AIDS: Na Dey Thing Whey You Gie We Papa ?

 
The church bell clangs again and again,
calling the faithful to prayer.
The timing is odd, so too are these days.
As I tossed and turned in bed,

I could see the rising dust through the window
as the procession approached my bearing.
A melancholic rhyme filled the room.
By now I could sing it by heart.
 
Na dey ting whey you gie we papa,
Na im whey we dey bringam so.
Na dey ting whey you gie we papa,
Na im whey we dey bringam so.
Papa heyyyyyyyy, Eh papa eh,
Make we take am with all our hart.
Papa heyyyyyyyy, Eh papa eh
Make we take am with all our hart.
 
On the casket, I could see a picture.
A young man in far happier times,
His diplomas adorned this final journey  home.
What a waste? Another cut down in his prime?
What an epidemic of death and destruction?
Yet, we refuse to learn from the obvious!
Again parents will bury their children.
Who will be there when their time comes?  
This time I don’t ask how or why,
I know the all too familiar answers.
Its witchcraft, ‘nyongo’ or slow poison.
Its everything but the obvious.
Across the street is my brother’s friend.
He’s got so much diarrhea, he wears diapers
When his wife died last year,
They buried her with a spear.
   
It’s been almost ten years since my friend died.
I am coming home for the first time.
I visited his aged parents who have buried two children.
I went to the graveyard to pay my last respect.
The tombstones told the story of a generation lost.
Manyi Mboko, born 1975, called to glory 2006.
On and on it went until I could not hold back the tears.
Unknowingly, many of my childhood friends were gone.
 
I was sad, then angry, then sad, then angry.
Why are we cursed to repeat the errors of the past?
Are we the children of a lesser god?
AIDS is here to stay and God has heard our cries.
Prevention is better and treatment is effective.
Stigmatization creates sero-deception.
Sero-positive is better than sero-ignorance.
We must work together to end this wave of dying young.

Na dey ting whey you gie we papa,
Na im whey we dey bringam so.
Na dey ting whey you gie we papa,
Na im whey we dey bringam so.
Papa heyyyyyyyy, Eh papa eh,
Make we take am with all our hart.
Papa heyyyyyyyy, Eh papa eh
Make we take am with all our hart.

©  2010 Ndum Philip, MD

Comments

[atanga sylvon]

nice one bro... i loved it

[jdsomgait]

For once we have a poem on a tragedy that has struck every heart and family, but from which writers and public have shied as if it never was. The literature of HIV/AIDS and its narratives across every nook and cranny of Cameroon lies buried like a specter. Who hasn't followed these church services and confounding songs from the morgue to the church cemetery where one witnesses the heaving energy of grave diggers and tearful mourners as we send to the netherworld our loved ones? I celebrate the poet for waking up - and taking off his shirt to bear witness to reality, and the poem for revealing how tragedy and affect often leads confounded populations to misplaced attributions of cause.