Well, i certainly am in a dilemma…
This is the place I love…the place I was born in,the place I belong to and the place I want to breathe my last in…I don’t know what it is that “they” mean by their terminologies and language skills, but I guess, though it is certainly not a part of my anatomy ,my roots are here…generations of my family have lived out their lives’s drama here..
What do I say about this place? Acres and acres of red earth, surrounded by the high and mighty, but mute mountains…there are times I remember from my youth…running around wild, free and spirited…in the kind protective ring of these old mountains ,that I have believed that I could conquer this world. That I can make what I want to, out of my life…that I have heard god whisper in my ears.Times I have flown on the wings of the winds….
Enough of my childhood romantic fantasies….apart from feeding my rich imagination, this land fed generations of my people by wholeheartedly offering her blood. Yes, we bled her off oil…some of the biggest oil wells in this country are situated here…increasing the worth of this land by economic units .But for me, the true worth of this land is much more than economy…the golden fields of maize which are eternally engaged in a myriad dance of colors with the sun…the gentle sheep that graze this land and make you feel that wherever you go in this world, when you come back home, you will find everything to be the same, exactly the way you want it to be…
Yes. This land has a spirit, the spirit of nurturing and providing for everyone dependent on her, even at the cost of bleeding or tearing herself up.
Sometimes, when the moon is high in the eastern skies and everything is quiet, as my eyes scan the vast horizon, i distinctly see vague image, sights, ghosts of the distant past . my ancestors roaming the nightscape.
Yes..thats the too distant past. my mother always said I had the vision…
More in the present….what is more persistant in my mind nowadays is the image..the image of my beloved ….my dear…lolling of to sleep…against my belly…the nudgings and movements..as he tried to shake sleep off and study in the stable….in the wan light hanging from the entrance…because..he wanted to be with me..my beloved master and me,his faithful horse..
Am sure you are thinking that I have grown senile with age….what with my rumblings about my birthland and master.
But no..these images and the emotions it stirs in me clashes with what my wife and children want of me…they donot want me to participate in the race,the race..that would bring in the money for my master to save our land.
I understand the concerns of my family, they think I am too old for this and my son even feels master ought to train him. But they do not take into consideration my experience in similar races…they haven’t participated in half the number of races I have..i love my family..but my duty to my master is also of prime importance to me..the duty which is my passion and life blood
and of most importance..they donot understand the basic feeling that binds a horse to his master..the feeling that their hearts are beating as one and their bodies are the continuation of each others..as they move forward in time and space
I will participate in this race with my master …and I donot know what the outcome of it would be..
I donot know what will be my condition after that..
But what I do know is..what I feel and what I have been silently taught..the lessons of unconditional love..given by this land to us….the feeling that more than the outcome of the action performing it wholeheartedly is important…
That more than the end of a journey..the anticipation and the course of that journey is important…
And when we succeed….maybe…god will whisper in my ears again….and I may see myself in the distant images in the horizon….
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