Sukuma Wiki (Or, Ode to the Labourer)

Ant, you rise
before the sun peeps
sleepily out of its luxurious
blanket of clouds, like
a coddled child.
The cock
dares not crow:
You have put
that living alarm clock
to shame.
Your weeping feet
have walked this road
a thousand times,
You have marched
till days have turned into nights
and nights have given birth to days;
Until the boots that sheath your feet
Have become reborn:
transformed into thin sheets of rubber,
like butterflies metamorphosing into larvae.
Your world revolves around suns named
Limbs, work and bread:
Symbiotic triplets that can only survive together.
You have learnt to ignore the aches
that nag your muscles like a bitter wife
and the yawning hole in your belly
that even a mountain of ugali cannot fill.
So you drill and build,
dig, bury, clean and guard.
Only when you have
lifted and carried the nation
can you then join the slow procession at dusk,
and break into song.
Boom, boom, boom, this is the work man's dirge.

Copyright ©, N.L., 2010

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Dedicated to the hundreds of thousands of Nairobi's informal workers and labourers who walk tens of kilometres every day to earn a living.