Before I share this poem, I’d like to say that it is an evolving reflection, not a conclusion. It draws on my visits to my first three countries in sub-Saharan Africa and the significant time I spent in one of them.

This piece of poetry is written from my perspective as an Afropean. I am as ancestrally European as I am African, but I reconnected with my sub-Saharan heritage later in life.

These lines hold some of what I noticed, felt and questioned while passing through those countries. I am still discovering… “Sub-Saharan” is a poem – not a dissertation.

Sub-Saharan

People of the Book
beside those of the other script,
sharing fertile land and a prayer
for passage to Oyibo soil…..

A stranger’s land,
flowing with milk and honey,
mixed with sweat and snow
and sometimes blood…..

Ebony and Ivory Coast,
plus Gold.

So much colour and laughter,
so much life and joy.

Teaching your future to dream…..
in Arabic and Mandarin,
while English and French prevail,
unteaching Yoruba, uprooting Twi…..

Where do strangers end?
Where do we begin?

I wonder…..

Sub-Saharan…
sculpted by a foreign hand,
your children claimed –
all….. but a few.

At ease with inherited
and preserved residue,
suffering but smiling…..

Sub-Saharan,
who are you?

Sub-Saharan…..
Whose are you?

By Monika Ribeiro