Nsah Mala, Cameroon-Denmark
When we were young, we had many types of bees.
When dry seasons powdered the earth with dust,
there were big yellowish bees – ndehse bangnese,
those not social to live in colonies, but as couples,
that burrowed into dry soft wood in the bushes,
and made a sweet yellow paste which we harvested
when we went to fetch wood. We often dated girls by
offering them the sweet paste. Sometimes we ignorantly
roasted and enjoyed their bulbous larvae back home.
Because they never stung us, we would catch some alive,
bring them home, tie to long thread pieces & fly as planes.
There were also big black bees – ndehse fingnese,
that burrowed into planks and wood on our roofs.
They also made a sweet yellow paste,
but we couldn’t destroy houses to harvest it,
except when our fathers had to renovate.
Facilitated by noisy zinc sheets on roofs,
they sometimes became boisterous bands,
humming gentle melodies from their burrows
to entertain us by day, troubling our sleep some nights.
—Aarhus, 26 May 2019
Nsah Mala is the author of five poetry collections, four in English and one in French. His collections include: Chaining Freedom (2012), Bites of Insanity (2015), If You Must Fall Bush (2016), Constimocrazy: Malafricanising Democracy (2017), and Les Pleurs du mal (2019). His poems and short stories feature in numerous magazines and anthologies across the globe such as Red Poets, Kalahari Review, Scarlet Leaf Review, Wales – Cameroon Anthology, Ashes and Memory, and Redemption Song and Other Stories – Caine Prize Anthology 2018, among others. He has also edited a number of poetry anthologies and has won literary prizes in Cameroon and France.