Alili: Alili is the Igbo word for “spite”. A word of caution: be careful what names you call your children…
Alili rains scorn on the people.
He says he is civilized
Having been to Britain and Whiteman’s Europe
The suit he wears in midday heat
is made in Trafalgar Square.
He feigns ignorance
of his native tongue.
When he speaks in his borrowed foreign accent,
he looks and sounds like a miserable clown
without boundary.
With a touch of bleach
and lavish exposure to sunlight,
his skin is transformed from stable Ebony hue
to sagging folds of loathsome shell.
He calls his mother’s cooking primitive
and devoid of class;
the same food that fed him life
in his childhood.
He is full of contempt for the elders
and those he calls illiterate.
Though he lacks wisdom and good judgment,
he feels superior to those he should envy.
Everything he does works against him.
Yet,
he takes refuge and pride in hollow reasoning.
There’s a saying that “he, who thinks he knows everything,
is only carrying water in a sieve”.
He thinks he knows everything
,cause he’d been to the Whiteman’s land.
Alili mocks the folks at the market square.
He says they are fat.
He whines about their funny steps;
how they walk clumpsy like live pumpkins on dirty alleys
when they should be busy cat-walking.
Their music he says is nothing but an aggravating mix
of wild sounds.
Given a chance he would transform their nose
Into pointed canoes;
and have their tummies tucked in
with silk suture materials.
Alili used to be one of us.
He drank the water from the communal well,
and felt our hot sand on his naked feet.
The farm that fed him had no ploughs;
and no fertilizer.
When it rained we’d dance with joy
that earth had a chance to feed the world.
He was here when the moon gave us light,
and messages were sent by word of mouth.
Now,
He feels enraged at the sight of village food.
“Where are the roads;
Where are the cars and the factories?” he asks.
“Where is the processed food,
and the chlorinated water?
Where is the telephone,
the electricity,
and the satellite system?”
One wonders where those amenities should come from
if not from someone
who has been to Britain and Whiteman’s Europe.
Alili looks like a misfit in a strange land.
The land is strange to him;
So is he to the land of his birth.
Some want to celebrate him as an outstanding son;
Others can’t hold the tears of shame.
“Bat” has become his new nickname in town.
Alili has become the bat among his people.
Back from Britain and stuck in the middle,
He has neither the full status of a bird,
nor that of a land animal.
He’s filled like a strange cup,
half British and half home-made.
A confusion walking on two legs,
he’s as much confused of himself as others are
of him.
That’s the final product of our son;
our son Alili who has been to Trafalgar square
and to white man’s Europe.