Umlungu* I

It was about the time
The lovely sun- Archeress chooses to strip nude:
May be to seduce, may be to change dress as she girds for battle,
Betraying the bright splendor of her divine whole
And skillfully pelting down the great bowel
Fine arrows warm
To earth’s amazement and also its son’s
Like a woman in lust
Whose thighs are moist for love.
This,
Dawn they call it!

The Drummer most of our village,
Handsome Njumba, whose voice of baritone
It was whispered
Tickled the breasts of village belles;
His hands as he drummed,
Were known to be guided by a power supernatural,
Came running and panting through the whistling grass
Along the pathway to his master’s great palace
Like a Bush buck pursued by a leopardess
With starving cubs!

The great epics of our King that did exist
He skillfully declaimed with no assist
And seemed possessed by a mad spirit
That was known to seldom visit.

He was the son of Nkwanzi the Blacksmith and of Nyangendo the storyteller
Of Rwetuma,
Of Bahemuka,
Of Kabyanga
Of Kagoro
Of Kakyomya
Of Rujumba
Of Rugumayo
Of Katana
Of Mbabi
All of the Enkoole totem in its second harvest.
And such was his bloodline!

Have you ever seen how unsettled
The laughing hyena that wears spots
Becomes
When a Lion hungry
Claws poised
Jaws strong and savoring for a meal to come
Darts around the hole in which she hid her only young the previous night?

Have you ever seen the vengeful gaze
In the eyes of a brave Gisu boy
Cursing the cruel intentions of a young girl
With a beautiful gap in her teeth
A set of smooth corals provocatively pointed from her chest
Cheeks blooming
Buttocks protruding
Dimples pricking
Who chooses to cross his path
In the days of his nursing?
So also was Njumba, the King’s errand runner
When he brought the news to his master.

Hangiriza! Hangiriza! Hangiriza! Hangiriza Agutamba Emanzi eteera n’enaga!
Hail you, hail you, hail you! Hail you my great king!
May the hundred clans of your Kingdom clasp around you
Like the wandering bird that found friendship with the tree branch!
You are the Great warrior
And as you advance,
You are greeted with the wailings of widows and the cries of children
For husbands and fathers who dare cross your path
Don’t live to see the next moment.
You are the war hero
Who advances and leaves behind decimated bodies as a trace of his passing
For your power to mutilate
Is the proud emblem of your conquerous ways.
It is for this that vultures also chant to your name in their worshipful legends as they make merry…

My Liege Lord, Lord of Lords, King of Kings
As your eyes were wandering
News I bring you,
They saw strange beings
Whose skins resemble the color of pumpkin porridge!

My King you are as wise as the Gods
Permit me to ask if you please:
Are they our ancestors reborn
As was soothsaid by Kafuuzi, the village diviner
That one day they will present themselves to us, their children, in ways strange?

Wise King,
They don’t speak our language
That is rich and pregnant with proverbs and riddles of our people!
But as I got nearer to them,
They spoke as though their noses were blocked by a strange disease
That had infected them all!

They are cowards!
Cowards they are!
They use not the spear
That gave the Abarusuura battle- eminence
And made our great heroes
Like Rwabudongo,
Ireta
Kikukule…
And also gave prominence to our intricate war stratagems
In the blaze of glory of battle
And formed theme for our proud legends!

It is their magic
Their magic lo
That has guided them to use a weapon strange
That gun maxim
So strange
That blasts like a thunder clap…….

Seated on his raised stool elegantly clad in the national constitume, a neatly worked cowhide, the great King cleared his throat and said to his errand- runner and skilled drummer:

“Njumba my obedient servant, as you can see the sun is on her way to rest (dusk falling) , tell the other court page the son of my subject Biribonwa that I have commanded that you be given a pot- full of Amarwa to cool of your sweat. I will be summoning the Rukurato (Supreme parliament of the Kingdom) tomorrow for you to continue relating what you saw to them. My son, go and rest.”

* Umlungu- The Xhosa word for ‘White man’ is ‘Umlungu’ meaning – ‘foam from the sea’. The plural is Abelungu.

KYOMUHENDO ATEENYI

 

The Ballad of Nyakato I

Kinsmen, Kinsmen, Kinsmen
Is it not only the man with no relatives who stays back when the Great Kangabaijje drum is sounded?
Wherever you are assemble here for I have a story to tell..

