Close your eyes. Imagine that childhood game of hide and seek you used to enjoy. Imagine your surrounding, the bushes, the open ground. Then the seeker opens the game by shouting the words Ready Ready....
That is how the game of love is played in most parts of Africa, where most people are shy in matters love and romance. A place where love is confined to the shadows.
Are you ready for a short journey in this hide and seek of love?
The first part reminisces a childhood love; bringing back all the fond memories of that period. The second part is a collection of short poems and musings that tethers between that which is sane and all that which is crazy. It can only be poetically defined as an escape from "freedom". The "freedom" which isn't really freedom. The confined freedom, the imprisoned freedom.
I whispered to the wind a story
The story of a girl in a village
A village in the highlands
The wind gossiped to the sun
Mocking his love affair with the moon
Taunting the sun’s boastfulness
That he dies every night
For his lover, the moon, to rise
The sun got enraged and burned with fiery anger
Jealous of how one loved this village girl
Now listen to this famed story
That made the sun jealous
Our first song
Do you remember?
Me and you singing to those Christmas birds
The ones that fly lazily in huge flocks
Do you remember?
Begging the birds to come to us
Singing songs that taunted them to fall to the ground
Do you remember?
Me and you
Singing to our hearts merry
Calling the birds sweet names
Seducing them with our childhood voices
Do you remember?
How happy we were then
Don’t you ever wish for that moment?
A snippet of that childhood happiness
A Childhood Wedding
Do you remember our wedding?
Down by the stream
Our invited guests being the cattle we were herding
Our wedding march being the bleating of goats and sheep
Do you remember our wedding?
With a pretty you under a torn mosquito net
Not holding roses but the flowers of random weeds
A cake made entirely of mud and baked by the sun
Do you remember our wedding?
How vibrant your smile was
How confidently you said “I do”
How you were the most beautiful bride ever
