She was more than one thing.
She was not merely a colonial product
Nor was she a child of the the revolution.
She did not claim to speak for her whole race
And resented the fact that she was asked to do so
Her reality was a thing of miracles and tragedies
Of a constant proximity to electrifying poverty
And sobering prosperity
Worlds she straddled with extreme difficulty.
She was ‘woke’ enough to see
But she knew the troublemaking life
Was not one she wanted for herself
She had no qualms with them not knowing her name
For the people who mattered most could say it
With love
She loved God but not the church
Yet she knew there was no other way
To make sense of her unique cacophony
Of existence.
She was a black, African woman
Trying to make life make sense-
More than a statistic on a country report
More than caricature
More than a stereotype
But a being capable of complexity
That the world frequently
Overlooked.
Making Africans 3D
heartinscriber 