"ten translations of 'Bambo Balanta'" by Gabrielle Oliver

Image Credit: Matt Hardy, obtained and licensed through Unsplash

Editor’s Note: This poem is best experienced on a computer or tablet reader.

ten translations of “Bambo Balanta¹”

for Sahmboh’s survival through, and for those two million African lives lost in the Middle Passage.

jaawo a ye
bambo balanta
baa baa

for the enemy carries
those Mandinka who resist                       
across the sea, to Europe. 

enemy carri
             Mandinka
cross         sea

jaawo a ye
bambo balanta
baa baa

the enemy is a crocodile
who carries resistant ones
on its back, across a river.

enemy crocodile
carri resistant
          across        river

daa wo a ye
bambo balanta
baa baa

the place for those
who carry resistance
is in the ocean.

place
resistance
in the ocean

daa wo a ye
bambo balanta
baa baa

I saw the place
where men resisted crocodiles
across the stream.

I saw
crocodiles
cross the stream

jaawo a ye
bambo balanta
baa baa

the enemy of a child strong
enough to carry a baby
on their back, is from Europe.

enemy
a baby
from Europe.

naa wo a ye
bambo balanta
baa baa

I resisted those crocodiles
who carried me
across the ocean.

I resist crocodiles

cross ocean.

naa wo a ye
bambo balanta
baa baa

men who resist crocodiles
can only return home
in the sea

men
turn home
in sea

naa wo a ye
bambo balanta
baa baa

for that mother
whose stomach is hard
carries a baby crocodile.

mother

carri    baby crocodile

na wo a ye
bambo balanta
baa baa

a crocodile runs
into my back swift
as the resistance of a river

run
into                       swift
river

naa wo a ye
bambo balanta
baa baa

my mother carries me on
her back strong
as the ocean.

my mother carri

a ocean

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¹“Bambo Balanta” is a traditional Mandinka hymn about the strong and resistant Balanta people – an ethnic group from The Gambia. In Mandinka, Balanta literally means “those who resist.”

²Sahmboh, born in the Gambia region around 1730, was captured and brought to the colonies to work as an enslaved craftsman for the Moravian Church in Old Salem, NC from 1771 until his death in 1797. Sahmboh lived and worked in the church’s “Single Brothers’ House” from 1783-1795, but resisted learning English and, in turn, could not speak in complete sentences. Sahmnoh attempted to escape slavery on two separate occasions. As punishment for escaping, he received the "typical treatment" (African Americans in Salem, 12) of 40 lashes, twice.

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Born and raised in the DC area, Gabrielle Oliver is a second year MFA Creative Writing Poetry student at the University of Kentucky. She holds bachelor’s degrees from Howard University and Kansai Gaidai University in Osaka, Japan. Gabrielle was the Japan-America Society of Washington, DC’s 2018 Tanaka Green Scholarship recipient for her diachronic research on the aboriginal Ainu language of Japan. In the summer of 2019, Gabby was awarded a writing fellowship with 7x NAACP Image Award-winning poet, Nikki Giovanni.