Village boy Impressions

Once, I was held sacred. Whole. Alive, I cradled your fathers— And their fathers before them. I gave from my bounty— Millet, yams, nuts, milk, and nectar  With sorghum from my back, They brewed pito to intoxicate their gods. Their laughter echoing down my plains. And in return, I received their care, Their love— And also, their dead. Now, your greed threatens my very essence.   Trees and shrubs once danced on my back, They dance no more. They’re gone. Once they whispered to the winds at dawn, Now only stumps and dust remain. Ghosts of life, scorched by your greed. Engines now hum where birds once sang, Bulldozers raze where crops once sprang. You traded roots for rubble, shade for shame.   They told you gold lies in my bosom— So you stab me, again and again. Looted my bowels and sold my bones. Turning my rivers into toxic dreams. My fields lie bare, my waters poisoned, Fish float belly-up like broken promises. And children drink poison for breakf...

They said gold would change everything. That shiny dust beneath the earth Could build homes, Buy new clothes, new phones, Forge new lives. They said school is slow. Hard work is for fools. Rich men dig gold — so why not us? And I believed them.     Now every morning, I wake to the roar of changfang motors, The choking fumes of generators, The sound of hammers striking stones, The hoarse coughing of my cousins My classroom is a pit. My pencil is a pickaxe. I write my future— In the belly of the earth. My soul is consumed by gold.     I see the river — Brown with poison, bitter as truth. Once, I drank from it. Now, it kills everything Even the frogs have fled And their song is silenced.     All around, I see only empty fields — No millet, no cassava, no cowpea No grass for a rat to hide, No shade for a bird to nest, Only craters where food once grew And stumps, scotched by greed.   ...