Mama Liberia’s Cries

By: Ernest G. Smith, Jr.
track2311@fastermail.com

Children, O ye fruits of my unique womb scattered nigh and yonder! How do I express how dearly I love and miss you? Like the ceaseless Victoria Fall so my aging and dim eyes depict my anxiety. Quo vadis? Quo vadis? Have not I for almost eternity endured your melancholic absence? Yea kids of my youth; come and feed at my breasts.

Have you not heard that your once desolate mom has regained her lost pride? The heavens declared it; cousin nature manifested it and, sister information technology publicized it worldwide…

Infants of my tender cradle nil desperandum! Do you still idolize my vast black breasts which like the plenteous Du River have enough nutritious goodies for the prepared ones?

Why worry O yea unprepared and aggrieved ones? As an old lady jitters whenever dried bones are mentioned so your once glittering face becomes the source of rivers at the mention of H-O-M-E. Have you forgotten that Mama Liberia never lack room for all her offspring?

Can the harbor of Freeport, the tarmac of the RIA and those dusty and primitive yet welcoming crossing points of mine ever frown at you? Though others of nations do so, yet I can not. O Mon-nee, with all I had I did fend for you until I was made richly wretched.

Ye equipped and learned hustlers in the wilderness, why dance in the wilderness while I beg hands from afar to adorn me? O Garbleejay the engineer for how long will you doze while washing plates in the Oyebo Land while the patience-bankrupt Atlantic remorsefully preys on Buchanan?

Come! Come!! Come!!! O kids of my travails; my laps are strong again to carry you. How can I ever cease wetting my pillow when words flying from you fronts are red? Oh rare jewels of my pride while be neighbors of the Agbolos and Ashawos under the connecting rods of Lagos? O what a lost! Like a robbed shepherd I can not account for my gems who’re perpetual tenants in comfortable demean rooms in strange lands. O you heritage of my struggle dost thou lie so low ad infinitum? Were you not compos mentis and literati ab ovo?

In pains and sackcloth I’ve rebuilt my house; upon the pillars of reconciliation and merit have I diligently gathered my broken and neglected pieces. With my soft and loving hands, have I prepared meat and wine and set my table of reunion. With the speed of the Hurricane Rita my maids are trekking the streets of foreign lands inviting you to my nourishing table of hope crying “O yea simple, prepared and destitute ones on the eighteens, come and feed and recline your faint and nostalgic animus.

Awake from your slumber, ply the routes to my warm arms overflowing with love and rooms for you; come home and fill my emptied nests. This is my wail and deepest cry-Mama Liberia’s Loudest Cry………………..