Those in the millet fields,
Those in the hunting grounds,
Those in war practice, seek permission for leave from the heads of your respective regiments,
Women, hold fast to your dangling breasts and run
For I want you here.
Those from the Well, don’t break those delicate clay pots on your heads, but hurry…
Those tending cattle as is your anointed job, drive the herds to the kraals, be fast here..
And all of you lazy men who are in bed glued to the aprons of your wives at this hour of the day
Mounting them hard in the bliss of frenzy,
Come hither, come hither, come hither
all ye my kinsmen

*****

I am Nyakato the fair twin
Yes In the rich traditions of Kitara,
Nyakato is the name given to the girl who comes after the first twin.
At least Omugurusi Mikaili Kabuubi told me that when I raced there to deliver news that the wife to the King’s royal drummer,
Kangere Bikundi, had given the King’s humble servant
The joy of a bouncing baby boy.

So the one whose ways am bringing to sunlight calls herself Sheena.
To date we have never known what it means, not even her herself!
We hear it is a name that came with these white skinned.

*****

When you look at her
What strikes you most is that thing she calls a wig;
A master- weave of hair scrapped from the decomposing skulls of
white women’s rotting corpses.
Sheena paints her eyebrows with charcoal powder
But prefers to call it eyebrow pencil.

She used to apply lime all around her face
Yes, kinsmen,
White lime all around her terribly black face
and rumour has it that she calls it powder!

She wears a very short skirt long enough to expose her oft- tormented womanhood
She does this with immeasurable joy
That those are the ways of the civilized
But when you steal a glance at her in this outfit,
She threatens to burst like an overstuffed sack of potatoes..
Hmmmm…I wonder how her oft- tormented womanhood breathes..
Poor little thing……

*****

Let me first seek clemency from the ancestors
Before I break this Omukago of the coffee bean
That I took with her just the other day beneath the Omutumba tree
When I promised that I would tell no one her little secret
About what she did long way back to lighten her terribly black skin…

I promised thrice as is our custom that I would tell no one about it..
And I seek the clemency and the mercy of the ever- forgiving Gods on this.
Kinsmen help me beseech the immortals to pardon me for braking Omukago, the sacred oath
For the thread that is to run throughout this narrative would break
And the reason I have invited you here lose meaning
If I never reneged on my the Oath.
Remember me in your supplications to the Immortal Gods that reign supreme in this our land of countless hills,
Recall me and plead for me when handing them sacrifice
So that you may know that she immersed herself in a drumful of acid to change the colour of her skin
And look like a white woman…
Pardon me Sheena
But my kinsmen have to know…

She also confided in me that she burnt her firm, hard and black African hair
So that she could assume the neat and raven hair on the heads of the white women
And attract all men
Men of letters, the civilized men with cool Benzes
Especially Prince Bulemu of the astounding Dietsun Apollo 11
And make them wish they could shed under the shadow left behind by her hair…
I know the Gods are all merciful..
But also pardon me Sheena
But my kinsmen have to know…

*****

If you hear her speak,
LO!
She imitates the accent of the white people’s Old Woman
Who has the tendency of speaking as though her nose is blocked
And in this attempt,
Kinsmen,
Irabahake my elder says she reminds him of a constipated boy crying foul!

*****

Though I am always weakened just by the mere mention of the name Rujumba Abwooli,
That belongs to handsome son of Mzee Rwetuma of the Abasambu clan
Whose gap in the teeth is the joy of those he smiles to
Whose athletically built body I was chanced to see as he unsuspectingly bathed by the Biizi stream that made me have an orgasm is the delight of the lucky one he strips naked for
Whose princely gaze in his eyes hardens my nipples
I am still Innocent..
I still have the sheath that covers the mortars of the innocent
For no man’s pestle has ever pounded my mortar….
Not even Rujumba’s!

