Near the Weeping Trees
Poetic license, a grove of weeping trees
Is said to mark the spot where Babatu's wife perished,
Abandoned by his retreating raiders
Vitellaria paradoxa, the botanists would precise
The creeping shea tree takes 15 years to start to bear fruit
The site of her execution, an arboreal memorial of resistance
The historians would argue about the accuracy of oral history
Questioning how these stories have come down through the ages
That the battle of Sandema most likely took place
Somewhat at a remove from where we now celebrate it
That the invention of tradition prevails
That, yes, Babatu was the prime slave raider in those times
But that the invocation of Samory was a touch of artistic license
Embellishment by the griots,
Born of his fearsome reputation
For the record shows he confined his empire's reach
To the west of the coast
Thus, while Samory's troops did overrun Bole,
They never made it to Sandema
No, Babutu was the prime mover
In what is now northern Ghana
The Zabarima depredations he led
The forced marches, the trail of dread
Spilling over from the East and North - Niger
Shackled, back to the market at Salaga
It follows; the dread that the Gonja faced
Was in the same vein as what the Bulsa bore
The specter of their adversaries
Commingled in the tales of the griots
For it was the same threat, the same suffering,
And the same wounds
And, yes, Bulsa children should run
At the mere mention of either foe
The griots had it right:
What is 200 miles in the grand scheme of things?
So, Salaga market
Or Kasana market near Tomu
Ominous since their founding
The former now a tourist site a century later
With a few exhibits
The footpaths trod by captives,
Marched from Bulsa and Kasena areas
And shackles, so many shackles, symbolic,
And other items that bear reflection
Earth shrines in modern times,
Northern doors of no return
...
We leave faint traces in our stories,
Signposts of intimate legacies
Fumes marking cautionary tales,
The touchpoints and the villains
And heroes too.
Years later, we gather and celebrate the victories
Feok they call the annual festival,
Harvests, and a "time of plenty"
Where warriors gather in performance
And recount the shared memories
And it all happens - historians may debate,
Not too far from the weeping trees
Near the Weeping Trees, a playlist
I recall when the then 3 year old entered the daycare center singing Burning Spear's refrain: "Do you remember the days of slavery?". The looks from the front desk, of those proper, Southern Texas ladies... I decided to keep things light with my playlists going forward. Still, these are living histories, the legacies of men.
A soundtrack for this note (spotify version) Bonus beats: a few live and dub versions of these joints
See previously Running Away, my first piece on the tales of Northen Ghana and, just to confuse things, Samory's Old Camp
This note is part of the Things Fall Apart series under the banner of The Bulsa Way.
File under: slavery, Bulsa, Ghana, Africa, culture, memory, history, observation, perception, fear, dislocation, escape, griots, Things Fall Apart, poetry, toli
Writing log: September 10, 2022
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