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The Sea Eats The

Land At Home
Ko! Awoonor (1935-2013)
 The Poem Overview
8
11
At home the sea is in the town, Awoonor uses this poem to tell us the story of
9
Running in and out of the cooking places, much of the western coast of Africa. The
7
Collecting the !rewood from the hearths Southern Atlantic ocean is gradually eroding the
7
And sending it back at night; coast and in this poem we see the localised
9
The sea eats the land at home. impact as a village is devastated.
7
It came on day at the dead of night,
7
Destroying the cement walls, A personified sea at first seems playful and
8
And carried away the fowls, mischievous in carrying away wood and cooking
7
The cooking-pots and the ladles, materials, but soon becomes a raging force
9
The sea eats the land at home; determined to inflict pain and hardship upon the
9
It is a sad thing to hear the wails,
9 inhabitants of this village. It leaves these people
And the mourning shouts of the women,
9 stripped of their livelihoods, food, warmth and
Calling on all the gods they worship,
11 comfort.
To protect them from the angry sea.
11
Aku stood outside where her cooking-pot stood,
5 Alongside being seen literally, the poem can also
With her two children shivering from the cold,
5 be seen as the deterioration of traditional culture
Her hands on her breast,
9 and lifestyle in Ghana, with the destruction
Weeping mournfully.
7 being a result of neglected gods.
Her ancestors have neglected her,
8
Her gods have deserted her,
5 Mini Glossary
It was a cold Sunday morning,
10 hearth – fire place/pit;
The storm was raging,
10 Aku – Ghanaian female name meaning ‘born on
Goats and fowls were struggling in the water,
12 Wednesday’;
The angry water of the cruel sea;
11 bark water – as far as I can see, means water
The lap-lapping of the bark water at the shore,
11
And above the sobs and the deep and low moans,
filled with debris;
10
Was the eternal hum of the living sea. Adena – African female name meaning ‘she has
9
It has taken away their belongings saved’.
7
Adena has lost the trinkets which
9
Were her dowry and her joy,
6
In the sea that eats the land at home,
Eats the whole land at home.

Analysis
Context Awooner was a Ghanaian poet famed for his close connection with traditional
African culture and religion. His work often focused on themes of ancestry and
Ewe (his tribe) culture and reflects the style of traditional African oral poetry. He
was also known for his concern about the influence of Western decadence on this
culture.

He lived a colourful life and one with some variety job titles: poet, teacher. lecturer,
manager of Ghana Film Corporation, founding father of Ghana Playhouse (theatre
and drama centre), radio play writer for the BBC, ambassador, representative to the
UN and Chairman of the Council of State (advisory board to the Ghanaian
president). He also managed to pack in a stint in prison for allegedly supporting a
coup to overthrow the military government.

This poem was written sometime in the 1960s when Awooner was studying at the
University of Ghana, before all those interesting roles. It reflects upon the
devastation caused to a traditional, undeveloped village community on the
southern coast of Ghana, something he will have been familiar with as he grew up
in the Volta region. This region has seen an increasing amount of land swallowed
up by the sea and whole communities have been lost, or cut off as the sea fills up
lagoons in land. This was not a one-off flood or storm, but a continuing problem
that Ghana and other countries on the western coast face and struggle with.

Read more about that here: Ghana’s Coastal Erosion.

Tragically he was killed by the terrorist attack on the Westgate Mall, Nairobi, Kenya
in 2013.

Themes The poem describes the devastating power of nature as the sea swallows
communities and wrecks lives. It also reflects on the changing times and values in
Ghana as the traditional gods have abandoned the people and cause this
destruction to demonstrate their anger.
Content The poem describes a village (it says town, but the primitive nature of the scene
described suggests a smaller, less developed settlement than we would think of in
the West) devastated by flood water from the sea. Initially it seems somewhat
mischievous as it moves firewood and pots around before bringing them back.
However, this soon intensifies and the sea takes on a more nefarious manner. Like
some sort of monster it sneaks in at the ‘dead of night’ to catch the villagers
unaware and pulls down walls and carries cooking utensils away for good.

