An Elegy for Kiswahili Sanifu
Swahili is “among the 10 most widely spoken languages in the world,
with more than 200 million speakers,” UNESCO
Africa Renewal, 9 December 2021
I.
On the edges of the Congo,
remnants of ocean deserting
porters and slaves find their way
out of a woman recounting kambi life
on BBC’s Dira ya Dunia
…hatuna ahiya…
to mean, hatuna ajira
which means, we are unemployed
…wameua bintamu weng’ …
to mean, wamewaua binadamu wengi
which means, mass homicide
…matokeo ni mbaya ya ntjala …
to mean, matokeo ni mabaya ya njaa
which means, the results are ugly
like hunger
II.
Why are you here:
beyond the Nile; past Kampala;
past Nairobi, the city where school,
hip-hop, and TV long mutated you
into Sheng, and where now Netflix,
AI and data bundles threaten to bury you?
III.
(in her own words)
Kiswahili kitukuzwe, maana hana kwake
anasafiri magharibi, akijigawa kilahaja
akizidi atawapinga, kufeli, kujiunga
na kujitambua kama pijini wa magharibi
na ndivyo bahari ya Hindi itakutana
na bahari Atlantika, kwenye ndimi
III.
(in borrowed words)
All praise to Kiswahili, the untethered
going west, fragmenting into dialects
in her pursuit, she will oppose, succumb
and join the pidgins of the West and finally,
the Indian Ocean will merge with the Atlantic
on new tongues
*Kambi life refers to living in a refugee camp in Kiswahili.
* Dira ya Dunia is a news program aired on BBC Swahili.
* The bolded sounds illustrate differences between the dialects of Kiswahili spoken in Eastern Congo and Kenya.
Estranged
out in Ruai,
bells, bleating, and lowing
begin my day
at noon,
on three of his fours, a calf
eats his day away
nearby,
the kraal is empty
out the pit
of my kitchen sink,
zooms a blue fly
its presence
provokes a heated storm
of dish soap and lavender bleach
its progeny,
will not survive
