The Ghanzi-Kang Road

For years
for lifetimes
the government of my country
has been trying to push me
out of my homeland.

Only one game reserve in the world
is larger than ours
here in the Central Kalahari desert.
Surely there is room enough
for hyenas, wildebeest, lions, gemsbok
and the San – my people –
in addition to the diamonds
everyone cares so much about.

Yesterday, in a courtroom,
we won the right to return.
Do you know that feeling,
washing off the dust
of Deception Valley
but still so happy
to have walked in it?

I'm heading for the Ghanzi-Kang road,
and from there my tracks are my own.
I am going home. I am going home.
It will be a fine story.
I am going home.

(Thanks to the women of Poetry Thursday
for their continuing inspiration. And to
the San, whose victory yesterday inspired this poem.)

(Click here for the story of the San's victory.)

San Bushmen Botswana indigenous PoetryThursday