I Had A Dream

When I was just a child
I heard the voice of God
I heard a famous speech
A man named Martin Luther King
Told us that he had a dream
And I dreamed right along with him
I dreamed the world was one
I thought the battle had been won
I dreamed that all the world could see
The beauty that his dream revealed
I dreamed that all humanity
Was bound by brotherhood and unity
That love reigned free
That brotherhood included me
That sisters did not need to be free
I did not dream of a sister hood
Because I had not yet understood
That there was any difference
Between brothers and sisters

Now many years have passed
I watch the news each night
I see the hate and fright
Rule over all our lives
And each day I cry
To see the nightmare
That has become our Life
What happened to the dream
They shot the King and he lay dead
All that’s left is a holiday instead
His voice a scratchy recording
His dream a wishful longing
And peaceful resistance old school logic
I need to hear his clear strong voice
Telling me once more
That I can dream of greater things
And make the dream a reality
Live a life of empathy
Stand up for truth and decency

My tears won’t stop now
They are a river flowing over dykes
They run into the River Styx
Where human folly meets its plight
Pays heavily for its lack of sight
Forgetting they must pay a price
Regardless of any earthy privilege or right
Or towering heights
Charon can not discriminate
Between the good man and knave
Between a rich man or a slave
Between a man of God
Or a man depraved
They all go down to the underworld
As if they were never even born
The Elysium Fields the last reward
Forgetfulness the final goal
For all the heroes of this world
Both young and old

I am afraid like you
I am afraid the world
Does not know what to do
Does not have the will to carry through
Cannot dream the dream and start anew
The death and bloodshed never rued
By Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Jew
The word of God fills cry and hew
Death is the certainty of what is true
After the silence of the bombs
We rush in to spread calm
And say a prayer or two
And I am to believe
That’s all we need to do
Mohammed, Jesus, Yahweh, Krishna too
Are you still waiting for a cue
Your people kill us
While we wait for you
They say it is our due

Am I naïve and unaware
Is it childish to cry ‘It’s not fair!’
To expect the people of the world to share
To believe that we can all care
To leave our comfort zone and dare
The hawks tell me I do not understand
The strategic discourse they propound
‘You are a woman that is all’
Perpetually to sentiment bound
It is true I found
The effort to be human ran aground
Upon the vanity of the fatherland
Where female is a dirty sound
Where the struggle of all humanity
Is under the oppression of hierarchy
And I am judged not by my character
But the quality of my physiology
Nobility is made subject to chemistry and biology
Ethnicity, tribalism, patriotism, and religious tautology

I had a dream
That character is all that counts
I was advised to forget the song and dance
Get off the fence
My nature to enhance
To exercise a little common sense
Challenge your best guess
About the world and all her guests
If you would know me, you must know thyself
Just like the Bard says
Instead, your words conceal pretense
My dream has gone into descent
I feel like Alice falling through the hole
Persephone stuck in the underworld
Helen of Troy longing for home
While armies kill and die to own her soul
All victims of a lying world
That mines the feminine like gold
And then decides to blame her for her woes



© Lesley Gene Agams February 03, 2007   Abuja, Nigeria

AFRICAN ETIQUETTE

Welcome to the motherland.



Many, many moons ago in the Land of The Origin, God the Creator made People, male and female. He put them in the Garden of His Presence and they had everything they wanted. They had a wonderful Mother and she was Africa.

She was a good mother and taught her children all the skills and knowledge they needed to survive and be great. She began at the Beginning  and taught them Without End.

Of all the things that she taught her children the most important was manners for how else would it be known that she had taught them anything at all if they did not have good manners?


“My son and my daughter,” she said “your Father has been given everything you want even a Mother to teach you. Listen to my advice and you will know how to always enjoy and conserve your good fortune.”

“Two is better than one, how lucky you are to have each other.” She continued looking fondly from one to the other. “Remember what I show you, follow my example and show your own children The Way also.”

“Everything God created has been put in your power except for People. You can control everything except People and the Snake.  But good manners will help you to live happily with your neighbors.”

And so it did

Copyright 2005

EZENWANYI REPLIES AMADIOHA

Amadioha, Ike, god of all gods I salute you. You have refused to accept the supremacy of the white man’s gods yet you are guilty of the same arrogance. A great man once said that the Earth will know no peace until there is but one brotherhood of man. You are none of you greater than your creator the Almighty. None can claim to know the name of the Creator because they that know do not speak and they that speak do not know.

