Africa: The Vine Upon Which Humans Grow

Oh, Tangawatu

The dream of the ancestral home

Oh, Tangawatu

The vine upon which humans grow

A young boy lay down in the African night

And gazed up above at the ancestral lights

And he wondered where he was going, and where he had been

Then he drifted to sleep and he had a strange dream

He dreamed there were beasts and birds all around

And amidst them the Creator, Mulungu, was found

Then a tall thin reed burst open one morn

And the first man and woman of the earth became born

But soon to the sky did Mulungu retire

As the humans began to destroy life with fire

The trees they were slashed and the land it was burned

And many a creature has never returned

Soon the destruction extended from the land to the sea

And to people and nations, and worlds yet unseen

So the green turned to grey and the blue turned to brown

And the sacred was lost, as Mammon was crowned

The boy, he awoke and could not understand

So he went to the wisest man throughout the land

And the sangoma said: "This is a warning to heed

Of the fate of the Earth if we continue our greed"

"But", said the sangoma, "if we realise

All life is connected, everything is divine

Then Mulungu may once again join us below

As the vine upon which we humans can grow"

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