A Swahili poem, well known along the East Coast of Africa. The poem is a husband’s praise of his wife Mwananazi.
Give me a chair that I may sit down
And serenade my Mwananazi,
Serenade
A Swahili love-song from the East African coast, and probably the best known and most widely admired of all Swahili poems in translation. Like Mwananazi, it is associated with Liyongo, the Swahili national hero.
O lady, be calm and cry not but sing to your suitors.
Sing to those who guide you and to the discerning passers-by
Introduction to Relationships
The poems in this section are chosen for their range of feeling about human relationships. They are about courtship, marriage, parenthood and bereavement. They deal with different kinds of love and different kinds of grief.
Hyena
A hunters’ poem from Lesotho. Throughout this poem, the description shifts to the first person singular to give the hyena’s own words.
The hyena is the greedy one among the wild beasts,
The one that drops a bone is a small one.
Hunters’ Salutes
The Battle of Tumu Tumu Hill
A Gikuyu song from Kenya, describing a battle during the Independence struggle in the 1950s. General Kariba’s group in the Kenya Levellation Army fought the British on Tumu Tumu Hill near Kirimukuyu. The heroism of Waruanja who went disguised to spy out the British position, and of Kanjunio, the girl who brought back his report, and of Gakuru who sacrificed his life to destroy the machine guns, are all commemorated.
Listen and hear this story
Of the Tumu Tumu Hill!