Awooner moves onto describe the emotional impact of this, with the lamentations
of the villagers sounding akin to something you’d expect at a funeral. The villagers
turn to their gods pleading for help, but without answer.

We then move from the general devastation to the specific suffering of Aku who
has lost her means of feeding her two children, who are left vulnerable and
shivering in the storm. It is clear the gods have abandoned her as everyone else.
Even their livestock is consumed and destined to be lost. Next the sea swallows the
possessions of Adena that were her source of joy and which would have served as
her dowry. Thus we see the sea depriving these villagers of food, warmth, comfort,
happiness and livelihoods.

The poem ends with renewed emphasis that this is not something that can be
recovered from, but the ‘whole land’ has been consumed and cannot be saved.

Language The title immediately personifies the sea and makes it seem monstrous. The
suggestion of overwhelming power is immediately established with the idea it ‘eats
and the land’. If the land beneath our feet cannot withstand its force, the villagers have

Techniqu no hope. The repetition of the phrase throughout the poem really emphasises how

es
unavoidable and unstoppable this is. This impression is confirmed in the opening
line as ‘the sea is in the town’. This conveys a sense of permanence both through
the matter of fact statement and the use of the present continuous tense.

Awoonor toys with the way we perceive the sea. Although the title and the repeats
phrase ‘the sea eats the land’ suggests devastation, the verb choice is rather
neutral, even if the action is anything but neutral. In fact, in the opening lines of
the poem the sea seems to be merely a mischievous menace to the villagers as it is
‘running in and out of the cooking places’ and ‘collecting’ firewood, but then
‘sending it back’. It almost sounds like a child playing a game, trying to tease and
irritate – if you don’t understand this try having a two year old! The imagery here
paints a view of quite calm and gentle currents flooding the village.

However, it becomes all together darker as the poem progresses. The fact it arrives
in ‘the dead of night’ suggests that it is coldly calculating the best time to cause
maximum devastation. As the villagers sleep they are caught unawares and do not
have any opportunity to react. Alongside this sneakiness, we go from the playful
teasing to ‘Destroying the cement walls’ demonstrating the incredible power and in
its stronger currents it ‘carried away the fowls’ and their cooking utensils. Teasing
becomes violence and theft. Note how significant these things are: we have the
walls that represent comfort, security and warmth; the fowls, representing
livelihood; and the cooking utensils that serve as a means to eat.

Later Awoonor recognises the sea as ‘cruel’, ‘raging’ and ‘angry’. The devastation is
seen to be deliberately targeting the community and punishing them. You could
read this as simply recognising these human traits in the natural conditions.
However, you could go further and link these to Awoonor’s ideas about his country
loses touch with its traditional cultural roots and religion. The influences of the
West have meant that the gods no longer get the respect they once had and take it
out on the remaining worshippers. This may be reading too far into things, but
otherwise we accept that this indiscriminate destruction and hate is the nature of
the sea.

Another important aspect of this poem is the use of a semantic field linked to
grieving death. This begins with the ‘dead of night’, which perhaps offers a first
hint at the wider impact of the sea consuming the village. Awooner builds on this
with the description of the women of the village’s ‘wails’, ‘mourning shouts’ and
‘weeping mournfully’. These emotional responses are commonly associated with
the sharp pain caused by death to a loved one. Later the sound of ‘sobs’ and ‘the
deep and low moans’ of the village are drowned out by the ‘eternal hum of the
living sea’. The moaning is visceral and animalistic, demonstrating the extent of
the damage done to this community, a terrible tragedy that cannot be undone. The
contrast provided with the sound of the sea being ‘eternal’ indicates that this is
truly the death of the village. These words in combination tell of the gravity of the
situation in this village and more generally in the coastal regions of Ghana.

