I estimated the date of this poem based on the reference to Kilimanjaro. OF course, I was aware of Kili long before 2006 and had seen it in 1974 and 1999 but it was only after purchasing my land over the Rift Valley, to build the lodge, that it became very familiar to me. I landed at Kilimanjaro airport in 2005 and travelled with Kanuth, my best friend in Tanzania around the Manyara district looking for land to purchase. I flew back in 2006 to start implementing the plans that Kanuth and I had been working on for so long.
It was not actually Kili that inspired the poem. Sometimes it is something very negative that gets it going, like the unnecessary waste, the murder, of elephants for their tusks and rhinos for their horns. I had to show my disgust.
Although one cannot simply blame the poachers. They never got rich by killing the animals but they had poor families to support. It was, and is, the luxury western market and the oriental markets that tempted its customers’ lust for aphrodisiacs that got rich.
The Afro-Dizzy-Yak
Up high in the snows of Kili lived a very uncommon beast,
nothing like it lived to the north, the south, the west nor the east.
Yet, in years gone by, it was a common sight,
sleeping by day, and on the prowl at night.
No foe of man, nor a pest to the land,
it lived in freedom and was never planned
into the daily lives of the common man,
for this being was no good in the pan.
But then, one day, and purely by chance
someone discovered that the beast’s horns enhance
the sexual desires and capacity
of simple people like you and me.
So this animal was hunted both day and night,
persecuted, and, from the gun, never far out of sight.
His horns would be ripped out on the spot
and his carcass just left in the sun to rot.
No breed can survive such a merciless chase,
no mammal can beat the human race!
So the inevitable happened to this creature,
it was simply destined to no longer feature
on this wonderful world that will one day lack
all beasts like the now extinct Afro-Dizzy-Yak.
Copyright © 01.06.2006 – Kevin Mahoney
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