Vasco da Gama Returns to the Ballot

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They said he left—
Vasco da Gama—
buried in the salt of another century,
his compass folded into museum glass.
But I see him again,
not on the Indian Ocean,
but in the ink of promises,
in the rehearsed smiles of men
who arrive like ships at dawn—
quiet, convincing, carrying “development”
in the belly of their speeches.

He docks at our shores differently now:
no cannons,
no крест-shaped flags—
just manifestos perfumed with hope,
just microphones that bloom like false prophets
in the market of hunger.

And we—
we are still Calicut,
still Malindi,
still the soft coast that welcomes strangers
before asking the cost of arrival.
He has studied us well.
He knows our tides:
how quickly we forget
the last storm that emptied our nets,
how easily we trade tomorrow
for a louder today.

So he renames conquest—
calls it agenda,
calls it bottom-up,
calls it hustle,
and we clap,
because the chains now sound like opportunity.

But listen—
the ocean remembers everything.
It remembers how maps were redrawn
without our consent,
how spices became excuses,
how friendship turned to fortresses
in Mombasa’s throat.
Today, the fort still stands—
not in coral stone,
but in policy,
in numbers that never reach the village,
in roads that end exactly where votes do.

Vasco da Gama has learned our language now.
He speaks in rallies,
quotes our pain back to us,
measures our poverty like longitude—
precisely, profitably.

And we?
We queue again at the shoreline,
inked fingers raised like surrender,
welcoming another voyage
we did not chart.

Tell me—
when will we become the ocean,
unconquerable,
refusing every ship that comes smiling
with a map already drawn?

Until then,
history will not repeat—
it will campaign.
©Bunguswa Writes ™

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