Monologue

Oh agony, oh path why do you haunt me?  Why does everyone hate me?  I am the king’s son and should be treated as such.  My father’s first wife, Sassouma, thinks me to be a fool.  She thinks that I came from fools because my face is only my mother’s and Sassouma thinks my mother is a fool.  This pains me because all around me I see folly and see children inferior to me.  They think because they can walk and because they use their tongues to relay their thoughts that they are better than me.  But they are fools speaking foolishly all the time.  Fools, they are all the same, young or old, kings, wives or not kings’ wives.  Sassouma is just as much a fool as the children.  But she should not be so foolish.  She has been on the earth longer than the children.  She uses her tongue to lash harmful words at my mother, Soglon Kedjou, with insults also directed at me.  She says, “Why does your son not walk yet Soglon?”  He is seven years of age and should have walked long ago.  Well, a slow son takes after his mother she says.  But she can not see that while she speaks before analyzing what she’s about to say.  I speak very little and analyze everything about the world and therefore I do not speak unless I feel it is needed.  That is why I know these words can only be the words of one like Sassouma who is an evil snake with no vision.  Evil because she wishes only to hurt my mother and I but foolish to prey on someone such as myself and my family.  Though she is an evil snake and a fool like the other children my mom makes me play with who are not evil but just foolish.   My pain comes from this source, their spring of hatred, of rejection.  They do both to me without cause and I long to be accepted by them.  For years, when my mom went to get a baobab leaf, I heard this insult from Sassouma:  “I have plenty leaves, because my son, unlike yours, can walk and got these for me.”  My mom came home sobbing and I resolved to go and walk. But I would need an iron rod to stand on, and then I would walk and grasp the baboob tree. I crawled to the tree and stood up on the iron rod, my knees began to shake until I got used to walking.  I then walked to the tree and uprooted it. Now Sassouma and the children’s spring of rejection and hatred would run dry.  They will have only respect for me now.  I now know what I am and what I shall be.  I am the “Lion” fierce and powerful.  I have awakened and my people will fear me, Sassouma most of all.