But Sheena is not a virgin
Her field has been severally tilled…
First was our important son
The Honourable Minister with a thick tuft of white hair at the boundary line of his hair and his brow
who laid her under the roof of his magic palace…
She boasted on me that while her age-mates when laid count the number of poles that support the grass –thatched roofs of the huts of their sweethearts,
And wow at the skill with which the builders managed to fasten the thatch and the Kalitunsi poles with mere banana fibres in sweet agony,
For her she admires the strobe lights that light in different colours
in the Honourable Minister’s huuuuge bedroom while singing the Honourable’s name MBABA…Mbaba….MBABAZIIIIIIIII…ayiiiii…ayyyiiiii
In her sweet Soprano….
That the honourable can pelt…

Next was the town clerk
The other moustached Muganda man with a belly as huge and round as that of a pot…
I wonder how he goes about with his manly energies..
But Sheena says she doesn’t care…
For the hands of her ‘sweet Omulangira Sserwadda’ are forever giving…

Then this our son who had just returned from Abroad
Abroad she told me was the name of the white man’s Country..
He is the son of the prosperous farmer Bikundi
Yes there is only one Bikundi..
Whom this whole village know and admire,
Whom you invite to virtually all your beer ceremonies..
Whom you always call to witness the payment of dowry when
The daughters of the Important amongst you are pledging their hands
To those boys they meet and love by the Stream….

So as you all know his son is just fresh from Abroad
Still smelling the airs of the white man’s Country.
Aha…now as he was driving past us in his Volkswagen
That shines as if smeared by ghee
And hisses like the salutations of the enormous Black Mamba,
On the road of tarmac that is near the Junction
That connects the D.C’s office to the Well,

Sheena started shaking her small buttocks vigorously in all known directions
As if possessed
From the East to the West, then from the North and then South
Ending with the sharp turn from Centre to the South.
She intended to capture the eye
Of the son of an important man,
The prosperous farmer Bikundi…
And indeed
Like the lumber who roams the whole village looking for the strongest axe to cut down a mature Mahogany tree
Only to find that the powerful tree that he intended to cut has been blown down by the wind,
Her motives came to pass
And she was also laid
By the Important man’s son…..
But she complained that his Pestle was still innocent, small and soft
Not used to such rough dances…
That it needed some more robust exercises of pounding
Before it could smoothen all grains usually found in mortars of that kind…
How can I count the bees that have sucked the nectar of Sheena’s flower?

*****

She eats in what she calls style
Not from the spread mat on the earthen floor,
But while standing and sometimes speaking!
Is it not a sacrilege, kinsmen, an unforgivable sacrilege
A heinous offence against our ancestors
to eat while standing and speaking
Let alone moistening the throat without pouring libation?
This is Sheena…She takes liberty to offend our ever- watching Gods with pleasure!

She uses a knife,
a certain weapon and a small spade
Occasionally seeking some recess
To prick some’ salads’ with a small but craftily sharpened stick
Slightly smaller than the arrows a trapped porcupine
Aims at its its relentless hunter.
Then with a forced precision
She fixes the knife in her left hand
then the mysterious weapon of four fingers her in her right.
You should see the satisfaction that she derives from using this elaborate process!
It is this tiresome procedure that consumed her entire teenage days…
To learn to eat food with sticks, spades and mysterious weapons….

*****

By the way Sheena also prefers Hot Dog
This is one of her most audacious deeds..
She particularly says a hot one is her delicacy, hot puppies and the like..
I always wonder how she goes about with their claws!

When she opened a certain pointed bottle
It sounded like a terrible blast from a gun’s barrel
I almost spoilt in my dress
For fear had overwhelmed me, and who can blame me
Especially at the sight of a kinswoman attempting suicide in such a cruel manner
By drinking liquid gun- powder? !
She parted my back and told me it was CHAMPAGNE
That Amarwa* was to the uncivilized like me what Champagne is to the civilized like her! ……….

My kinsmen,
I pray I pause here now
So that am left with what tell tomorrow of this my friend Sheena and her strange ways……

*Amarwa- Olden brew, delicacy of throats of the Banyoro Peoples of Western Uganda.

KYOMUHENDO ATEENYI

 

Hapo Zamani

Once upon a time my child:

There lived on this continent, men.
With hearts of Oak and bowels of Iron
Great Spearmen and prolific at archery.
On this continent they lived, Black men,
The Black pride.

When death shook one,
It was the grief of the whole village
And mourning would be uninterrupted for a fortnight
And hair would be shaved.

When the princess got married
It was all laughter and song.

When the Drum-beat of war went,
So did men rise
And the native one said:
‘Let your feet stike no stone’
Off they marched, those ferocious warriors,
To guard the land bequethed to them by the Ancestors
For no mortal could bare the curse of the Gods.

And as a custom,
Females went to cultivate
And shy the village away from the face
of the abomination of femine
with its fat long claws that fear no man.
On this continent men lived.
My son, It was Black Pride!

