My dear friend
a bright woman of ideas and letters
noble of deed
blessed
with riches, a golden heart light as a feather
blessed with
beauty, intelligence and character
eyes clear and bright as
noon
but naïve of the ways of this world –
the
ways of the gods and of their men,
the lords of this earth and
their warriors,
the kings of this world and their priests,
the
architects of history and their friends,
the engineers of global
processes and their soldiers.
Hoping to affect her
understanding of the ways of this world
show the affairs of the
gods and their men
the lies of history made
human reality
schemed
expose the underbelly of global processes
I
suggested and she agreed we go on a trip round this earth
to the
terrain where it all began –
the fated encounter of the
gods and men,
of the sky and the earth,
Nut and Geb,
up
and down,
the north and the south.
We started in
Cairo and Alexandria –
where the gods and men made
contact,
the sky and the earth met,
Nut and Geb
coupled,
the Atlantic and the Mediterranean
collided,
reconciled, colluded.
And on to Mombasa, Dar es
Salaam and Zanzibar,
Maputo, Cape Town and Port Elizabeth
–
where the Atlantic and the Indian met, battled, bloodied
the sea, the land.
Then to Luanda, Douala and Yaoundé,
Badagry, Porto-Novo, Lomé, Accra and Elmira,
Freetown,
Dakar and Gorée Island,
Sao Vicente and Santiago –
where
ships once docked, their cargo the lambs of history shackled.
Then
across the great sea to Salvador de Bahia, Kingston,
Port-au-Prince,
Santiago de Cuba, Havana, New Orleans, and Charleston –
where
the lambs nourished a new world,
their sweat enriched all, gods
and men.
After moons of globetrekking
our resources
lowending
we decided to take a break
some time off to
rest
to ponder and discuss what we had experienced and seen
to
spend time with family and friends
to replenish our
resources
and then continue our journey tracing the path of the
lambs
by again crossing the great sea from our homes here atop
the New World –
this city of the radiant lady of the
harbor, her eternal flame held torch high for all the world to see
–
to the other side of the earth, the Old World.
The
plan was we visit in the Old World some of the lands where
the
story of the lambs, the enriching effect of their sweat on those
lands
are seldom talked about, not well-known.
Ostend.
Antwerp. Copenhagen. Oslo. Stockholm. Nagasaki.
Then visit some
of the lands well-known.
London. Liverpool. Bristol. Edinburgh.
Amsterdam. Brussels. Nantes. Bordeaux. Marseille. Barcelona. Seville.
Lagos. Lisbon.
But we did not.
“I’ve
seen enough, my dear. I’m glad we took this journey into the
world … I am exhausted from the weight of it all … I
now appreciate our true history, the substructure of our existence,
the real source of our wealth, the backbone of our well-being …
I am really humbled by the things I’ve seen, the people we’ve
met, the lives I’ve witnessed. So much we don’t know
about ourselves … about the world … what makes our
comfortable life possible …” she pauses, clear bright
eyes cloudy.
© 2023 Ségun Ògúntólá