Poem by Birgitta Abimbola Heikka

[Birgitta Abimbola Heikka]

We do not have the typical summer in Nigeria.  Actually the months of summer coincide with our rainy season so I have written a poem about the havoc of rainy season in Lagos
Unpublished

Season’s Rain in Lagos

 

Havoc, the season’s rain spells on the streets of Lagos

From the third month to the tenth

the sky, dense, is forbidding as a forest at night

Like an open dam, rain gushes down

On its tail, thunder and lightning wag.

 

Lagoons swell like helium-filled balloons, ready to burst

Onto the streets, the sea massive spews

Women holding shoes, in pulled up wrappers, wade

through the dam of water

Men, in pulled up pants, push stalled cars and buses

 

But naked, cheerful, children come out to play

They splash and dance and sing the Rain song

“The medicine man declared it will not rain

but now see how it’s pouring

Follow me, let’s dance to the drums of the rain

Follow me, let’s sing to the drums of the rain.”

 

On the streets of Lagos, the season’s rain spells havoc

But in Igbo-Ora, the fat forest, everything grows stout

From the earth, yams sprout looking like an elephant’s tusk

Attached to their mother’s stalk, bananas are as round as a pig’s nose

and corn ears resemble a hippo’s thigh.

 

From the third month to the tenth,

Shango, god of Thunder and Lightning, with his beloved,

Oya, goddess of the River, in matrimonial bliss are united

but on the streets of Lagos, bred is havoc.

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The Yoruba people of Nigeria believe that when Shango, the god of Thunder and Lightning and his wife Oya, goddess of the River come together, the product (as can be imagined) is rain, lightning and thunder.

Birgitta