One finger cannot kill a louse
One hand cannot carry a beehive,
So Gikuyu rumbled
from the above he helms.
Thus a brother could not have bits of copper,
as the other farted gold blocks;
One terkking with his bare feet,
As the other surveyed the clouds with a metallic bird that flies!

Cry aloud my child:
The sea then vomitted white flames
that raged down the thatches
which your forefathers had built for generations
to cover you of their lineage!
But my little one,
So the Banyoro say:
Men are like Eagles, they land and soar
And He is all- knowing,
Amaxhosa who keeps watch.

2007

KYOMUHENDO ATEENYI

 

A rage letter from the woods

For how long shall that kingdom blare out its moans
To the scarthing energies of your fury
To the waxed ears of you raping man?

The beautiful leopard can no longer hop to and fro
In the stare of the gently husking trees
Whose song, that beautiful song,
accompaned by the wooing hisses of the wind
Is the delight of the fauna.

The Lion, the mighty king of the jungle
Can no longer rumble
Like the Emperor at his court,
For into ashes his court has been tuned.
Where shall be left to execise his supremacy from?
The motherland is lying naked, yes naked,
At your hands you raping man.
Don’t you in the slightest realise that you have now torn assunder her green robe,
That has covered her since the dawn of time?

When the highest heavens split open
Him with a heart of Gold and a shaft of Bronze was born.
Thus was the coming of Omukama CWA II KABALEEGA
The conquerer of conquerers.
But You beloved black brother
Of shot memory,
Should you also forget
That it was his alliance with the mighty Budongo*
That the tunes to the speardance
Of the Ekya Nyangire Resistance
Was birthed
And was later to resound across the plains like the angriest thunderbolt?
Was it not from that green sacred arch
That the fathers of your fathers
Plunged hard into the White Man’s liver
The avenging spear of the motherland?

Yes bats roam in the dark and enjoy
But we are humans not bats!
Why should we take after these small mammals
And not envision a day when the children of our children’s children shall ask your children’s children
Questions like ‘Father, how did a tree look like? ‘!

The rapist is on rampage
The sow is screeming
Its chains are rattling
And timber trucks are groaning.
Mutilated corpses of trees that have overwhelmed a millenia block your next stride
Like carcasses of speared rhinos in a remote hunting field!

The hope and promise of the magnanimous flora
That has incarnated man’s mortal aspirations
And so lovingly seen him through the stages of his growth
Is at stake and uncertain
Like the pride of an impotent Bull
In the stare of wanting cows!

Foward to save the green
Forward to save the wild
And then Pamberi ne chimurenga…

2007

KYOMUHENDO ATEENYI

 

In Memoriam of Dr. Nkrumah

Dear Kwame
I last night had this dream and I thought I should share it with you
I know you are listening….

It started with the cock- crow proclaiming dawn
That it was a new Morning
A whole new beginning!

The very stone that the builder once rejected
Had become the corner-head of the house!

Imperialism was a tale related only by the grey- haired
Fat bribes were an abomination in that society
Than no one dared commit.
The brotherhood between the people was firm
Like the bond of mother and child
And in fact the moon that had grown dark grew bright in salutation!

From the Sahara known to be barren
To her Kalahari counterpart in the south.
Ululations of dancing women and happy children
Proud and victorious tales of war as related by the men
Was the music.
The thousand tribes of Africa,
Spider webs that united and tied up the Lion
Dripping water that wore away the rock of Imperialism
Heroes they were.
Men were no longer graded by how much gold they had, but by the intensity of their morals,
Leaders not by how many convincing lies they could tell, but how wise they were!

The green blanket that had warmed our mighty continent for generations of generations
Still never relented
And of how men suddenly grew kind without tearing parches into it
I am disarmed of the words to relate the episode.
The mountains were on guard, as they have been for millennia
The rivers of honeyed milk
So trod the path the creator allotted them in the beginning of time
And with the Jungles in peace,
The game rejoiced.
It was a new morning.
A new morning in the golden African sky!

With unity as their national religion
Did they even have to blaspheme and create differences?
Differences in boundaries, in alignment, in Culture
When all was but one planet warmed by the same sun
The sun of unity?

Theirs was a religion were, smart in African apparel, all were righteous preachers
Propagating the same cause at the alter of love.
There was even no reason for sheep to wonder
Because no keeper had broken legs

This then was the United States of Africa
The United States of Africa!

