Global Changemakers

On Mondays, http://www.global-changemakers.net turns into Speakers’ Corner: members of the network and community have their say on their work and the issues that concern them.

My name is Kyomuhendo Ateenyi and I am stationed in Uganda. To be particular in the Kingdom of Bunyoro-Kitara that was given so much prominence by the guerilla battles and fighting stratagems of King Kabaleega II against British colonialism. Omukama (King) Kabaleega took on the Imperialists for nine solid years and is undoubtably a source of pride and inspiration not only for all the Banyoro-Batooro peoples, but all Ugandans. He was recently declared a National Hero by the President of the Ugandan Republic- Gen. Y.K. Museveni.

So I thought I would communicate well my message through this art of poetry about the the extremely urgent need to conserve our environment by sanctioning his name in my poem. Worth noting is that environmental degredation in many parts of Uganda is nearing epidemic proportions! King Kabaleega used the great Budongo forest, also mentioned in the poem, as  a launch-pad and a later as base for his guerilla activities that spanned for almost a decade. I am thus essentially asking in the Poem: If the gallant king whose name we so much blare and revere could not in the least attept to cut down that mighty forest that infact bacame his greatest and closest companion during the times of his need, who are we mere subjects, to mercilessly descend upon and cut down almost all the trees of the Budongo?

A Rage Letter from the Woods                         
For how long shall that kingdom blare out its moans
To the scarthing energies of your fury
To the waxed ears of you raping man?

The beautiful leopard can no longer hop to and from
In the stare of the gently husking trees
Whose song, that beautiful song,
Accompaned by the wooing hisses of the wind
Is the delight of the fauna.

The Lion, the mighty king of the jungle
Can no longer rumble
Like the Emperor at his court,
For into ashes his court has been tuned.
Where shall be left to execise his supremacy from?
The motherland is lying naked, yes naked,
At your hands you raping man.
Don’t you in the slightest realise that you have now

     torn assunder her green robe,
That has covered her since the dawn of time?

When the highest heavens split open
Him with a heart of Gold and a shaft of Bronze was

     born.
Thus was the coming of Omukama CWA II

     KABALEEGA
The conquerer of conquerers.
But You beloved black brother
Of shot memory,
Should you also forget
That it was his alliance with the mighty Budongo*
That the tunes to the speardance
Of the Ekya Nyangire Resistance
Was birthed
And was later to resound across the plains like the

     angriest thunderbolt?
Was it not from that green sacred arch
That the fathers of your fathers
Plunged hard into the White Man’s liver
The avenging spear of the motherland?

Yes bats roam in the dark and enjoy
But we are humans not bats!
Why should we take after these small mammals
And not envision a day when the children of our

     children’s children           
          shall  ask your children’s children
Questions like ‘Father, how did a tree look like? ‘!

The rapist is on rampage
The sow is screaming
Its chains are rattling
And timber trucks are groaning.
Mutilated corpses of trees that have overwhelmed a

     millenia block your next stride
Like carcasses of speared rhinos in a remote

     hunting field!

The hope and promise of the magnanimous flora
That has incarnated man’s mortal aspirations
And so lovingly seen him through the stages of his

     growth
Is at stake and uncertain
Like the pride of an impotent Bull
In the stare of wanting cows!

Foward to save the green
Forward to save the wild
And then Pamberi ne chimurenga…
       
- Kyomuhendo Ateenyi

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