Resilience

​'Our story didn't begin in chains'
Brother Malcolm reminded.
Remember when we were free to just be?
Be comfortable in the skin we're in? 
Where our chests were just as expansive as baobab trees?
Where free traders and dusty foot philosophers
threaded red earth paths of knowledge 
Seeking the truths we hold?
Even held on to across the Seas?
Where village aunties kept up tradition
In colorful head scarves made educated guesses
That healing was never done in isolation
and understood that womanhood was the best hood to live in?
Where children's classrooms were filled with wooden writing boards 
Not only blackboards 
To illustrate the long history of Islam and literacy in Africa?
As lessons completed, boards were washed clean for reuse
And the ink of young scholars flowed through the Savannah?
Where the Sheikh and the mureed convened
under the shade of palms from the heated sun beams
sitting knees bent dripped in clothes without seams?

Knowledge is a garden, if it isn't cultivated, you can't harvest it, 
the proverb says.
Remember when they had us cultivating and harvesting everything else but
 in foreign, unwelcoming places and in cruel and unusual ways?
'But my hand was made strong by the hand of the Almighty'
Brother Bob put forward 
​And as we forward in this generation triumphantly 
'We are going to emancipate ourselves from mental slavery
because while others might free the body, none but ourselves can free the mind '
A lion name Marcus Mosiah authored
 So free your mind and be unconfined.

Go ahead and tell your story
Freely, in all your strength and glory
The mind is a terrible thing to waste they said
so don't waste time with those unworthy. 
Know your worth and charge taxes on every gem you drop
Pick up where the ancestors left off and don't you stop.
You are Black history and future in the making 
Through the joy and the pain 
Your spirit is steady manifesting 
The plant that God favours grows even without rain
​
Resilience is a blessing

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Written by Zaakirah Rose