A funny Ìjálá poem (hunters’ song) from Nigeria, imagining five animals engaged in improbable lines of business.
Five creatures
There were in Iresa Town…
Abdu dan Tsoho, the Sarkin Daura
A Hausa praise poem (see also Rano and Bawa Jangarzo). Daura, one of the ancient Hausa kingdoms, suffered a succession dispute in 1806, leading to the creation of three separate states.
You boy, take heed of the groundnut that sprouts a second year!
The old one, he can make spells…
The Migrant Workers
A Zulu song about a young migrant worker who has left home to seek jobs in Johannesburg and the search made by his siblings to find him.
We were sent by our parents
To search for our father’s child…
Prayer for Rain
A ChiSena prayer to Chauta (God) from southern Malawi. The prayer is led by an elder, with the people responding in chorus.
Chauta we beseech you, we beseech you!
You have refused us rain, we beseech you!…
In Praise of Molefi Kgafela
Another attack on the damaging effects of labour migrancy to South Africa. In this extract from a Tswana Praise Poem, the poet appeals movingly to Chief Molefi Kgafela, who ruled 1929–1936, to bring home all the young men and women from Cape Town, Natal, Johannesburg and Rustenburg.
Seek the strays, child of the Makuka,
Bring home the human strays…
The Man to be Envied
A Hadendoa poem from northern Sudan. The Handendoa live in northern Sudan, bordering the Red Sea. They supplied the majority of the supporters of Muhammed Ahmed el Mahdi (‘The Mad Mullah’) in his revolt against the British (see also the poem The Mahdi’s Boast). Like the poem Why Do We Grumble, it accepts that ‘wealth has a coat of many colours’.
I have good cultivable land sown and watered,
I have men who load my camels with trade goods…