As for me I am the Lady of the River, a creature and servant like you, a servant of the Most High. They that revel in their own power are like the ancient one Lucifer who forgot that he was a mere creature and declared himself the Almighty’s equal. Because he turned his face away from the source of his glory he is in perpetual darkness. They that have ears listen.

You appear with awe and trepidation intimidating the puny humans and always asking for blood. You rule with fear, your subjects dread you; they have no faith because fear is the opposite of faith and that is why your people have abandoned your worship. They are afraid of your great anger so they go to worship the god of love and forgiveness because truly all have fallen short of glory all have sinned and need forgiveness.

No one is perfect not even the great Amadioha. Nowadays we would describe you as having a definite anger management problem and refer you for counseling with a shrink. At least it’s better than baptism and exorcism! The lesser god Ejiokwu and his consort Nwanyi Ocha of Umuaka had to suffer such indignity! They were called Peter and Paul! Now all the women of their village behave like men and the men like Peter are in denial!

Amadioha, the creature cannot claim to be the creator. You were supposed to give the Igbo-Nigerian people leadership and protection. Instead you became a blood thirsty ogre, a tyrant and a despot. You still ask for blood in a time and age when blood sacrifice has been rejected by all except a vicious and covert minority. From drinking the blood of goats and chickens the hunger for blood grows till even human blood is no longer enough to satiate your hunger, drunk on blood you make hideous faces and shed all compassion, frightening your subjects who scatter before your terrible presence. Only the mean desperados remain as your devotees feeding you more blood and warping your judgment further or why else would you dare to claim to be the God of Gods?

Even in the Igbo-Nigerian pantheon of gods the Almighty Creator’s supremacy is acknowledged and recognized! Chuku  is the Almighty Creator, not you. Do you claim His right because you have been given leasehold over Igbo-Nigeria? Do you claim divine leadership who is a mere appointee of the Most High? Do you forget by whose grace you are the mighty leader of the Igbo race? You even dare to ignore my rights as co-ruler of the Igbo-Nigerian people. Since when in Igbo history and culture have the women been so far removed from community governance?  The Igbo nation is truly drunk on Gin and Gunpowder and the wisdom of the wise has become like pearls thrown before swine. Amadioha you too stand accused of becoming like the white man.

The republican democracy you claim as yours (just like Lucifer claimed it was all his idea) wonderful though it may have been in the old subsistence economy cannot meet the needs of our people in this capitalist and materialistic age. Even the Greeks and the Romans abandoned Republican Democracy long ago! The Israeli’s gave up the rule of the judges for monarchy and then gave up monarchy for democracy. The world has moved on! All meta-narratives fail when they start to exclude and discriminate! Be it against man, woman or child! Be it based on race, ethnicity or gender. All civilizations fall that shed blood as sacrifice, and not out of necessity. But then that is Son of man for you, necessity is so relative there is no end to it and the killing and the death continues even in the new age. Compassion, love and mercy are weaknesses and guarantee exploitation.

It is written that they that cry that the olden days were good are foolish. Has the world stopped moving forward even for a day? Would you have us go back when the rest of the world is going forward? Do not become guilty of the intolerance that many have died to resist in others.


Amadioha have you not adapted to the modern age yet? If you have something to say then you must enter the mainstream as the sons and daughters of your rival Sango have done and that is why it would appear that they are still celebrated. That you consider him your rival at all suggests you are yet to accept that cooperation is more productive than competition. Obviously tribal rivalry is not a solely human peculiarity!

It is rivalry that leads the Igbo to waste resources on an ill defined project such as the Igbo-Nigerian Presidency. As you have rightly pointed out in politics you don’t get what you deserve but what you negotiate and to negotiate you must have leverage. What leverage does the Igbo-Nigerian nation have? This they must first define and articulate. They must identify their strengths and their weaknesses, and then they must consolidate them. Reconciliation is no big deal; everyone wants to be friends with the powerful and successful! We don’t need to beg, we need to make an attempt to improve our market value! Our leverage! The Igbo intelligentsia and the Igbo money bags need to cooperate not compete! And certainly not exploit each other!

