A POEM FOR CHRISTIANA JATTA
By: Ousainou Mbenga
A SPARK FOR THE REVOLUTION
With a spark of youthful arrogance, audacity, courage
Atop a defying confidence; you jolted GRTS into disbelieve
Mouths dropped, eyes popped and hearts raced
In awe to your fed – up bravery with calculated temerity
For once, GRTS ceased to be the idiot’s box of vanity
Reason begins to challenge willful ignorance
You rekindled the forgotten cry of past generations, that
Students are the spark of the revolution!
Your courage was contagious
Not a contagion to spread disease
Rather to spread revolutionary resistance.
From the opposite pole of stupidity
The dishonorable guest of tyranny
Blared his trumpet of chauvinism
“I don’t debate with women”
”You have a sickness”
In steadfast defiance, you giggled at the put – down
Intimidation is a test for cowards and traitors
You harbor no cowardice to betray the gospel truth
Unlike the traitorous treachery of pseudo scholars
Desperate to sanitize tyrant presidents in the name of Allah
Unmoved by his taunts, you sparkled the sanctum of religious deceit
Even the Hijab –donned youngsters were reluctant to interrupt you
They admired your audacity to challenge opiated ideas of blind religiosity
We hope the spirit to question dogmatic ideas rubbed off on them
Never surrender your brain to religious zealots
It benefits them to let religion remain the “opium of the masses”
Indeed, you were a rare moment on the idiot’s box
Reduced to disrepute, the hustler scholar resorts to comedy
You illuminated the writing on the wall that time is up!
This monster must leave our lives of religious coexistence
No gangster – Imams or false “prophets” can snuff this SPARK
The unity of the SPARK and the powder keg is inevitable!
So, will all the brave women like Christiana Jatta please stand up!