The City

The city, I heard, was a grand place, that is why I came here, to see if all I heard was true, to see the wonders I had heard of; the small suns in people’s homes, the small coiled black snakes that cooked without wood or fire…

But nobody had told me of this, of these tall huts that kept rising and rising, of these wide black paths that led you nowhere but took you in circles. Nobody told me of the suffering I would see here.

I remember my first day here. I was down on one of those black paths-roads they call them-wandering and admiring. I got lost hopelessly lost. Every other street looked the same, the same old rows of doors, windows, same merciless orderliness.

I remember the panic that rose in me as the day turned into night, as the natural light was replaced by the artificial light. I didn’t know the language, the white man’s tongue that every one seems to use here. If I tried to speak my own, I was shunned, treated like a leper.

I still do not know how I got back to this place I am forced to call home, maybe God had his Angels watching over me. All I know is that though I live here, in the deepest part of my heart, my soul, I still yearn for the open Savannah.

2002