This is the story of the Hausa people of west Africa, the mythical tale they will rather have the world believe and the actual ancestral truth about their real origins.
The tale
Myth tales of great Bayajidda
The stories’ author of all Hausa
He trophied a serpent in Daura
Which made thirst of their well
And married their crown bearer
Prince of mighty Baghdad
City of the most sacred race
Fleeing his so furious father
Across the vast dry expanse
Like a worm he left a trace
Bastards ever begat bastards
This prince did have fourteen
With the crown he had seven
And with loose maids another
All formed lands legitimate or not
With a faith embraced in force
The tale sought to erase history
Legitimizing its apt ascention
Without due regards to facts
Either traditional or customary
Tales the child tells his peers
After he has compared origins
That pride and great honour
Like Ishmael’s became a nation
And the swords crossed palms
The truth
Driven on downwards earlier
Off northern homes by Berbers
In flight also they meet Tuaregs
Brought together in their fear
Two races like fated and destined
Much time of harmonious peace
The races naturally yoked here
As they settled to live and bred
Their half-castes knew ease
And such a mere life they led
Traditional in past and faith
Makeri of so great a repute
Islam’s sword left its sheath
And a mere life was made mute
So became the land and its
Ashamed of all its culture
That the sacred didn’t nurture
Hiding from all the nights
And clinging on rootless future
Denied are all that is right
Sons of the soil, Bamaguje
You breathe this land and its
Homeless children, Bahaushe
The stench of you is too real
But Bamaguje is the Bahaushe
The poet in the poem
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/451309
between myth and reality, I walked away a more knowledgeable man about the Hausa people.
The flow of the piece, although could be breathless – if rapped in that way, is left open to the reader by its humility and commission of traffic lights. Bravo
Coming from you, a poet I admire immensely, I feel highly elated. Thank you so much my friend.
I especially enjoyed stanza 4 in ‘the truth.’ Great poem!
Thanks….
Great piece. I think what makes our history more complicated is the efforts to erase the truths we are ashamed of, and the assumptions we all should agree as told even when it makes no sense.
So true! The almost global efforts by peoples to erase their actual histories and attempts to substitute them with fantastic tales can be annoying. ..’Everybody wants to be Greeks’