Like every school boy, I was cultured to dine with fine silver;
piercing steak with polished tines and cutting with the right.
Because eating bare hands in the manner of my forebears
mirrors the manners of every other primate shooting from tree
to tree. I recite the rosary, venerate men (now saints) that look
zero like me, did nothing to better my lot, nor brought glory to
those in my backyard. Quickly I could recite by rote, accounts
of valor of the mission men and women who braved the rank
tropics and her malaria, but told mite of Crowther. And the history
tutor recounted how one man, a Scot, discovered a river that since
the founding of earth, my folks traded, plied, and bathed in. I even
learnt the queen gifted our highest mountain to her grandson—a
prize to brace familial bonds maybe. And though we’re taught equality,
I sooner learn that some animals are more equal than others, because
when asked why I’m not taught accounts of my fathers: their medicine,
wars and empires, the tutor affirmed that that’s no germane history. I
see now why I no longer speak my tongue, blank over my fathers’
days and ways; I see now that though I’m refined, I lead a lie.
Growing up in a colonized country/continent where our authenticity was replaced with the colonist’s truth informed this poem. Upon easing into manhood, it struck me, as I buried myself in the history of my people, that the colonists were able to gain control of our endless acres of land, resources and manpower by changing our narrative through the religion they introduced. Queen Victoria gifting Mount Kilimanjaro in Kenya/Tanzania to her grandson Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, for example. Was it hers to gift away in the first place? Or Mungo Park, a Scot who is claimed to have discovered the river Niger in Nigeria, when generations of the natives plied and transacted on the river for thousands of years before his birth. The sheer arrogance of these acts is disturbing. Most infuriating however, is the justification of their presence with the mischievous excuse of bringing civilization to the “savages” in Africa.

Kelvin Kellman writes from Lagos-Ibadan Nigeria. He’s had works featured or forthcoming in Green Briar Review, The Blue Mountain Review, Hawaii Review, North Dakota Quarterly, and elsewhere.
We were reprogrammed; our culture and history taught out of us.
Beautiful work brother Kelvin!
This is beautiful Kelvin. How would we have relinquished our culture and history if we knew the true greatness of it?
It had to be taught out of us. We were reprogrammed.
hard truth.
This struck a cord and made me reflect on my life. Beautifully written too.
Astonishing!👏
This resonates so well with me. It’s amazing how history glorifies the people who wrote it and the arrogance of the colonizers stuns me sometimes
Awesome Kelvin!
Thank you Kevin
To the heart…..thank you