Why do you embrace my generation?
Who brought you to Blackman’s world?
You were not here in the days of fathers
When a daughter’s virginity was the family’s pride
And the eager bridegroom pays the debt –
One full keg of frothy palm-wine –
The first morning after the wedding night
Today the young ones fraud the debt
At the first glance of the beautiful one
…
My love, my princess, my Juliet, my queen
Why did you discard this bridal’s pride?
Who was the man that stole your virginity?
For it was not at home the first day I was here
Where is it? Who took it away from you?
My mother just told me whom to love
She says my father met her virginity at home
I must follow my father’s trail she says
The trail of his father and his father’s fathers
Call it superstition, but it made Africa unique
My love, I wish I could marry you
If your father wanted a thousand kegs of palmwine
I would get it for him –
Though industrialization has killed our palms
I would plant new ones in my father’s backyard
…But you can’t bring back your virginity
Oh my love, how I wish to marry you
If your father wanted dollars
In place of the thousand kegs of palmwine
My politician friends would find it for me
Their fathers have stolen enough oil dollars
…But you can’t bring back your virginity
Oh my love! Why has this come upon us
If only you can bring back your virginity…!
I still love you though you’re no more mine
Your love remains heavy upon my brow
But you can’t bring back your virginity
And I have pledged to uphold Africa’s heritage
I am African; I follow not the strange ways
I cannot override my mother’s word
The African child has no age of independence
As long as his mother breathes on earth
Written by: Bada Yusuf Amoo
Edited by: Kukogho Iruesiri Samson
