Nomadic People

Fetch me my old wooden pillow!

Fetch me my old thumb piano!

Why do my thoughts go back to the Sami artist, Nils Nilsson Skum (1872-1951), whose work I saw and admired in Umeå, Sweden? Maybe because there have been nomadic or semi-nomadic peoples in many of the countries in which I have lived (eg in Ethiopia, Kenya, Australia, Greece and Sweden)? Maybe it's just that old feeling of restlessness, the desire to be on the road? Here's an old song of mine called "The Nomad" (in a new arrangement by Raul Scacchi).

I hope I'm not in any danger of romanticising the nomadic way of life, as some have said about Bruce Chatwin ("The Songlines"). I have no illusions!

Swedish Vision

A reindeer drive

On the river ice.

Fifteen hundred, with their herders.

Fulani Flautist

(Nomad versus World Bank Agricultural Development Project,

Gombe, Nigeria, September 1978)

At the edge of the forest reserve

We stopped to stretch our legs.

The road gangs had not reached this far.

The jungle cats had yet to come

To claw up trees and undergrowth.

No bulldozers, graders or scrapers,

No pipeline crews; only our Landrover

Had so far disturbed the peace.

Out of the forest the faint sound of a flute;

A mirage of silver-white cows.

I watched the herd materialise;

The sound of the flute grew louder.

Long-horned cattle, groomed like stallions,

Sleek-skinned, clean and cared-for.

The Fulani flautist emerged from the trees:

Standing before us with a welcoming smile.

He stopped to play, acknowledged our interest,

And them ambled away with his herd.

I would have followed the Fulani herdsman,

But I could hear less soothing sounds.

The big yellow cats were coming,

Rumbling through the forest reserve.

The ground was beginning to tremble.

And the fragile flute of the nomad

Would soon be crushed beneath caterpillar tracks;

And the cattle would soon have to graze

On whatever might be left

Between the asphalt and acres of maize.

Vitsa Nomad 

 

I’m a new kind of nomad

Without any sheep: I’m changing

The manner of migration.

Four months in the mountains,

Five months by the sea,

The rest of the time in some city.

For half the year

Nomads lived and died round here;

They bred their livestock

And wove their wool

For almost thirty centuries.

Three thousand years, so little changed.

Half my life I’ve lived

Like some kind of wanderer,

Like a Sarakatsan

Or Zagorian man,

A man on the move,

Self-exiled, xenitemenos.



(Vitsa Nomad, from my book "Corfu Blues")


Afar Song:

To have been included in my unpublished book project
"The Ethiopian Anthology"