Remembering the Mission - even when in Comfort

My relationship with Poetry is somewhat complicated; I left her in 2010 while trying to make it work with Actuarial Science and we are yet to properly reconcile. The betrayal is not something I am proud of for I almost lost the very essence of my being in the process. We met while I was still in high-school and I started actively engaging with her during my unplanned ‘gap-year’ in 2008. It was while intoxicated with the ecstasy of this love-affair that I was introduced to a poem titled ‘You will forget’ by Chenjerai Hove. The poem came to mind a few months ago while attending an event at the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation here in Cape Town. One of the panelists was a woman I met while studying in the Free State and the conversation that ensued between us was a very interesting one, an eye-opener. I shared with her my challenges of being new in the area. One of these challenges was that of finding my place at the University of Cape Town and finding my way around Cape Town as my new home. I guess part of the struggle was due in part to the advice I had received before setting off for the big city. I was warned not to fall prey to the 'white and liberal' bug. Although I deeply doubt the possibility of this, I was still worried. I was worried that in the comfort of this city I would forget about the concerns of my fellow Africans. I was worried that in the comfort of the city and that of my own privilege I would forget about my own personal mission to play an active role in Africa’s Renaissance.

I count this poem among my very personal favorites:

You will forget - Chenjerai Hove

If you stay in comfort too long

You will not know

The weight of a water pot

On the bald head of the village woman

You will forget

The weight of three bundles of thatch grass

On the sinewy neck of the woman

Whose baby cries on her back

For a blade of grass in its eyes

Sure, if you stay in comfort too long

You will not know the pain

Of child birth without a nurse in white

You will forget

The thirst, the cracked dusty lips

Of the woman in the valley

On her way to the headman who isn’t there

You will forget

The pouring pain of a thorn prick

With a load on the head.

If you stay in comfort too long

You will forget

The wailing in the valley

Of women losing a husband in the mines.

You will forget

The rough handshake of coarse palms

Full of teary sorrow at the funeral.

If you stay in comfort too long

You will not hear

The shrieky voice of old warriors sing

The songs of fresh storied battlefields.

You will forget

The unfeeling bare feet

Gripping the warm soil turned by the plough

You will forget

The voice of the season talking to the oxen.

Surely some revelation is at hand

I 'met' William Butler Yeats for the first time in a Literature in English class at Gaborone Senior Secondary School. The year was 2006. Poetry and I had known each other before then but it was only on this year that we would fall in love. I remember an exam question that asked that we select a poem to recite and explain in detail, 'The Second Coming' was my poem of choice and it gained me most of my marks. In hindsight, I doubt my young mind really understood what the poem was really about. 

When I read it again two weeks ago, the world was not in a good space. I was not in a good space. I was in deep thought about Gaza, about Africa and what had happened to the 200 Nigerian girls. I was in deep thought about the future of Africa and whether we will ever find a way out of colonialism. Mr Gomolemo Motswaledi had just passed away in a car accident and I was deeply concerned about the future of Botswana. I felt as if all was falling apart and this poem was just a perfect description of that.

Two years ago, I had the opportunity of listening to President Thabo Mbeki give an address at the University of Western Cape. He opened his address with this poem, it was then that I began making sense of it. I believe that was the first time I got to fully appreciate this poem, especially in the African context.

    The Second Coming

    Turning and turning in the widening gyre
    The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
    Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
    Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
    The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
    The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
    The best lack all conviction, while the worst
    Are full of passionate intensity.

    Surely some revelation is at hand;
    Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
    The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
    When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
    Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
    A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
    A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
    Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
    Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.

    The darkness drops again but now I know
    That twenty centuries of stony sleep
    Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
    And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
    Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?