Poems in Celebration of Black Africa


 Poem - The African Child Will Dance


We speak of you, Mamaland
What our Ancestors have said of you

We dance to your drumbeat
Hills, rivers, lakes, and farms  

All that tell of your story

The music in our streets, markets, and malls… 
Taxis and motos

All that tell of your story

We are told to sing,
We are told to tell that the African child shall dance

This is the wealth of our home

An Economic Development college student now based in the United States, 22-year-old Natasha Muhoza (pictured) of Rwanda recently released an African pride-filled poem called “The African Child Will Dance,” featured below.
The self-described “writer, poet & artivist/womanist and Rwandanist-Africanist Lawyer-in-Training” recently spoke about her love of her homeland, after having one of her poems featured in a collection.
About the importance of writing poetry, Muhoza said, “I carry with me a sense of duty to my country and I have a natural inclination toward literary works.
“Writing is the best way I can live with myself.”
In “The African Child Will Dance,” Muhoza describes the Africa she knows:

POEM: MY BLACK SKIN

  Look at me – how tall and proud I stand!

The curls of my kinky hair, my nose, my full lips, my broad hips and round buttocks!

My beautiful dark chocolate skin…it clothes me, it embraces me and tells me who I am.

Look at me and be illuminated by the brilliance of my eyes…

Behold the embodiment of utter beauty and intelligence,

The epitome of creativity and diligence, all of this, locked within this supple Black body.

Look at me. Please, tell me what you see?

Do you see a sex object? Or, do you see an African Queen?

I am an imperial being, who knows my mind, one I assure you, who will not be left behind.

Look at me; do not be fooled by my beautiful smile, but listen to the words that I say.

From Africa I arose! Some of my ancestors – enslaved from birth!

Now, here I stand – a living testimony to the many battles fiercely fought and won!

I carry the weapon of intelligence and still I will fight…the adversities, disadvantages, and social stratification! The segregation, discrimination, and absolutely countless frustrations!

Look at me – know that I will fight for what is right!

Why did you decide to be my oppressor? Or, even be an aggressor?

Who taught you to hate so much?

Why do you continue with the senseless murders, oh violent vipers?

But like Nelson Mandela, Marcus Garvey, Malcolm X and our prophets of old,

I fight for freedom and will fight, to preserve the integrity of my Black skin!

Look at me- I see your greed;

the greed from which you devised your pyramid schemes.

You stole Black history, to design and justify your perfectly racist society.

By your education, I was brainwashed and slumbered many years in ignorance.

Now, I no longer sleep.

I rise and I wipe the tears of bloodshed, plunder and rape from my eyes.

Yet still I cough and sputter, from the choking smell of your gunpowder.

Look at me, I forgive you and I have made it my destiny never to be like you.

Wrong is wrong and the colour of my skin will never make your many wrongs right.

Despite your hate and oppressive systems, I learned love and I thrive.

I push forward,

knowing the power of the spirit that lives within me,

the spirit of Mother Africa.

POEM: MY INVALUABLE ‘BLACK’ LIFE

Mother, what is the monetary value of a human life?

Are humans weighed pound for pound, like slaughtered goats and sheep?

Or, are humans bartered and sold like bags of cotton and sugar?

Do you think the returns are good for enslavement, dehumanization and murder?

Why are our people hunted and shot down like game? Are we sport or food?

Mother, tell me, what is the monetary value of a human life?

Why do we work and maintain the money hives, with little to no reciprocity?

Perhaps the value lies in guns, diseases, and abject poverty…

Mother, they celebrate and boast about plunder while we quietly watch and suffer!

Mother, I insist that you answer me! Your life, too, was taken, because of money!

My daughter, my love child, why such rage?

Cast away your bitterness — this is unlike you!

Why do you ask that question? When you already know the truth?

Money cannot buy a life; death for love is the only true sacrifice.

Like Jesus, this is what generations of your people, have been doing for you…

We fought on the battlefields mighty and proud!

They had guns and they were many!

But we gallantly chose death, to save you.

Daughter, the value of our lives has always been our intense love for you.

Now our spilled blood — like liquid fire — flows through your veins,

So look at the world, my love, and put a smile on your face!

You have such a pure and untamed energy;

Your very hair grows to defy gravity!

Nature simply adores you; so much that even the sun has kissed you!

My daughter, I smile, your fiery African spirit makes you truly mine,

Go now, tell the world our story; let them know that our people are divine.

 
Cressana Williams-Massey
Born and raised in Jamaica, I am pursuing my Master of Philosophy in Chemistry Degree and the focus of my research is on extraction and the characterisation of natural products from various species of plants in the Genus Pimenta; these are plants known to have medicinal properties. I am very passionate about social issues and believe that it is my duty to help fix the various ailments of the Jamaican society where I can. Therefore, I dedicate my time and energy to volunteer work or just educate Jamaicans about Black history (especially the ancient Egyptians) so that they can find out who they are, rise out of the victim mentality, and simply take charge of their lives. I have received several awards, including national recognition for my community service activities. In the year 2011, I was awarded the Governor General Youth of Excellence Award for the parish of Westmoreland in Leadership and Achievements. In that same year I was given another award, which is the Governor General’s National Youth of Excellence Award for the county of Cornwall. Subsequently, I was recommended to serve as a Justice of the Peace for the Parish of Westmoreland and was installed in August of 2012. Consequently, I am currently one of the youngest serving Justices of the Peace in Jamaica.

POEM: YOUR SILKY, POWERFUL BLACK SKIN

Your silky and powerful Black skin is Life. 
It is much needed in this world full of dead wills.

Your silky Black skin is authoritative, 
A reflection of Humanity’s bronze age, 
Cogent, dynamic, everlasting, and fruitful.

That is why my people will always be fly; 
This is the promise this poet made to our Sun and Moon and Sky.

Your powerful Black skin is Love and much needed in the world that is harnessing hate and lust.

You are the old prophets’ oracle: Africa of old renewed at the turn of this next century 
Eternal Well of satisfying spiritual waters  

Please quench your Children’s hunger!

All the billions of dollars in the world you have spent to buy these Africans; 
You call it investing, 
Yet you are fighting the words of this emancipating poem.

Africa cannot be bought!

Your lost cause is being erased: for our own economic and political future, our battles are fought.  

My heart sings every time because of the Nature of our Power, God-given power.

God has bestowed upon our People something peculiar and wonderful. 
This is about a legacy, 
It is about engraving your first and last names, our names, in to History

And that fight is not selfish.

This is why we keep writing gracefully. 
There is no greater liberating peace than knowing that we are conscious of what we are doing.

And forever we will be celebrated, but for now we keep on living and writing’, our impacts will change thousands of African as they adopt a new mind and become the people who first came from Adam and Eve. And that is beyond just you and me.


Christian Djimra Koumtog was born on April 7th, 1984 in the capital of the Republic of Chad called N'djamena. He is the 5th of 10 children on his Father's side and the first of five children on his Mother's side. Christian has dabbled with modeling and soccer, and he tried out professionally for the MLS for the Kansas City Sporting but now he is dedicated to Poetry. Christian's sense of activism is an everyday matter, from the way he carries himself to writing and promoting this beautiful art called "Poetry. " Recently, Christian has been performing as a way to reach out to people  As a Poet, he not only wants to convey what he feels but also express what you, the reader, feels.


 

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