My Lyric Scene

         My Africa

I am African, I am black, and I possess rare energy in my veins that makes me the envy of many. I am the Lion of Burundi, I own the pyramid of Gizeh, the desert of Sahara, I am the Mountains and hills of Kenya, I am the origin of beauty, the definition of unadulterated pure beauty, I am the world’s Agbani Darego.

I am black and I am beautiful, I am courageous like the lion of Djibouti, in the midst of challenges I succeed, in the front of slavery I still overcame, I n the height of social discrimination I blossomed. I am the pride of my father, the pillar of my tribe and smile of my mother.

I am Oba Ovonramwen of Benin, I am Queen Amina of Zaria, am Nana of Itsekiri. My name is Jaja, I am King, and I am Power, an Inventor. I have my culture both Tangible and intangible, I dwell in my inhabitant and have no fear.

I am the answer to the world’s problem, I am the solution to global challenges, am the key, I am Africa. In me lies unlimited resources the human world is yet to see; my mind remains the goldmine for global economic development and the sunshine of the future.

I defeated slavery from the shores and desert of Africa, I surmounted colonialism in the cold coasted and even in Niger area, I shot the mouth of Apartheid, and I cut off the winds of imperialism and also the threat of globalization on my communities and finally I gave freedom to my tribesmen and joy to our women.

I saw the evil of industrial revolution, I saw the hades brought by globalization, I saw the irony in our amalgamation, I saw it all, I saw it veiled in exploitation, it was another tool for a continuous hegemony, I knew it all. I need not a juju priest or Ifa goddess to reveal it to me; that was why in Opobo, Bonny and Benin Kingdom, Ijebu, Ashanti and Zulu we fought and shed so that today might not be like today, so that our children yet unborn would speak our tongue yet more than another man’s tongue, our youth would create their jobs and not wait for white collar office bureaucrats for jobs, so that our women could realize that their beauty is in the black of their skin not in the white of another, so that our young people could acknowledge that  marriage is a union that units and not that that divides.

 We did all this so that today would realize that sex is a pleasure between a man and a woman not a man and his like.  We did this so that our traditional education system which was associated with entrepreneurship, apprenticeship and business secrecy would not be uttered by modern day classroom educational philosophy and ideology that focuses on making a man an office tied sheep.

I am black and am not shy to identify with my uniqueness, I can’t cover my face from my reality. My realities might seem unbearable, brutish and impoverished. My needs might be large but they satiable, my dreams are big and deep but they are attainable. I am African, I know who I am, who I was, what I represent, where am from, and where am going to.

photography by johnpeters_photography