“Where are my people?”

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INES.CELISOfrendo este poema escrito por Miss Ofelia Bent Robinson*, al Pueblo Raizal, esté donde esté en el mundo. De paso, va mi admiración y voz de ánimo a las heroínas y héroes posicionados en nuestros patios al frente de la edificación impuesta de la Policía Nacional.

Where are my people? 

My people where are you?
I went to the corner of the streets,
I went to the hospital,
I went to the Chamber of Commerce,
all around, I made my visits
but no signs of my people could be found.

I then went into a chapel where a congregation worshipped,
but could not find my people.
My people, oh my people, where are you?
Finally, I took a bus and went to the birth place of my dads,
where men spoke my language, where men praised and feared God.
Where men ate my run down with dumpling
corned fish with coconut oil and fried onion, green plantain, yucca,
white yam from Big Ground.

Fried fish with fresh bammy, journey cake with mint tea, fever grass tea, chocolate tea with promenta leaf, araruth pop, mishla; Concante Pop.
Syrup and sugar cake, sweet potato bread with the custard running off the top.
Cassava bread and those corn bread baked outside under tinning and husks.

Beans soup, fried fish with coconut oil, rice with gung-gu peas.
Drink my cane juice, tamarind and lemonade with syrup;
make their own coconut oil.

I was no more a stranger, as I found my people my soul cried for joy...

Last night while climbing my Little Hill, in the darkness I met an old man, uncle Dodd’s, who spoke my language, which marked him as one who knows my God, with his polite and a Christian smile, he offered to me, shelter under his black umbrella from those big rain drops, I once recognized that I was among my people.

*Ofelia Bent Robinson. Educadora nativa fallecida hace pocos años, quien dedicó más de cuatro décadas de su vida a la enseñanza de los isleños en las escuelas San José en Sound Bay, coordinadora y directora de varios planteles educativos de la isla, como el colegio Flowers Hill Bilingual School, la Escuela Nacional de San Luis y también estuvo encargada de la Secretaría de Educación Departamental donde puso su grano de arena en la cultura de las islas.

Última actualización ( Sábado, 19 de Mayo de 2018 08:43 )