Unrooted

By Chiamaka Umennadi

IGBO kwenu!
Kwenu!
Kwezuonu!

Kedu?
How are you, my people?
Do you remember the days when one greeting could bind us together?
When “Nnoo…” meant you are welcome — and you felt it, not just heard it.

We had a culture once.
When evenings smelled of roasted yam and palm oil,
When children gathered barefoot in the dust,
Waiting for moonlight stories to rise with the stars.

When our names carried history,
And every syllable was a prayer,
Not something shortened for convenience.

But somewhere, between the mirror and the screen,
We stopped recognizing ourselves.

We traded the stories of our ancestors
For fairy tales that never knew our pain.
We silenced the tongues that carried our roots
Just to twist our lips into accents
That never tasted our soil.

Before, we gathered under the moon to hear stories.
Now… we scroll in silence.

Our dances —
Once born from the heartbeat of the earth —
Now stumble to beats that don’t know our names.
Our cloth —
Once a language of symbols and pride —
Now hides in closets,
While we chase brands that will never claim us.

Onye kwe, chi ya ekwe.
If a person agrees, their spirits agree.
But we disagreed with ourselves.
We said no to our own beauty,
No to our own language,
No to the very things that made us whole.

Now it’s a flex to say,
“I can’t speak or understand my language…”
But the same lips will brag about learning French,
Spanish, Korean —
Wearing borrowed tongues like trophies,
While our own mother tongue gathers dust in silence.

And now look at us—
Brothers, sisters, neighbours… strangers.
We sit together, yet miles apart.
Our laughter once carried unity,
Now it echoes hollow,
Drowned by the noise of borrowed lives.

We chase what is not ours,
And in the chase, we lose each other.
The warmth of community replaced with cold competition.
The village square abandoned for lonely screens.
The handshakes, the embraces, the “Kedu?”
Replaced by scrolling thumbs and empty hearts.

Tell me…
How can a tree forget its roots
And still expect to stand?
How can a people despise their reflection
And still expect to rise?

Igbo enwe eze.
The Igbo have no king.
But now?
We bow to crowns that were never ours.

We call it modern.
We call it civilized.
But I call it amnesia.
Because we are forgetting—
Forgetting the tongues that prayed for us,
The songs that carried us,
The names that crowned us,
The soil that birthed us.

Our children grow up knowing Cinderella
But not Nneka the wise.
They dance to rhythms of strangers
But cannot move to the beat of the drum.
They answer to nicknames that erase their fathers’ legacies
And wear fashion that strips their mothers’ pride.

Oh, my people…
A culture lost is not just music forgotten.
It is identity erased.
It is a people unrooted.
It is a soul without a home.

But listen—
The embers still glow.
In every proverb whispered,
In every drumbeat remembered,
In every hand that still weaves the cloth of our ancestors.
The embers still glow.

So rise.
Pick up the drum.
Speak the tongue.
Wear the cloth.
Tell the story.
Guard the root.

For a people who remember who they are
Can never truly be broken.
And a culture reclaimed
Is a nation reborn.

Igbo kwenu!
Kwenu!
Ya gazie.

* Umennadi, historian and international relations expert, wrote this poem from Akpo, Anambra State, in celebration of the 2nd Indigenous Arts Festival organised by Indigenous Culture Center, Asaba, scheduled for September 26–28, 2025 at Delta Film and Tourism Village, Anwai, Asaba. Festival is dedicated to journalist, performance poet and cultural textile maker, Evelyn Osagie, who attended and performed at the maiden edition last year