The African Child (let’s tell a tale of time through Africa)

I have just walked to my backyard where I saw Africa. The place where life and living are the brown and black side of Antarctica.
Where the sands hot, hurt and the trees rejoice at each other.
Where the animals have become unfriendly for hunt of meal and supper.
There I gazed at the brightness of the sun and how mothers were kind,
Kind to their African children and would give their lives for theirs.

I have just found the place where children were the signets of the future.
Parents touched grace and felt life at the sight of their own – what culture!
Children meant more gold than diamonds and they are the better for silver.
The parents saw themselves in the future and lived on after being severed.
I just met Life for the African mind. Now I can tell why sorrow filled this female African kind.

Who gave ears to the cries of that wailing African mom?
When she cried to the ears of her neighbourhood in her small hut?
From the arms of sorrow and despondence she refused to be freed.
The torture in her heart she would prefer to bear except she met her need.
The greenness of this fate was her unclothedness and she was displeased with it every time. Unease was blown worse when this rang in her heart “when shall I bear in my arms my African child?”

Everyone passed and muttered to themselves when they saw her.
“What is her trouble? Does she want to kill herself?” that was their wonder.
Those who thought they knew among them would whisper “she is barren”.
All attempts to take in had been futile ever since she married.
Some would gossip that she played away her youthfulness in the exuberance of it.
“Or if she didn’t do it, let her show us her own her own womb Child” they defended their myth.



Several moons after days had slept and woke, she found herself always almost throwing up on her cloak.
She thought it was her sorrows that made her sick but time had set on her and like the vegetables must she pick.
As soon as she knew what had been coming about, hmmm . . . ... would you imagine if she had joy or doubt?

On that grey day of scorch from the vitriolic midday sun,
when the pistons and mortars fought and grindstones looked at them and hummed; when people were at war in their own selves and their belly took them for martyr, and the office of every mother was the judge of every matter and clatter,
there announced this cry of the new one from the hut. That cry was the herald of the male messiah – the African child for his despiteful mom.

Need I say the traffic from the whole village for crowd?
The home that became the square of the whole town. Both whisperers and genuine fellows became the same.
They had joy so full that they could not tame. There in the backyard side of my mind I found this tale of Africa,
The tale of how the African child replaces sorrow to become the joy of every mother.