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An [un]Heroic Journey

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July 14, 2025

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A Tanzanian poet unseats the illusionist tale of the mission museum of the Archabbey of St. Ottilien in Germany.

brick and mortar
like skin and bone
wisps of burnt
frankincense and
the soft bubble
of the fountain

the floors have been
mopped clean, a
cold hush covers the
estate, the farm, the
half-chopped tree,
the forest in the distance

What needed to happen to create
such serenity? Whose cartilage was
      snapped into rippled light?
      stained
       glass

pass through the curved
corridor, the domed roof
enter under the low
metal doors to a world underground

the museum is a cruel illusionist
spinner of tales

compressing millions of kilometers
into mere footsteps
to Zanzibar or the bush

you decide, you choose
what will it be—perhaps
the diorama of stuffed
animals, a dying gazelle
impaled by the teeth of a
snarling leopard, the komodo
dragon, the wide-mouthed pelican,
the crouching porcupine

the cherubic young girl peers over
the wooden rail into this frozen safari

her parents, grandparents
are giddy with secondhand glee
the perfect family day out

the next glass cabinet holds
a jar of arsenic, a sawing
knife, and an open book
detailing the ways to
gut and clean an animal carcass

then the photograph of a row of
sunburned men
Men of the Church
posing against a four-wheel-drive truck,
a crowd of children
pushed to the background
shushed, permanently shadowed

or the other snapshot of a bearded man
dressed in ghostly white
carried across a river held by small
hands so that his feet never touch
the water, so that he never walks the land

the illusionist presents
a fun fair of the faraway world

why is it only me
who sees this monstrous consumption?
only me who notices  

the insatiable desire to 

accumulate,

who hears

the language of the bayonet
its thick tongue that
swallows all it
encounters, then
returns to write of
mercy and grace

the ebony carving
shows shetani engulfing( Shetani in southern Tanzanian folklore is a trickster character who is both helpful and deceptive. People make carvings of this out of a black wood more bountiful in southern Tanzania. Missionaries also collected this type of relic.)
the crowns of men
in its gob, eaten in one gulp

how can they not see
their own mouths?
this mirror image,
the wooden apparition

a wall of antelope skulls,
a blood-stained figure of Christ,
small axes, sisal rope,
stretched leather drums, walking
sticks and gourds, cowrie shells
stitched into its curved body

no more sleight of hand
nor cheap tricks:
remove their names from
your mouth, throw away the
wooden staff, bury the amulet,
the waist bead, the rusted dagger
these sacred props
that made you
the hero

“damu sio maji”
blood is not water
remember this

along with the lesson
that a handful of rupees,
crumpled Deutsches Ost-Afrika banknotes
and certificates of freedom( Certificates of manumission were an ostentatious act of the “civilizing” mission of German colonialism against slavery. The Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade in 1807 created ripples globally and justified the invasion of countries such as Tanzania (then Tanganyika) as a way to eliminate slavery.)
can never buy a whole history of a people

so here are new options
without the old mirage:
start the pilgrimage back to earth
to the twisted bark of ebony
the mganga to
his ungo, his flywhisk
the musician to his ngoma
na mama to her toothed comb ( Mganga is a KiSwahili word for traditional healer. Pejoratively, it has been used to mean witch doctor. An ungo and a flywhisk are both straw instruments integral to the work of traditional healers. A ngoma is a drum.)

in the meantime,
the continuation of this odd show,
whether trapped souls or descendants
woven into the old
fabric made from cotton ginneries,
cracked baobab seeds,
pulverized coffee beans,
mourning the moment when
gun ignited stone and waiting

holding what cannot be held,
what should not be held
until it is safe to let the wind
reclaim what it is owed.

Note: This poem was inspired by Irish poet Eavan Boland, whose poem “Heroic” explores similar themes of remembrance cultures and exclusion. 

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