Once more, among the many once mores,
The sun has risen as it has been its norm
Since the conception of the world
But you only remember a quarter of century
If you can count days you just drooled and pooped
And giggled at the simplest of things
Before school took away your innocence
How it made you hate your own mother tongue
How it made you despise your culture
Because, somehow, you learned it was backward
Or primitive, as the white man would say
Teachers, agents of the white man’s bullshit
Made you despise your own African religion
Not that you grew with it, but you were told
That somewhere in the course of our history
We worshiped the Asiss, the sun
The god who created Kalenjin in his own image
(If you can borrow the white man’s lingo)
With differing complexions, but still rich with melanin
And we poured libations to the intermediaries
Old who men and women who went before us
The white man, beaming with written evidence
Talked about the Ten Commandments
Do not steal, he said, and then went and stole our land
Do not kill, he said, and then killed our brothers and
sisters
And we, sheepishly believed him and are now fervent
supporters
Of the new religion that keeps us in bondage
In poverty, because our riches are in heaven
The white man inherits the earth, which he can see
And promises us African riches in heaven, a place we cannot
see
And even it exists, it was fashioned by a God from abroad
Whose witnessed our oppression without striking them
Who has witnessed racism and said nothing
If anything, I want to go to a black heaven
The heaven we know will be filled with people
Who have had no qualms hating the black man
Enslaving and killing the black man
And yet tells him to be meek and righteous
Legitimize black poverty by robbing us our treasures
Turning brother against brother that he can sell weapons
Yet, he goes to church every Sunday to atone for his sins
For god gave a provision allowing us to sin first
And repent later
A thing that was not African at all
Because we did not believe in heaven
