August 14, 2006

Odia Ofeimun, A Feast of Return: Under African Skies (Lagos, Nigeria: Hornbill House, 2000). viii, 66 pages.

The two poems presented in this volume were both written to be accompanied by musicians and a dance troupe. The company performs many of the traditional dances from the different regions and cultures of Africa (“from the Cape to the lakes / the FoutaDjallon to the Nile” [1]), while the voices of the continent narrate their communal joys and woes.

“Under African Skies” carefully moves from character to character to unfold a complicated history of exile and migration, and a search for a collective identity in the wake of mass displacement: “I have danced / to different drums in my time / even drums that put a tail / between my legs / my heart in my mouth” (11). From the drunkard’s accusatory clarity (‘it is your history that is drunk. Not I” [18]), to the lament of the effects of colonization (“And we, who feel the tongues of other people / burning the roofs of our mouths” [22]), Ofeimun paints an uneasy picture of war and loss that can only be remedied by a coming together of the many peoples affected by them: “wherever we stand we say No / to the voices drubbing the colours / in which the stars must speak / to us and to our future” (24).

“A Feast of Return” revisits many of the themes developed in “Under African Skies” and places them in a specific South African context. With descriptions of the Slum Clearance Act which displaced many poor Blacks as told by a poor Black (49) to the Police Chief’s reasonings for imprisoning Winnie Mandela’s bedspread for having the colors of Black African unity in it (55), Ofeimun does justice to the complicated psychology of a country torn by apartheid. We watch tribes such as the Manthatisi turn their victimhood into a love of violence : “I shall go on fighting! I am beginning to love it” (41). The Drunkard returns to denounce the hypocrisy of colonizers: “Like the whitemen of the Book / who ask our people to turn the other cheek … those who go hunting for slaves everywhere / while talking of the brotherhood of all men” (46). And in the end a “roundtable” is envisioned as a means to bring all the disparate factions and parties to the same table under a rubric of equality as decribed by the Priestess: “But we do not want to live by vengeance, do we? / We want liberation as a roundtable / where the wrongs done shall be righted” (57).

Odia Ofeimun delivers an hommage to Africa’s heritage of exile and displacement and celebrates “a return” in which the many cultures and peoples and Africa will be able to live together without the presence of animosity, cultural vendettas and war.

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