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Lois Olusakin

Lois Olusakin

Friday 14 November 2025

They walked in, in authority,

Blindfolds on our eyes.

Our men threw down their sticks,

Our women their beads,

The children lost the way they eat.

The world around us changed.

Even after they left,

We kept the blindfold on.

What we saw behind it

Is what we call "home"

But definitely not home home.

After they left,

Scores passed, decades swept in and out

Still, we are stuck,

Trying to flow back into our way

Our way of speaking now lost,

In the words of a slave master.

We speak like they do,

And the little ones still linger on their leverage.

Our culture now a stranger to us.

Our languages aliens on our tongues.

Our food some call it disgusting.

Our skin, a comment for being ugly.

Now, I struggle to speak

The syllables of my mother tongue

I am trying hard to fit in,

Like I don't belong home in the first place.

I still linger on the leverage of the slave master.

Colonization took a good turn on me.

Oh how I wish

I feel it and not just say

I am an African, a Nigerian

Because to me, no matter what my culture is home home