Asante
This multilingual Thank You Poem was written by Ann Biersteker at Against All Odds, the African Languages and Literature Conference which was held recently in Asmara. She says:
I began this verse to thank Bob Holman and Gtahi Gititi for their engaging exchange of poetry during the Saturday, January 15, 8:45 session of the Against All Odds conference. As I worked on the verse I decided to extend my thanks as well to the other poets and writers who performed their works at the conference. The verse is written in the Swahili language and in the shairi genre of Swahili poetry.
Yekenyeley¹/Shukran² Mabingwa
Ndugu, Thank you, ni wega,³ wapenzi wa zetu ndimi
Akpe¹¹, E se o²², ngiyabonga,³³ ni waro¹¹¹ kwa lugha kumi
Twendeni bega kwa bega, njooni muimbe nami
Hatutungi peke yetu, kwetu ni kujibizana
Tuyaimbe mashairi, tungo za kupendekeza
Maneno yenye fahari, mengine kuendeleza
Naomba msisubiri, wasi wasi kufukuza
Hatutungi peke yetu, kwetu ni kujibizana**
Mahadsanids²²²
Chavucha³³³
Asante*
¹Tigrinya
²Arabic
³Gikuyu
¹¹Ewe
²²Yoruba
³³Zulu
¹¹¹Kiembu
²²²Somali
³³³Kidavida
*Swahili
--Ann Biersteker
**Ann provides this English translation of the refrain:
Hatutungi peke yetu -- We do not compose by ourselves / in isolation
Kwetu ni kujibizana -- For us (composition) is (in) the exchange of poetry / What we do is to enable / challenge each other to compose / to engage in dialogues
Ann Biersteker is the Director of the Program in African Languages at Yale University. She has written extensively on Swahili and Gikuyu literature and is co-editor of the Internet Living Swahili Dictionary.
About.com Poetry will be posting more Notes from the Front arising out of the Against All Odds conference. Specifically, we'll delve into the gender equality in Eritrea, where women are still elbow-elbow at the front, as they are in the poetry and political worlds there. (Check especially Ararat Iyob and Hidaat Ephrem at Asmarino.com, and the extraordinary appearance of the great Egyptian writer/doctor/politico/humanist, Nawal El Saadawi.)
