Nananom Farmers: A Celebration of Veritable Work (2)

(2 of 3 Parts)

*By Akadu Ntiriwa. Mensema

PART II AGONIES OF FARMERS

Farmers

My Grandpapa

Nana Nkwantabisa Boa Amponsem

Their agonies

Are like Limann’s last miserable days

Once farmers harvest old age

And can’t wield the cutlass

Their seamless narratives of farming

They become poor like aging vultures

Farming in famine Sodom/Gomorrah

Common salt is farmers’ gold

It seasons Ofin plantains

But not elitist soiled French fries

Farmers

My Grandpapa

Nana Nkwantabisa Boa Amponsem

Their agonies

Farmers’ tooth-aches are cured with time

They lack access to plush dentists

Farmers’ BMWs are their one foot

One bare-foot that talks to dry leaves

As they voyage

From thatched-roofed huts

To farms across Denkyira Ofin

In the bowels of Densu

Pra, Ankobra, Afram

Birim

Tano, Oti

Greeted by squirrels in ritual dance

Chirped on by birds saluting the sun

Surveyed by snakes on warpaths

Gory thorns pave their highways

Pave their one-bare-foot routes

Farmers

My Grandpapa

Nana Nkwantabisa Boa Amponsem

Don’t have Ridge-Junction mansions

Neither East Legon thievery palaces

Nor Dansoman state-built estates

Thatch-roofed huts are their citadels

With sagging crying eaves

Anointed rooms reserved for DDT

TSATSA (grassy material) is their bed

The mat for their aching backs

Not Konadu Rawlings’ Jacuzzi

Nor Hotel 4 K4 Family’s beds

Baths of elitist thievery delight

Farmers

My Grandpapa

Nana Nkwantabisa Boa Amponsem

Trapped by perennial back pains

While slaving for thievery elites

That never experience pain

Pangs of pain in thieving

But glee in stealing

Raping farmers of the joys of work

Even before the sun sets on them

Farmers are seen as pests

Like Korle-Bu mosquitoes

Known, but unrecognized

Farmers

Nana Nkwantabisa Boa Amponsem

Work the earth

Romancing Earth

Married to Earth forever

Taking delight in Asase Yaa

Punished by the rebellious sun

Endures lightning that stuns cutlasses

Farmers’ agonies

My Grandpapa

Nana Nkwantabisa Boa Amponsem

Farmers

Their agonies

Mired in painful eternal existence

While elitist thieves in ecstasy

Swim in farmers’ sweat

*Akadu N. Mensema, Ph. D., is a nationalist Denkyira beauty. She is a trained oral historian cum sociologist and Professor in the USA. She lives in Pennsylvania with her great mentor and teaches Africa-area studies at a college in Maryland. In her pastime, she writes what critics have called “populist hyperbolic, satirical” poetry. She can be reached at akadumensema@yahoo.com