In cherished memory of Dr. Kwame Nkrumah of Nkroful, Ghana and Africa, the most eloquent and foremost spokesperson of Pan- Africanism and African Unity of his age.

2007

KYOMUHENDO ATEENYI

 

Europe Learns about Africa

In a pride,
They surged forth like hunting leopards
And found you black beloved
Jumping to the rhythm
Of the dance with pod rattles
Affixed tightly on your legs of talent.

In shock and awe
Of the handiwork of your finest drummers.

You were attentive and quiet
Listening to legends of the bold
As told by the old
In the glows of Bon fires
Long lit by your ancestors.

Yes, they found you admiring the shining spears
That were brandished by your warriors
And beaten by the finest smelters of the land.

They also saw the beautiful colobus monkey, Engeye
Gliding to and fro as in jubilation:
They mellowed at the untamed loveliness of your plains
Whose soils were supported by deposits of the cleanest Gold.

For this journeying pride,
Africa was a long and winding road
On which they were to stamp the footsteps of civilisation!

KYOMUHENDO ATEENYI

 

Them

Only robed Amazulu in His mortal throne
Can narrate to us
How we lack the foresight of the Spear- dear Indunas!
The shafts have gone broken
the spear-head is rusty and blunt
Losing it’s poison and stab, it has.
The Warrior is dying of old age
And the fatherland is littered with them
That have helm over our plains
And them that have emptied our then bulging treasure- caves.

With it as raging battle-ware
They spit speeches decorated wit magic oratory
Firebrand clerics at the alter of hope they so seem
Master architects of unenvisionable ambitions they look
Yet blasphemous they so suddenly turn
With only fine verbal refrains and fleshy empty hands
To serve the starving regiments of their patriotic countrymen.

Ripe, shiny and bulging boils they have for bellies
That threaten to explode
And spill sticky rotten pus therein hidden
And imperil the habitat of the stuffed maggots
That have mucus-like pus as a day’s collect for their little empty stomachs.

In magnificent villas of ceaseless splendour,
They sit,
Belching in leather sofas with golden cushions
The ones that fat loudly when one sinks into them
With the satisfaction only a rapist gathers after tearing the virgin’s hymen!

They contrast with the men of steel
Those stalwart sons
That echoed the aspirations of their submerged Black kinsmen
In the thirsty struggle only sovereignty could quench
Like the son of Madam Nyaniba of Nkroful
Like the one who came of Gadla Mpakanyishwa,
Then the one who was slain by Belgium and the CIA,
The roaring Lion of Bunyoro son of Kanyange Nyamutahingurwa Omunyonzakati
And the greatest Elephant of Kwa- Bulawayo.

By the golden morning sun that casts its serene rays
To warm the heart of our great African paradise,
Torrents of ill- bane are blisters all over.
In deep dirges those in the sleep of the brave are groaning
The ones that cloaked themselves in perfumed war-gear
With the scent of gunpowder,
Those ones who braved the ultimate penalty of high freedom
For you caged black beloved to fly like a free golden- beaked dove.
Is it a befitting tribute to these gallant battle- dwellers,
that evoked the laughter of Amazulu
Up high in the silvery skies he commands?

A man’s Akasoro is the article of his pride- however small!
How then shall we brag
with what,
when only the light- fingered
are charged with the affairs of our treasure chest?
Since when did the greedy eater start nursing the patient
Didn’t they know the fate that was to befall such a patient?

2007

KYOMUHENDO ATEENYI

 

Quiet thunder of the soundliest anger!

So silent!
So silent is this thunder
Like an arrow on its own journey
That only ravages and scathes when a stranger strays into its path.

Brought from the hurrying clouds from the West,
It hunts upon earth
Like the hunter of talent who eventually made a kill
Of the elusive Bushbuck in the legend.
In the victim is its rumbling
this soundless thunder that makes the choicest and most wily of grown up women
Walk like cats!

2007

KYOMUHENDO ATEENYI

 

The Coming

The sooth- narrator of our village,
Emissary from the most high Gods
Warned that his masters
were considering descending on all those
Who engaged in the trade of thighs!

2007

KYOMUHENDO ATEENYI

 

What Colour Is God?

Lumumba was Black,
Mandela is Black
Isn’t God Black?

KYOMUHENDO ATEENYI