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.

Amii Omara-Otunnu