Written piece
The thread from Babadjou
TCHOFFO PENAYE CELESTIN XAVIER
Cameroon
About this piece
A poem about the invisible thread between Yaoundé and Babadjou, between my parents' giving and my grandparents' blessing. Memory of dried potatoes, white wine, roast beetles, and love that crosses distance.
When I was small, we lived two lives
One in Yaoundé, gentle and kind
The other where the village thrives
In Babadjou, left far behind.
My parents gave with open hands
Bags of rice and boxes of soap
Oil in bottles, salt from the lands
A little money, a little hope.
The grandparents came from the red earth road
Bringing dried potatoes and white palm wine
No pesticide in what they bestowed
Just the taste of nature, pure and fine.
They had no scales to weigh the gift
Only love, a blessing, a warm embrace
And when we left, our hearts would lift
Then sink again, leaving that place.
At home in Babadjou, the water was clear
The roast beetles smelled of the forest floor
No chemicals, nothing to fear
Just the soil’s song and nothing more.
So I think of the thread that stretches still
Between the city and the village hill
It is not iron, not gold, not wire
But the tenderness of my grandparents’ fire.
A quilt is never done, they say
Each hand adds thread along the way
I hold theirs now, and I will weave
So the next child also believes.