Maji Maji - Yusuf O. Kassam

Sitting on a stool outside his mud hut,

The mzee scratched his head in a slow motion,

Trying to recall.

His dim grey eyes quiveringly stared into the distance

And with a faint faltering voice he spoke

Of the wind that stirred sinister feelings,

Of the leaves that rustled with foreboding,

Of the men who talked of deliverance and freedom,

And of the warriors who pledged to fight.

Then he paused and snuffed some tobacco

‘The Germans —’ He shook his head and shuddered:

‘Yes, they came — with guns, to be sure —

Many guns.’

His glance slowly shifted in a broken semi-circle

At each of the few listeners who squatted on the ground

He pointed to the distant hills on his right:

‘For many days,

They resounded with drum-beats and frenzied cries;

Then with the spirits of alien ancestors

They thundered with strange unearthly sounds.’

Placing both his hands on his head,

He looked down on the earth and pronounced,

‘They fired bullets, not water, no, not water.’

He looked up, with a face crumpled with agony,

And with an unsteady swing of his arm, he said,

‘Dead, we all lay dead.’

While the mzee paused, still and silent,

His listeners gravely looked at each other

Seeming to echo his last words in chorus.

Finally, exhausted, he sighed,

‘The Germans came and went,

And for many long years

No drums beat again.’

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Yusuf O. Kassam (born 1943) Tanzania

Source: Poems from East Africa, edited by David Cook and David Rubadiri, East African Educational Publishers, 1971