I have seen a race second to the Jews
A race running a race against all odds
Won in strong sinews and thews
Built with wits that no adversity ever succumbs
My Cameroonian friend told me that
The Bamilike are like Ibos
I don't know them but I know my Ibos
I know how they shrivelled them
And how they rose like lilies and blossomed.
Always and always they're at the receiving end
Of the odds my country mets out
A ball of akara and a mini loaf of bread
An Ibo man keeps his naira
And tomorrow he's a millionaire.
In the south they kill him
So he's driven from the north
And a stranger in his own land
He takes refuge in a primary school field
With his household littered
Like the dry cashew leaves they rustle
With their feet, food or no food
Once the head is upon the shoulders, erect
Hope is what the day breaks with.
He looks an African
He thinks either like a Chinese or a Korean
And this how the federal forces faced a threat
Until hunger became a weapon of war
They lost but today its pyrrhic victory
As the wit of industry resides in them.
Give him a metre, he takes a kilometre
And give him a kilometre, he takes the world
Perhaps Albert Einstein's mother's mother's mother
came from here
And they have Philip Emeagwali to show
A race running a race
And the Ibos with the muscles will always excel.
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem