(2 of 3 Parts)

*By Akadu Ntiriwa. Mensema

PART II AGONIES OF FARMERS
Farmers
My Grandpapa
Nana Nkwantabisa Boa Amponsem
Their agonies
Are like Limann’s last miserable days
Once farmers harvest old age
And can’t wield the cutlass
Their seamless narratives of farming
They become poor like aging vultures
Farming in famine Sodom/Gomorrah
Common salt is farmers’ gold
It seasons Ofin plantains
But not elitist soiled French fries

Farmers
My Grandpapa
Nana Nkwantabisa Boa Amponsem
Their agonies
Farmers’ tooth-aches are cured with time
They lack access to plush dentists
Farmers’ BMWs are their one foot
One bare-foot that talks to dry leaves
As they voyage
From thatched-roofed huts
To farms across Denkyira Ofin
In the bowels of Densu
Pra, Ankobra, Afram
Birim
Tano, Oti
Greeted by squirrels in ritual dance
Chirped on by birds saluting the sun
Surveyed by snakes on warpaths
Gory thorns pave their highways
Pave their one-bare-foot routes

Farmers
My Grandpapa
Nana Nkwantabisa Boa Amponsem
Don’t have Ridge-Junction mansions
Neither East Legon thievery palaces
Nor Dansoman state-built estates
Thatch-roofed huts are their citadels
With sagging crying eaves
Anointed rooms reserved for DDT
TSATSA (grassy material) is their bed
The mat for their aching backs
Not Konadu Rawlings’ Jacuzzi
Nor Hotel 4 K4 Family’s beds
Baths of elitist thievery delight

Farmers
My Grandpapa
Nana Nkwantabisa Boa Amponsem
Trapped by perennial back pains
While slaving for thievery elites
That never experience pain
Pangs of pain in thieving
But glee in stealing
Raping farmers of the joys of work
Even before the sun sets on them
Farmers are seen as pests
Like Korle-Bu mosquitoes
Known, but unrecognized

Farmers
Nana Nkwantabisa Boa Amponsem
Work the earth
Romancing Earth
Married to Earth forever
Taking delight in Asase Yaa
Punished by the rebellious sun
Endures lightning that stuns cutlasses
Farmers’ agonies
My Grandpapa
Nana Nkwantabisa Boa Amponsem
Farmers
Their agonies
Mired in painful eternal existence
While elitist thieves in ecstasy
Swim in farmers’ sweat

*Akadu N. Mensema, Ph. D., is a nationalist Denkyira beauty. She is a trained oral historian cum sociologist and Professor in the USA. She lives in Pennsylvania with her great mentor and teaches Africa-area studies at a college in Maryland. In her pastime, she writes what critics have called “populist hyperbolic, satirical” poetry. She can be reached at akadumensema@yahoo.com