Which is why your suggestion to ‘deal with’ Ngige is also not worthy of you. Would you have it said that the great Amadioha needed the puny humans to fight his battles? Ngige and Ubah both have disgraced the Igbo nation and for you to even suggest that you might be in support of either party is unworthy of your greatness. And to hear you refer to Ogwugwu as king breaks my heart! The shrines that the men of Aro used to overawe the Igbo nation into providing them with a steady supply of slaves for the America bound ships of horror are most certainly not kings! Wake up Amadioha, wake up great one! Shine your eye for you are in the thrall of knaves and brigands! Reject their blood offerings! Decline their bribes and pay offs! Remember your true heritage, a heritage that predates Gin and Gunpowder and their resultant madness. A heritage of Justice, where all were equal and had only to prove themselves in the cult of the Ikenga, the cult of the Right Hand, the cult of effort, hard work and personal excellence for the  benefit of the community of kin, Nwanne. Our community has grown now, it is all Nigeria.

Our children have excelled, in commerce, in engineering of all class, in social welfare and development, in administration, in storytelling. I could think of more if I had the time. And they are growing in other skills, in mastering the present form of government, which is neither democratic nor popular, in the art of semantics and mass communication, they are not becoming more oyibo they have always been more oyibo! Curious, technologically savvy (have you forgotten the Akwa blacksmiths that were your special devotees?) imaginative, innovative, humanist, hospitable, confident, industrious. Like the proverbial ants! The Igbo-Nigerians did not build kingdoms because kingdoms are always built on shed blood and violence; they built families, large families! No other Nigerian nation has as an elaborate system of consanguinity rules!

Indeed the Igbo quickly understood where the power was at in the new system; follow the money, without money there is no power! The memorized the Golden Rule of a Capitalist Marketocracy; he who has the money makes the rules. The intensity with which our people started to work and acquire capital in the post 1971 era is remarkable! In 35 years they have built mansions and factories and markets and schools and hospitals. They have started companies and institutions they have acquired assets, liquid and fixed at home and abroad, they are always the first to wear the latest fashions and drive the latest cars; were the entire Igbo nation to liquidate and withdraw their assets from around the country the Nigerian economy would stumble badly. All this they have achieved in 35 years and on twenty pounds and despite the constant and continuous efforts of forces public, private and spiritual to frustrate them! Come on give the kids a break! They took to capitalism like fish to water! And yet you say that of all our children you have hope in none! Surely that is a failure of parenting then, O mighty one! Understanding democracy is understanding the economic system that the democracy upholds, our children are consummate economists, they understand profit and loss and they understand markets. The women especially understand markets. Or do you think it is a coincidence that the biggest market on the West Coast, the Nigerian Stock Exchange, is headed by an Igbo-Nigerian woman?

I am the Lady of the River and the people who are yours and mine have profaned me too. I am Love but they have named me Lust! I am Beauty but they have named me Temptress! I am Compassion but they call me Cruel! I am Justice and they try to bribe me! Daily I am raped and abused, exploited and degenerated, stripped and plundered. I am a creature in the image and likeness of my Creator but they construct me in their image and likeness! Sometimes I rage at their insolence and punish the puny humans but always I forgive them. They know not what they do; they know only their hunger for bread and their addiction to Gin and Gunpowder which they fed to us too. Never mind, their ignorance cannot change my nature. Nor can it change yours my lord. We must show compassion to our children and use positive reinforcement to encourage them, it is the new way of parenting, and it is more effective than the old.

Amadioha, great lord of the Igbo’s; we used to rule together you and I, male and female together in harmony. Remember how I used to calm your temper and rage? How my cool hand at your brow smoothed away the frown lines and brought a smile to your face? Then our people were content and happy and they had balanced and tranquil lives but ever since you abandoned me and accused me of treachery our people know no peace. The white man came plundered our children, our resources, our treasures, our history, and our heritage in the great catastrophe and sowed the seeds of gender discord to keep us ‘distracted’ while he filled his treasure houses and destroyed ancient civilizations in the name of evangelism and he still exploits us today! And you are worried about what Omo Oduduwa your neighbor is doing to distract you.

The solution to all our problems is to heal the rift that has developed between man and woman not between tribes and nations. We need to heal the wounds in the family first before we can heal the nation for what is the nation but a collection of families? And if the families are sick can they not be likened to a cancerous growth that will kill the whole body? Families are sick because Igbo-Nigerian women who have always worked side by side with their men have been brainwashed to behave like the white woman hiding in the kitchen or the ladies room or lying prostrate in the master bedroom!  By excluding your women folk you have already halved your strength. What victory can you gain without them? In Igbo-Nigeria it is not done, Ezenwanyi must speak, she worked as hard as any man to build and maintain her kingdom, our kingdom, Ike.   The Almighty created everything in pairs, male and female.  ####

Copyright 2005