Letters to Africans

By Leon Tuam

Letters to Africans is a life buoy that Leon Tuam sends to African people. Readers will discover that many poems remind blame Africans to have not done enough to get out of the deep mud they have been living in for centuries. African people are aware of this situation, but they have not decided yet to stand radically and to get out of it. Nobody will carry out this task for them. It is their responsibility. Already they understand, but they need determination. They are paralyzed with fear still. In this collection readers also discover that despite many hesitations, the days of the forces that prevent African people and the other peoples from being free, strong and prospering are indeed numbered. The African veins have remained open for a long time. The hemorrhage has lasted long. It is time to stop it. Letters to Africans is full of sorrow and hope, blows and caresses, roars and murmurs, emotions and coolness, cowardice and bravery

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Jun 25, 2012
• ISBN: 9781477216958

Leon Tuam

Leon Tuam was born in a country that he loves to call one of the African provinces, Cameroon. He has livee in exile since 1993.

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© 2012 by Leon Tuam. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means

without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 06/15/2012

ISBN: 978-1-4772-1694-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4772-1695-8 (ebk)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012910331

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CONTENTS

Native nest

African Golgothas

Ah, what about us?

Africa, O my dearest place of birth,

We, the people

He is called Suffering

Hypocritically

I found the answer

Strange African eyes

The best and the worst places

The scissors

The people’s future

O Africa

Our African leaders

I am the father

African families

They fail to lift Africa up

The future of our people

Role’s change

Our gorgeous House

Wealthy empty countries

The African marriages

The hooks to fish us

Mines discovery

The underwear of developed

countries

If we fall down

In that blue vampiric shell

Dark broody hen

We cry, they cry

Tremblingly

We can’t wait for God

About my dances, my clothes

The bloodthirsty angels

This piece of shame

Living abroad

We must not love the pain

Because of it

Mighty law

Greedy officials

The future of the world

They never get the right thing

If only I could call back the time

The more we talk peace

Water hole

Young men

Dominated Africa

Ineffaceable scars

We are not lazy

The hunters

Africans again

Learn to be ready

Lost children

Where was the world, where is the world?

Colonization and slavery

Lions and cheetahs

Arms to the sky

The day I felt unsafe

Many doors

Africa, don’t let me think

Africans, God created us

Victims of democracy

Many bleats

Mosquitoes, mosquitoes!

Heart, heart

Africans, Africans, look!

The good and the evil

In the doomed days

They say it

Broken-wings-pelican

If I were an African politician

Our lands

We wait patiently

Foreigners, visit Africa

Like the ancient Egypt

We vote them

Song of tomorrow

The foreign tools

A message to the world

DEDICACE

For the humiliated people of dignity of Africa.

Native nest

I lived on my native Nest and strongly

I believed in the benefits of goodness,

I believed in the benefits of peaceful words.

I tearfully left my native Nest,

Crossed the Atlantic Ocean and strongly

I believed in the benefits of goodness,

I believed in the benefits of peaceful words.

But when I turned back and saw heavy guns

Silence the lives of thousands of mouths,

When I saw bombs and created poverty,

Hunger and diseases silence children,

Silence adults,

Silence elders,

Silence our villages, streets and cities,

I met on my way some words

That I never dreamed of.

I looked at them and they smiled at me.

They talked to me,

They told me that they were the true friends,

I hesitated to pay attention to them,

They touched me and showed seriousness,

They told me that from that time

They were my best friends;

I found them helpful,

I found them precious.

Compared to the bombs,

Compared to the created diseases,

Those words were nothing.

I bent,

I collected and

I started using them profusely,

To stone the night, to stone and

Stone the night, the African night.

African Golgothas

Africans,

We have walked many paths of suffering,

We have walked many roads of contempt,

We have walked many boulevards of divisions,

We have walked many streets of destabilizations,

Walked many highways of humiliations,

Walked those of frustrations and discriminations,

And walked those of wrong negotiations and peace,

Wondering when we will see their ends;

Sufferings spring out of our faces

Like an army of worms from dry carrions

Which are tickled by a heavy rain.

Golgotha, Golgotha, African Golgotha!

Golgotha, we climb you,

And once at your peak,

Another Golgotha calmly awaits us;

We climb it and at its peak,

We hear a strong call and as we look,

We discover another Golgotha

That is taller and bigger than the previous ones.

Golgotha, Golgotha, African Golgotha!

Black nights, deep African long nights!

Everlasting deep nights!

Ah, how many Golgothas?

How many, how many Golgothas

Are here on earth for us?

How can we know? How should we know?

Sad, angry, tired: we have kept going,

And reaching the dead-ends of these ordeals,

We have gone beyond them; far beyond

And walked, walked and walked.

Golgotha, Golgotha, African Golgotha!

Africans, black people: Aren’t we peculiar?

Ah, what about us?

Ah, what about us?

Some people have a season of sadness,

Then come the seasons of happiness.

Some people have a season of rottenness,

Then come the seasons of flowers.

What about us?

Africans, what about us?

The news from our rural areas is sad.

The news from our towns and cities is sad.

The news from the hills is sad.

The news from the plains and waters is sad.

The news from the forests is sad.

The news from the savannahs is sad.

After rain and deluge takes root a good life.

Africans, what about us?

Africans,

Sadness on everything and everybody falls,

Feeds, plays, sings; and cedes its seat to joy.

Africans, what about us?

The sky turns blue,

The good weather bespatters people with laughter,

New lives spring out and abound around,

Rivers, brooks, lakes with their offsprings

Sing to the world;

Plants wear exuberant clean clothes,

Flowers blossom and fall down never to die,

The leaves’ executioners of the previous season

Have turned into angels

And are getting drunk on the flowers,

Competing with the honey’s brewers;

Feathered friends in the new clothes are busy

With songs that put more heat

In the trees, in the air;

The breeding moment is a fascinating time

In the life of the creatures in the nature;

Season of abundance! Season of peace!

Season, season of happiness!

Africans, what about us?

Sadness on everything and everybody falls,

Feeds, plays, sings; and goes away;

Then comes peace,

Then comes