Africa And The Loss Of Innocence Poem by Kingsley Egbukole

Everyone knows everyone
or know somebody who knows somebody
In the serene and peaceful remote abodes
Where one neighbour's hut faces another
In a harmonious congenial relationship
And every family's history is known
The good and exemplary is extolled
The bad and adverse condemned

The life is lived in communality
One can borrow a cutlass from another
Take few pieces of neighbour's firewood
Leave your kids with others to go to the farm
Dip into a neighbour's eating plate to take a piece of yam
That was the village, the African village
Before the conquest of division

The churches came subtly with the bible
The traders of our local content came too
And the slave traders and forceful colonisers
Who brought new knowledge and technology
To get us fascinated and carried away
We greedily ate the apple of good and evil
To discover our nakedness and loss of innocence
And today our culture and heritage is floating away
With the acute corruption of civilization.

(Thursday,21/9/2023,5.32am)