disappeared, the neighbourhood where we lived, the sports club, nothing is visible. Well, naturally - it's a long, long time since I was there. 

The population meanwhile has gone from 81,000 to 670,000 so everything must have been demolished and rebuilt to accommodate that growth.  I know I won't recognise a thing, but still, I just want to go stand there once. Unlikely in this lifetime as the security situation is not so great, travel advisories are firmly against foreigners' venturing there, so veering towards impossible. But one can hope. And dream on and write... 

Build me a home...somewhere on the fringes

There’s a peace in the fringes of the desert,
in untouched yellowed grasses of the earth,

sands marked with only antlions and birdprints,

in the cricket’s song and the pale moon’s rinse

on the unmarked path that’s barely a path.

It’s not that I have not loved the cities

the streets of bookshops, artworks, topiaries,

the tempests in the endless cups of tea

the bustle of trade, the quick repartee -

but they’re all smoke and change, nothing’s at peace.

In the capitals some or other tribe

jostles for power, takes a random swipe,

narrow minds and narrow rules deal hard blows

to ones they called neighbours just days ago

and peace is a stranger to urban life.

The sands are ever changing, ever still

the antlions likely still pockmark the Sahel,

the birds still sing, the trade wind brings and pours

a fine mist of dust wisped in from the north

only the grass trembles, the rest is tranquil.

But that Sahel’s a figment, just a dream;

the sands are churning, the grasses aren’t serene

some manic sickness has taken sudden hold -

and the innocent suffer all round the world

no antlions those, they’re something else it seems.

Build me a home where humans have forgotten

to aim and shoot, sharpen the war obsession,

where the Sahel and the green are both peaceful,

the olive shades the white dove and keeps her cool,

where ships are only transport and not weapons.