Relate Vanity By Birago Diop To Our Contemporary Lives

Vanity by Birago Diop is a culturally inclined poem which admonished the readers with a pessimist tone because of the reoccuring cultural negligence. The poet was uncertain that his lamentation would resolve the issue "What heart will listen to our clamoring?" since no one paid attention even when the ancestors were lamenting: "When our Dead come with their Dead/ When they have spoken to us with their clumsy voices;/ Just as our ears were deaf".

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Looking at our contemporary living, a whole lot has changed in the face of African culture. The acceptance of strange styles and the adoption of alien religions have almost painted the hair of African culture to grey making it so clos
e to grave.

In Yoruba land, women no longer greet with two kneels. The attached importance to virgin maidens no longer exist. In Hausa land, men no longer receive flogging before marriage. The true means of making an emir no longer exist, only the rich gets the seat. In the Igbo land, the architectural form that placed families in clans no longer exist.

Modernization, science, technology and strange acquisitions have left the lamentations of Birago Diop to a condition of vanity in this our contemporary living.

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Samuel C. Enunwa aka samueldpoetry
(the Leo with wings flying)