Yahya Jongintaba

Yahya is one of America’s African-originated people

whose ancestors were stolen in chains

to the land in which he was born and bred

among the hills that roll and the valleys that lay bordered

by the Holyoke Mountains along the Connecticut River Valley

in the New England college-town Amherst Massachusetts.

His wife Sophia is one of Tanzania’s Msukuma people

born and bred among the granite hills

and stone monoliths of peninsula Mwanza town

on Africa’s great ocean-of-a-lake Victoria

near-neighbor to the vast plains of the Serengeti

of the East Africa lands that birthed modern humanity.

Yahya’s upbringing was a valley and rolling-hills existence

rummaging through woodlands building treehuts and forts

fishing camping mountain-climbing with father and friends

paper-delivering grass-mowing basketballing footballing

singing in the church children’s choir

and taking lessons on piano and guitar.

Sophia’s upbringing was a village and lake existence

farming crops fetching water collecting firewood cleaning house

washing clothes cooking food back-toting baby-sister

climbing trees for fruit swimming in the lake

jump-roping hopscotching net-balling soccer-playing

singing with mother and siblings in a family church choir

with older brother strumming a self-made guitar.

Yahya’s advanced education

began with college-town schooling

in state-of-the-art educational facilities

that set the course for a life of professoring

researching authoring and world-traveling.

Sophia’s grade-school village education

began in a too-small classroom

with blackboard chalk pointer and teacher

before a hundred uniformed mostly barefooted children

dirt-floor seated with laps as desks for notebooks pencils

and a few tattered shared textbooks

setting the course for marriage family farming

and travel nowhere beyond the national borders.

With a secondary school diploma in hand

Sophia got work at the historic Marangu Hotel

famous for organizing climbs of Mt Kilimanjaro

where on the afternoon before his Kilimanjaro climb

and five days later upon his descent and return

Yahya was met by her who served him water in the bar

and talked to him innocently remarking “I want to go far”

the imagined “far” for which Yahya’s journeys learnings callings

and conversions so long had been preparing him.

Marrying six years after meeting and befriending

Yahya introduced Sophia to the “far” outside African village

and how in the grand bid for salvation

humanity left village to the distant past

to become great in religion philosophy and science

while Sophia introduced Yahya to the “near” inside African village

and how despite humanity’s grand bid for higher salvation

the first might end up last while the last are first.

Into this marital bridging of two persons borders and cultures

embodying the hope that none would be last while some are first

but all together would constitute a common salvation

came our son Izengo America-born Tanzania-bred

and since age six domiciled and schooled off the grid

in the forest-foot of Tanzania’s Uluguru Mountains

where his childlikeness is valued honored

and enhanced by a nature-immersed lifestyle

that enables him to guide us back

to original guru in all us.

Yes let us.