FOUL FARM, FARM FOUL
( Note To First-Ever Africa-South America Summit, ABUJA 2006)

I sat glued to my TV screen taking in the stirring words. I thumbed through the newspapers poring over the reports. Quite exciting, truly promising. And why not? This is South-South Cooperation rising a notch further, reaching out to the future, calling for change - real change. Why not!

Was I pleased Abuja was hosting? Ask again. About time Africa's giant rose up to its natural duty, not flip-flopping. Is there hope of anything concrete coming out of this? Yes, I'll say. Why, what be different from the perennial talkshops? Well, I do not speak for their excellencies but I intend to let them into some very OPEN secrets - just in case their very large protocols and tinted (some may suggest, tainted!) car-cum-office screens hinder them from seeing or hearing. It is one way of securing and sustaining my boundless optimism!

My opening salvo on the open secrets is done in verse. We are very soulful peoples, these two continents. We are about 1.5bn in population, and have the world's most fertile and ecologically and geologically diverse lands, bursting with marine and mineral resources. We can change our lot in a jiffy, and can help save the world in tow. Our forebears handed us proverbs, folklores, songs, dance and art, so our peoples sense the seriousness of the matter when you address them in verse. Elders are venerated, the Sage is virtually worshipped. Verses be code, be mode.

In so wrapping my message, this piece is a demonstration of the place and power of PopPoetry. Welcome to my music to the land:

FOUL FARM, FARM FOUL
Our land is breeding:
not food but famine
not winners but weaklings
not mothers but murders
not honour but horror
As for man, materials have
taken his place
As for hope, hype dealt
it a fatal blow
and hell has taken over
The lucky generations have
blocked tunnels, channels
and passages
The doomed generations are
pruning their chances
to bare bones
in the heat of waste
From these throes
the web of multiple traps
is choking our willing limbs
From this betrayal
a million scenes have grown
into the movie reels of angst
so our land conjures blockbuster
tales and magic cartoons
Neither the Sage nor the sapling
can fathom this thunderbolt
The eerie passion of diabolical
leaders meets a sonorous silence
of deprived masses, in a kokoma
peace of the grave-yard:
cloaking the poverty of leadership
the depravity of dishonour
and mesmerisation of short-termism
Oh, be not deceived!

No roads for tractors
autobahns for tanks
No cash for ploughers
foreign aid for choppers
No stores for harvests
vast dumps for bombs
Hard times for kids
swell life for thugs
As we turn our fields to graves
we search for help abroad
As we loot our land to death
we beg for stones abroad
When the giver sets snide terms
we turn whimsical in fits!
Pray shame

We foul our farm with glee
robing greed as glory
posting stench as status
Farm be great fantasy
in white and green, blue and red
black or yellow paper rituals
fouling senses, freaking sensibilities
Farms be seething staples
gasping for life in annual budgets
jinxed programmes, junk projects
As we go, when we go
others farm fruits of health
we farm foul health
we foul the air
and choke fair help away
For easy dough, we foul
For easy fame, we foul
For all our shame, we foul
the bond of change
and send the Sage to rage!
Pray pain

We have no centre
lest it holds
We shun them griots
none to heed
Poor moms, how cope ye now
Lost dads, where seek ye more
Our lands be slaughter fields
not farms or mines
Our forests be blighted fields
all gone to logs
Our waters quench thirst no more
just rivers of blood -
fouled by ruptured bowels
of pregnant beauties;
soaked in crying crimson
of craggy kids;
virussed with drawing matter
from riddled skulls!
It is a curse of mounting contempt
flowing from our mountains of hate
jumpy intolerance, and haunting distaste
It is a blessing seen and denied
It be hell undue, love untaken
It is how we look in base brashness
and react in feverish frenzy
The Sage be so in pain

Yes, it is the farm we foul
and the fouling we farm
It is how we mock
and now, we're mocked
Pray change


There is nothing more helpful than the wave of democratic embrace of sustainable development which appears to be sweeping through our two continents these days. More elections and some change of guards will cement our optimism. No one gets to solve their problem unless and until they get to accept its existence, its reality. That means telling it as is, seeing it as is. No padding.

The media has a fair reflection/representation of the stark reality on ground in the two regions. The internet and our diasporas, especially the dissenting segments, have opened up the debates just as multilateral agencies, the donor community and friends of the Third World constantly do. Most crusaders, civil society groups, student bodies, labour unions and intellectuals have told our leaders some home-truths, calling for more stakeholder-voices to rise in tandem. Speak TRUTH, bitter truth, to power! So they may ACT in earnest. Especially now that they've seized the initiative to change things, to turn things around, by this and all other summits. Again, no padding.

This verse, may I humbly suggest, does that. May our leaders now wash our shame away!