They have come in their numbers to eat up the land, scrape it off, chew the grass and spit it out.
They have come to destroy, mow our farmlands, bite our children, and unleash famine in the land. They have become blind to their cousins, irreverent to pleas, Godless and wicked with a glint in their eye. The Locusts have descended on our land, tiny animals killing our lions, breading in forbidden places and laughing at us.
They have arrived with their children, their helpers, their cooks and strategists, baggage in hand, oblivious to happiness, family and laughter. A tower of boxes trails them, full of nails and shrapnel, full of guns and explosives. They carry anonymous bags and show a contented smile, teeth blackened with soot from bombing, eyes glazed with things known and unknown. These locusts strange in their new ways sleep with their sisters and are mirthful in cadavers. They drown in body parts and belch with blood on their lips.
The Locusts are among us and they dare us to blink, to laugh, to be hearty or free. They delude our little brothers and drag them into a bottomless abyss, feeding them with untruths and turning them against us. Now our brothers walk around dazed in new thoughts, soaked in violent thoughts and have departed the peaceful ways we taught them.
The locusts think it’s the year of the locust, they hover over us, descending so low, trying to overwhelm us and taking our children.
But the locust is but a small being, desperate in its hunger to kill, blind in the dusk of man, ensuring that we are confused in spite of ourselves. But this locust is but a weird insect, unseen and unknown to man. It has morphed from insect to demean us, huge in its plans to destroy, climbing trees and dropping deadly bags across the nation.
This specie taunts us, celebrates our tears and cheer as we bury our children. This type Z locust has embedded itself in our communities and is traversing our land with gusto and eating us alive. These locusts dammed and done for, think they have won; think they have victory over us.
It forgets what we have as a people, that we will crush its underbelly and bring it to justice. They forget that we still have community, stronger than ever, more close-knit than ever before. The locusts forget that we are a tribe of people who have God above all things and are known to be warriors; our forefathers fought hard and never gave up. They forget that we have always being our brother’s keeper. That we are bigger than the locust if we gather together and learn to stay in formation like them, tied together, bonded, hurdled with our arms around each other. The locust is small, spineless, and spindly, where we are strong, bold and outspoken. The locust can be weakened by our very togetherness.
They come like a thief in the night, pillorying, scattering, maiming, killing, spilling the blood of innocents. Everywhere is Crimson red and the sky is black with swarms of locusts, there is overcast in the land, the sun is blurred with locusts; the people are running for cover.
But the life of the locust will soon be over because we are determined to send them away, to crush those who resist and to deny them accommodation in our homestead. We are going to starve them and hang them to dry, make them pay for their sins. We are going to ostracize them, put them out in the rain and deny them as our kin.
We have cleared our farms of weeds and put a locust- eating scarecrow on our farms to protect our farmlands. We have held each other’s hands and looked out for our cousins. We have prayed like never before and thrown fire at locust territory. We are burning down their havens and outdoing their strategists. We are rooting them and zoning them out. We have invited aliens to join us in stamping out the locusts and by love, by God we will succeed. Even the aliens know that this is our war against locusts, strange insects in our land, and we will lead this fight, smacking our lips as we turn locust territory into a huge bonfire and consign them into the rubbish bin of history.
We will crush them because we can and we will as we pray together, holding hands and chanting victory songs.
We are tired of locust mockery, tired of burying our children. We know because we believe…That the locusts will soon be History…Amen
Eugenia Abu
