Kai kai Lady

1

Kai kai lady

Bico, have mercy on your liver

The flavour of juniper berries

Conceals the spirit’s venom

Mocks you

Washes you dry

That Sapele water

That heads for the liver

2

Your claustrophobic secret

Herniates out in at parties

Explains your photophobia

Kai kai lady beware

They all know why you smile

For behind you they whisper

‘Her joys are propelled

by Push me-push you’

3

The babe you suckled

Lies comatose, succumbed to milk and Kai kai

Oblivious to mosquitoes that

gyrate in it’s small ears.

The ill informed suck your blood

but it goes straight to their Anophelese brains

Unbalanced in flight

As Ogogoro takes over

4

Apketeshi lady

Share thoughts for your liver

and Betty Ford acquaintances

all hung out to dry.

The brew is illicit

Your tremors explicit

This treachery could set them back

A year or two.

 Dr Wilson Orhiunu

My Time

2005

Excerpts from Cynthia Ikoro Oroh's Thesis

Final Year Project

August 2014

Writing in English, the language of the imperialist conquerors of Nigeria, Achebe’s stated goal was to create‘new’ and more African English. He integrated Igbo words and phrases, proverbs, folktales and other elements of communal story telling into the narrative in order to record and preserve African oral traditions and to subvert the colonialist language and culture. It is against these backdrops of the language arguments that Wilson Orhiunu’s  My Time, a collection of poems in the new and more African English and Pidgin English, was written. My Time is a collection of 101 poems with some written in English, some in pidgin and others in a blend of both. 

3.12 “KAI KAI LADY”

Poem Summary/ Subject Matter

The subject matter of the poem is the unknown effect to the victim of taking spirit (kaikai). The poet persona is aware of the effect of alcohol on the human liver and tells the lady the effect it has on her in a bid to make her stop. He tells her that the flavor of the drink is deceiving her from grasping the effect alcohol has on her liver.

Aside the effect it has on her liver, he makes her see the effect it has on her personality, her suckling child, down to the mosquito that sucks her “kaikai” ridden blood.

Stanza and Verse

The poem consists of four stanzas and each stanza has 8 lines, altogether, the poem has 32 lines. Each stanza is a blend of English and Pidgin English, and represents a unit of thought.

Rhythm and Metre

The poem is not rhythmic and the use of metrical feet pattern is completely absent, because the combination of stressed and unstressed syllable is completely absent. The poet has no intention of creating rhythm with his choice of words, instead, he is more concerned with making the lady know the effect of “kaikai” on her system.

Rhyme Scheme

The poem has no well-defined rhyme scheme, since the poet’s intention is to make the lady realize the negative effect spirit has on her liver, herself as a whole, and her baby, and at that, he is not overly concerned with creating a rhyme scheme. The only places where 2 rhymed lines followed each other, is simply done to make emphasis. In the first and last stanza of the poem, there are two rhymed lines each:

Lines 7 and 8 – “water” and “liver”

Lines 28 and 30 – “illicit” and “explicit”

In the first stanza, “water” means “kaikai”, so placing the rhyme on the “water” and the “liver” places more emphasis on the two words, showing that taking one leads to the damage of the other.

In the last stanza, “illicit” shows taking “kaikai” is not legal, especially for a breastfeeding mother and “explicit” is when something is made more obvious to anyone who cares to look. Having tremors (shaking) that are explicit shows that the result of taking “kaikai” which is illegal is made obvious by the tremors. Putting the rhyme on these two words shows their affinity and makes the emphasis effective on the reader.

5.3 CONCLUSION

From the foregoing, it is evident that much work has not been done on the overall literary appreciation of Wilson Orhiunu’s My Time. Structure and language is an aspect of literature (poetry) that has been adequately explored in many works but there’s a wide research gap in terms of some contemporary works especially those written in Pidgin English. This research has to an extent covered a gap in this field but there’s still so much work to be done in this area. Aspects on literature like the themes, socio-historical context, form and content etc. are still unexplored in the poems of Wilson Orhiunu. The researcher therefore suggests that writers should pay closer attention to homeland poems that are deep-rooted in the Nigerian society