For
All of africa’s Children
who live die and still live
in the diaspora
especially for those
who still stand so tall among the cannonades
and smell of mists and powdered memoriesOne thing becomes clear in the above, and that is the evocation of history both in its
distant and immediate as well as contemporary temporality. Concerning this, Smith (254)
intimates that “one result of capitalism’s global expansion was the voluntary and (more)
forcible dispersion of increasing numbers of people and it is in relation to these impelled
dislocations of modern history that the concept of diaspora becomes more widely
germane as displaced populations attempted to trace a story of unity in the face of
dislocation and alienation”. Without a doubt, the extent to which Africa is affected in this
global phenomenon of dislocation is largely traumatic. This is in view of the great
number the continent lost to global capitalism beginning from the 15th century. What is
designated in contemporary times as mild forms of the “forcible” dislocation as informed
especially by postcolonial disillusionment and neo-colonialism could thus be said to be
deeply steeped in the history of the past. That history, when invoked, only brings about
“an evocation of trauma” (Wole Soyinka 1999: 59). Given this painful reality, Soyinka
asks with double interrogation: “But is that all it can be? Should be?” (59) The question is
repreived from the misfortune of hanging in historical limbo when he answers : “Every
landmark is a testament of history and in our own indelible instancefrom Goree through
the slave forts of Ghana to Zanzibarevery fort and stockade, increasingly turned into
museums, filled with grim evocations of this passage of history” (59). Such ground
clearing enhances the understanding of the dynamics of exile that one encounters in
EarthChild. By returning for instance to the source and inspiration of the artistic medium,
the Anlo-Ewe tradition, one does not only discover, like Ezenwa Ohaeto (1999: 128)
argues, that “the dirge impulse proceeds beyond the fact of death; for it projects into what
could be described as a synthesization of sadness and hope in terms projecting beyond
current sorrow into the future”. The attempt on the part of Ohaeto to impose exclusive
absolutes of present and future temporality stands to be interrogated. For by excluding