AFRICAN LOVE SONG
Oh! My love
Are you just not the finest?
Woman of my dreams!
The time has come to harvest
Our long-nurtured love
Just look how our Odo has bloomed
Swelling like a pregnant woman’s bosom
It roots have burrowed deep like the Kuma tree
Holding us tight like the string holds the ends of a bow
Perhaps this tree is that seeded by Okomfo himself
Perhaps that is why we are inseparable
Just like Mama and her Misa songs
My heart! Oh my life!
Just yesterday we were so young
Full of gusto; youthful exuberance
Playing in the dirt; naked and reeking of cow dung
I remember how tenderly you played mother; such brilliance
Such Henna you showed the other kids
Even my naive heart found that hard to miss
Those days in your father’s backyard
Where I stealthed under the cover of my friend darkness
Just to embrace you; a meeting most often cockeyed
But it was worth it; I couldn’t risk losing your Odo
And forever sink in a gloomy abyss of dolor
My love!
Even our dates in the forest
Where I always battled blood-thirsty mosquitoes
From making your beautiful legs their feeding spot
Yet here we danced - like the Europeans vividly described by Uncle Nkansah
A rather peculiar string of body movements called Sarsa
You would laugh; happy…your laugh, the rarest
My bride-to-be!
A lagim – you know I do
So tell your father these words my heart beats;
Soft thuds with resonating echoes so
That I am coming for you with gifts
Cola nuts, palm wine, finest Kente in all of the Ashanti Kingdom
To claim my bride; I am taking her. YES! Away from stale boredom
And when all that is over
And you are truly mine
I will sing accolades in your name, my lover
Drunk in love and wine
I will roll your waist beads in my fingers at night
And protect you like the panther defends its young
May the gods of the north and south bless this light
And I shall hold my love tight
Like a drunkard holds on to his calabash; no wrong
Te vielang. Nnasonki odo.
This poem is my humble attempt to try and recreate the love process in pre-colonial Africa. While most of the practices the poem talks about have given way to modernity, some are just too good to let go of and are performed alongside the modern Christian and Islamic weddings. Paying of bride-price and presenting gifts to the the family of the bride are some of those that are still widely practiced, especially in my country Ghana. As I was born in the late 1990s, I personally have never experienced such pure African love or saw it either. My grandparents however did tell me stories of how it was before modernization took over. In the poem, I used several words and phrases taken form some of my nation's local dialects. Ghana has a lot of dialects by the way. Most common in the poem is my mother tongue "Waali", spoken in the Upper West Region of Ghana. Other dialects used include Twi-the most popular and of the south,Hausa- widely spoken by Muslims in Ghana(not a tribe though) and other countries like Nigeria and Kasem- also of the north, to the east. Below is a glossary of the words and phrases used and the language in order of appearance in the poem.
Odo(Twi): n/v meaning Love
Kuma(Twi): n name of tree. Legend has it the great priest Okomfo Anokye, planted a Kuma tree in modern day Kumasi. The name Kumasi comes from Kuma, and it means 'under the Kuma tree'
Okomfo(Twi): n meaning priest
Misa(Waali): n meaning Church
Henna(Waali): n meaning Kindness
Sarsa(Twi): n due to the common Twi accent, certain English words are pronounced quite differently. This is an attempt to express the Twi pronunciation of Salsa
A lagim(Kasem): phrase meaning I love you
Kente(Twi): n a fabric or home made cloth of the Ashantis. Made in Ghana, they're some of the most beautiful clothing made in Africa
Te vielang, Nnasonki, odo( Waali, Hausa, Twi): phrase meaning We are beautiful. I love you, my love. A blend I made with words from the three different dialects
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images taken from Google. Signing out... Peace