Dear Africa,
The land of my birth, where the rivers sing from my ancestors mouth,
And the skies paint dreams with hues only you can claim—
Let me speak to you, as a son speaks to a mother,
Let me say what sits heavy in my other,
For in your soil lies the past and the future;
Every grain holds our histories and our myth.
You are, if not, the cradle of life,
The place where all creation started,
The white man lied, what trouble have they averted?
In Eden,
The sun kissed a black face, and the wind carries whispers from the haze.
You have danced through centuries, clad in the skins of lions,
Your feet thundered upon the earth—after hallelujah cam to Zion.
You wear the names of kingdoms that rose and fell,
Kush, Mali, Benin, Ghana, Oyo, the insignia before Baybylon came to trouble you.
You were great once, and that greatness still lies beneath your skin, still, Waiting, waiting to rise into incandescence.
But, oh mother, wrinkling beauty, an artistic piece you are, you have carried too many burdens.
For every diamond in your heart, a scar runs across your back,
For every ounce of gold in your veins, a tear runs down your face.
The chains they placed upon your sons and daughters still rattle in echoes;
They speak of years taken away, of names lost at sea,
Of villages burnt, cultures uprooted, and gods forgotten.
Yet, despite the scars, you held firm, like the baobab tree,
You grew, even as the world sought to cut you down.
Today, I see you straining against new chains.
They call it “efflorescence,” they call it “aid,”
But still, too many hands reach for the wealth beneath your soil,
Too many voices speak for you, deciding your fate from afar.
Climate change now stands as an enemy without a face,
A storm that batters your coasts, dries your fields, and withers your forests.
They gather in boardrooms to speak of billions to help you,
But, mother, where are these promises when the flood comes?
Where are they when the locusts rise, and the droughts persist?
Yet, within you lies resilience that defies comprehension,
Your laughter breaks forth, even from places of pain—
From Lagos to Johannesburg, from Cairo to Dakar,
I see hope in the faces of your cubs,
Sprouting in dying deserts.
I see the joy,
In the farmers who reclaim barren lands with their hands,
In the artists who tell our stories, who paint our struggles,
Who carve our dreams in stone and iron,
Who remind us that we are more than what we own.
Oh Africa, you are not just what they say of you,
You are not the wars, the famine, the poverty—
You are resilience, you are beauty, you are euphrates.
For every desert that grows, a forest can bloom,
For every flood that takes, a city can rise anew,
The future belongs to those who dare to dream.
And I see your children daring, mother,
Their dreams encrypted.
I know the journey is long,
That the road bends, and it is often steep—
But I see a future where we are not just the suppliers of raw material,
But the makers of the finished product,
Where our cocoa does not sail away to foreign shores,
But instead turns into chocolate in Accra, in Abidjan.
I see a future where we do not beg for our own resources,
Where we have taken the sun, and the wind, and the rivers,
And built an energy grid that powers every dream,
From Cape Town to Cairo, from Nairobi to Lagos.
Mother, I want to tell you that we are coming home,
Your children, scattered in every corner of the earth,
They are coming home, with skills and dreams in their suitcases,
They are bringing back what was taken,
They are reclaiming the narrative that is ours to tell.
And those of us who stayed—
We are not waiting any longer for saviors from the north,
We are digging deep, in your soil, in our hearts,
We are planting the seeds of tomorrow,
We are building the Africa that we see in our dreams.
So, Africa, be proud,
Lift your head above the valleys, above the past,
Your children are ready,
To write a new story on the pages of history,
One that speaks not of poverty, not of need,
But of a people who stood and became the architects of their destiny.
Let the world hear us, let the world see us—
Not as victims, but as victors,
Not as the dark continent,
But as light bulbs.
—
– Lemmy O.
