Children of Echo

 

CHILDREN OF ECHO BY OLA FEMI

What if children who are torn from their mother's tongue were cursed from birth? The gods, knowing that they would spring up to be more dangerous than the Ogbanje , therefore shut the once raving slaughter house they called a mouth. Now they roam the Earth in search of a 'humanly' identity, their tongue refusing to heed to their parents teaching,. It begins in lieu to deepen its apex into the fabric of distinct languages, rubbing and twisting its sides to the vocal rhythms and wonder.

They said once you taste their delicacies and grow on their streets, you'd bask in the perfection of their lingo. But I tell you, their tongue is a rebellious survivor fighting for fluency and independence. It heaves like an epileptic patient at the outbreak of a concussion, beating from syntax to semantics. It bends, it bows but yet remains static under the oppressive subjection of this colonized parlance. Bastard is the name the community placed as their middle appellation. The traditional men christened them scoundrels at the edge of society waiting to fall off, to be wrapped up and sold subconsciously. 

They do not die like the Ogbanjes, neither do they screech like the galagos. They do not whistle like the Owuru bird nor do they shape shift like the Abada. Their tongue might be dead but it rises like a shape shifter taking the forms of distinct vernaculars, learning and acclimatizing itself to their harsh phonologies. It breaks out from its subjective cell to be graced in patterns of vocal taffetas, oral boubous and articulate adires. If you were truly cursed, just know that with every step forward, the weight of the curse grows lighter.