Currently attending Ohio University as a grad student, Keith read a poem during our West African Art History class called 'Nursery Crime' that dealt with learning a song most kids in America are taught. Keith was taught this nursery song in Botswana, this was a way to teach English. He mentioned that it strange being taught a song asking rain to go away when they really needed rain for agriculture. This is something I'm exploring with my senior thesis, seeing the effects language has on cultures, especially countries that have multiple languages but the officially language can be the former colonial power's language.
Nursery Crime
Keith Phetlhe
A bird that chirped from a loosed mosu branch has left
A cactus thorn that pricked an ethnic totem has lost its sharpness
I sit trying to conclude a poem I am not permitted to begin
Africa, your past is to me a present of the present
While an early morning rooster crowed,
he opened the breath of the day to a tapestry of acts and deeds
even letsitsiropu bird has abandoned a nest with her eggs hatching
to fight a delirious eagle, this bird too ducks a stone thrown from a hungry herd-boy’s catapult,
she then moves to another loosed branch yet
this branch too withers her foliage after weeks of surviving a chop from an axe, the leafs are now nothing but dried debris of dust
Children are caused to gather and sing a song,
a rain song,
yet the scorching heat peels their blistered skins
They are forced to sing a rain song with skills
of a bird that nestles while tweeting for it has a song
in its throat
They are caused to sing a rainsong which goes;
Rain! Rain! go away,
come again another day!
Taught to chase rain from infancy,
though languishing in the dry Kgalagadi
who seldom shines except after the rain has rinsed her desert dust away
Where the sun gazes the earth without mercy
Where a moroka used to pray for rain
They are caused to sing a rainsong which goes:
Rain! Rain! go away,
come again another day!
Flogged if out of tune, mocked and teased
if not knowing the rainsong
praised if not knowing a rainmaker’s name but this rainsong
that chased rain from the dry land of grain and sorghum
They are caused to sing a rainsong which goes:
Rain! Rain! go away,
come again another day!