Oral Poetry from Africa
The Gurage people traditionally inhabit the fertile region of southwest Ethiopia where they grow a banana-like plant called Ensete, as well as coffee and khat. The diligent farmer is often praised in Chaha (the local language of which there are various dialects) songs as the model Gurage citizen and he is depicted on the Ethiopian dollar ploughing his fields.
O man who cultivates the field, how great is your merit!
Wealth flows out from your fingers…
A short poem sent to us by Laju Ereyitomi Oyewoli. Iya ni wura means “Mother is gold” and is a common saying among the Yorùbá people of western Nigeria.
Iya ni wura
Mother is Gold…
A Yorùbá praise poem or Oríkì, commemorating the figure of Balógun Ìbíkúnlé, the great ruler and commander-in-chief of Ibadan forces in the nineteenth-century. Ìbíkúnlé was born in Ogbomoso, a city in Oyo State, south-western Nigeria, during the first decade of the nineteenth century. This was at a time when the Fulani jihads were beginning to make incursions into various territories within Yorùbáland.
Ìbíkúnlé, the Lord of his Quarters,
The proverbial magnificent doer…
Ngwane III is considered the first king of Swaziland, because during his reign from 1745 to 1780, he moved his people north of the Pongola River into what is today the Shiselweni district in the south-east of Swaziland, establishing his capital at Zombodze.
Angry one, of Dlamini.
Ngwane, angry at home…
Here’s something very unusual, a Somali Gabay that makes fun of the form. Specifically, this is a mock-heroic version of the poem The News to Rome, with its celebration of holy war and camel raiding. In this version, the “true men” launch an expedition to a brothel where they eat the addictive stimulant “qaat”.
By the Herer ravine,
if at noon, you gulp down an unpalatable lunch
Sleep you should not enjoy
— you must wage a holy struggle for the soul…
Another Somali Gabay, describing a camel raid and once again the fate of the British officer Corfield in 1913 (see The Death of Richard Corfield). This version is notable for its emphasis on the role of the poet in pastoral warfare. His task is to pray for the success of the expedition and to curse the enemy clan.
Residing at Taleeh, we raised the question of holy war.
At once seventy hundred Dervishes selected powerful horses…
