Memory Markers for the Dead of Yesterday
We gathered pieces of our past left on the fringes
To pillar the memory of a nation afflicted by amnesia
To stop the slide to a future traumatized like our past
So, we mined the iron ore from the hills of Marampa
To forge memory markers in the furnaces of our wrath
To mark the spots where our Pharaohs killed our first born
Here we stood our grounds to preserve the memories
Of those fallen men and women killed at a time when
The death sentence in our laws was a loaded gun
in the hands of power drunkards thirsting for perpetuity
At Thornton hill near state house, we will plant a memory
marker with the citation; “For the unknown
civilians killed in 1967 for protesting the first military coup.”
At the gallows of Pademba prison we will plant
A marker to mark the spot where on a sombre July 19, 1975
Mohamed Sorie Fornah, Ibrahim Bash Taqi, P C Bai Makarie N’silk,
Brigadier David Lansana Kamara, Lt Habib Lansana Kamara
and Albert Tot Thomas were executed and their remains dumped
in acid graves at Rokupa crime scene
At Lati Hyde hostel, Fourah Bay College, we will erect a tomb
with bleeding epitaphs for those the thugs molested and raped
when they invaded the college in the 1977 strike to cover
the shame of a dictator booed and humiliated for shattering
a nation’s dreams into shards
The same marker will be planted at the Magburaka roundabout
next to the old Mobil station to mark the spot a class seven pupil
was shot dead to instil fear in the protesters
Then ubiquitous markers will be erected in many places
for those killed at night in the name of enforcing curfew orders
At the gallows of the prison, we will plant memory markers
To mark the spot where, on October 7, 1989, Francis Mishak Minah,
Gabriel Mohamed Tennyson Kaikai and others were executed
After a treason trial that is still on trial in the court rooms of
Our consciences
We will then plant twenty-eight memory markers to mark
The various spots where in 1992, Bambay Kamara, Yaya Kanu,
and others were extrajudicially killed and buried
n unmarked graves
At Goderich seventh battalion firing range we will plant
a Gola Forest of wrought iron markers to mark the spot
where in1999 Col Kula Samba, Salami Coker,
Hancile Bangura, Kawuta Dumbuya, Abdul Karim sesay,
Hassan Conteh, Max Kanga, Col FY Koroma, Capt. Jalloh,
Lt Col PF Foday, Victor King, and others
were hooded, tied to a stake, and shot to death
Another forest of memory markers will be planted at Pademba
Prison to mark the spot where in 2019 thirty prisoners or more
Were shot dead in the name of stopping a riot
Now our landscape is steeled with markers of the dead
Our ore depleted to cast memory markers for an Egypt
of Pharaohs without a Moses with a rod to split a Nile
but we will nurse trees in the vast swamps of the land
to mark the spots where our compatriots fell during the war
Willow trees for each limb chopped off by the rebels and left to decay
Yew trees for the wombs entombed to win a wager of a cigarette
Baobab trees for the mass graves in the Gola forests and elsewhere
Everywhere they left them to die we will mark till the whole land
Is strewn with markers of memory to expel the plague of dementia
Spreading like Ebola in the land
Beneath the navel of the land, a phallic tower shall sprout forth
To broadcast seeds in the womb of the earth so it can bring forth
Children who will sit beneath the willow trees to read the eulogies
On memory makers and strengthen their resolve to never again
Allow their souls to kneel to tyrants even if they spit fire like dragons
Of myth
By Oumar Farouk Sesay
Stay with Sierra Express Media, for your trusted place in news!
© 2021, https:. All rights reserved.
