Women’s War: Nigerian Delta

Abstract

Women’s War: Nigerian Delta Jacqueline Johnson (bio) Praises to Delta grandmothers in lappas and T-shirts protesting low wages and poverty, pushed back gates of Chevron oil. Praises to all those secret society women, took over five hundred and eighty-three acres of Delta oil land, now Texaco property, staring down the ghosts of their future. What if Americans had joined them,made stronger their protest.It’s so hard to think of global freedomwhen you don’t have local freedom. These ordinary women shouting for jobs, blocked the airline terminal stopped Chevron’s presidents from escaping, back to Europe and safety of empires. Great-grandmothers in geles and braids demand more housing, new towns, twenty-four-hour electricity, for their wealth to come back to them. Praises to grandmothers from fifty to ninety, strapped grandchildren to their backs, camped on concrete grounds as husbands and children brought food each night. What if Americans had joined themshut down Texaco and Shell oil USA?Demanded, “no oil sales,until you do right by my sisters in Escravos.” [End Page 1122] For ten days they stopped production, took seven hundred workers hostage. Grandmothers who were not making “mash” only fighting like their foremothers in 1929. Grandmothers threatening to go naked in front of male workers and foreign power brokers, shaming Chevron oil thieves into negotiation. Praises for the new women’s war. [End Page 1123] Jacqueline Johnson Jacqueline Johnson, who lives in Brooklyn, is a graduate of City College of New York and New York University. In 1997, she was given the Poetry Award by White Pine Press, which published her book of poems, A Gathering of Mother Tongues, in 1998. This Cave Canem Fellow has also received awards from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Mid-Atlantic Writers Association, and the McDowell Colony. Copyright © 2008 Charles H. Rowell