When considering the implication of these words and phrases, it is also important
to consider the perspective of the poetic voice. Although there is a distance between
the village and Awoonor suggested in the opening ‘At home’ as if this is happening
away from him, the repetition of ‘home’ throughout the poem indicates that this is
still the place closest to his heart and where he feels truly at comfort and relaxed.
Thus the poem is not offering a sympathetic glance at this situation, but feeling the
pain of loss almost as sharply as those directly in the firing line.

Awoonor moves the poem between the general and the specific. He introduces Aku
as a way of demonstrating the devastation on an individual level. The often
misattributed quotation ‘a single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic’
conveys the idea that a personal story leads to a much greater feeling of empathy
than a more general overview. Here Awoonor proves the point. Aku is ‘stood where
her cooking-pot stood’ suggests that she and the other villagers live a primitive
existence with few valuable, the singular ‘pot’ is lost and thus she has no means of
feeding her family. The vulnerability of their position is further exposed as her two
children are ‘shivering from the cold’ and rather than Aku being able to warm and
comfort them she is physically overcome with her mourning with ‘Her hands on
her breast’. There is something deeply moving about this as the woman has lost the
little she had and now is seen in this one image as being bereft of hope and unable
to support her children.

Aku and the villagers are said to be ‘Calling on all the gods they worship’ and yet
they have been ‘deserted’ by the gods and ‘neglected’ by their ‘ancestors’. At first
glance this may seem like some pretty poor showing from the gods, but I think
there is an implication that this worship is prompted by the destruction of the sea.
At the very least, there is a suggestion that the gods are not shown the same
reverence by all. As mentioned above, the way the sea is personified in such a
monstrous and cruel manner suggests that it is punishing the people for something
and I would suggest this is linked with those Western influences Awoonor stood
against as they were decaying traditional cultural beliefs and ways of life. I see
Awoonor’s idea that the gods and ancestors had deserted the people as a piece of
dramatic irony as it is really the other way around.

Furthering this idea is Adena. The meaning of this name is ‘she has saved’ and
juxtaposed to the humble Aku losing a single, essential pot, we see that Adena ‘has
lost… trinkets’. This suggests greater wealth and materialism that could be
associated with Western decadence and conflict with traditional, simplistic
existence. ‘Trinkets’ further implies that these are not functional items or anything
of real use, but simply pretty things to look at or displays of wealth. Adena here
could represent the changing times and effectively be being blamed for this
 disaster. I find it telling that while Aku appeals to the gods and feels abandoned,
Adena is not connected with them in this way.

If I can stop myself pointing the finger at Adena for one second, we should
acknowledge that her loss also sees her lose her ‘dowry and her joy’ and thus this
adds another level of destruction for the sea. Not only do we have warmth, family,
comfort, livelihood, but also happiness and love added to the mix.

The poem ends by repeating the phrase used throughout the poem ‘the seas that
eats the land at home’ twice. The added emphasis of ‘eats the whole land’ in the
final land is a conclusively and emphatic reminder that this devastation cannot be
undone. And yet, it also poses questions. We know that Ghana has not been
swallowed whole, nor the Volta region. Thus this final line could connect with this
idea that the devastation and loss is not only relating to the actual damage caused
by the sea, but also serves as a metaphor for the traditional Ghanaian culture that
has been swallowed and consumed by creeping Western customs and decadence.

Structure Some versions of this poem have it separated into four stanzas, but in Songs of
Ourselves it is one continuous stanza. The impact of the poem running together is
that it helps convey the sense that the impact of the sea is inescapable.

The poem follows the oral traditions of African poetry without the confines of a
rhyme scheme. The rhythm flows with the different stages and emotions of the
story being told. The best way to understand this is to have a glance at the syllable
count (next to the poem in green) and see the ebb and flow between longer and
shorter lengths, which also reflects the ‘lap-lapping’ waves.

Tone Although the poem is presented in the present continuous, there is a sense of
mourning and loss throughout as if there is no hope of rescue, respite or release
from the sea’s anger. The poem laments the suffering of a community, but sees no
hope and no future.

! "

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