Travelers Welcome

Travelers Welcome

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Cry African Girl

by Handsen Chikowore

Up in the azure sky
Shoots the sun’s rays
Rises to meet another day
Another promise
To me it’s not yet any hope
As each day brings more problems
Which trouble a thirteen year old girl
Setting alight fire early morning
Sweeping the sheets of dust and dirt early morning
A beast of burden for firewood so I am bound

All those long distances I have to walk
A throbbing ever throbbing pain to my foot
With the baby clinging on my yonder back
The thorn infested forests
The meandering long walks to boreholes and wells
The back breaking dreary buckets full of water
It's so tiresome my body sweats
It's so punishing my body cannot endure

All African girls
Cry for your rights
The rape, torture and victimisation
Our life an eerie furnace of denied paradise
A sad song of denied education
I am so weary, Oh weary, So weary
A breath for fresh air cometh not
Don’t fall African girls
Up and fight
Yearn for another life

5 comments:

  1. I got goosebumps! When I was in West Africa, I encountered women like this daily, and it breaks my heart how resigned many are. But there was also hope, and your beautiful and poignant poem shows this. Thanks for writing it.

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  2. A lovely and deeply expressive poem of daily problems in Africa. I am so delighted to know that there are still women that will never surrender. Thanks for sharing this.

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  3. wow, can't even imagine what they go through, but this poem gives some insight...wonderful

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  4. You would think females were not considered human the way we are treated. It is world wide but worse in the poorer countries.

    Let's hope poems like this open the hearts of all men.

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  5. Hello how do I sign up for advocating for basic cancer vaccination and screening in Jamaica ? Reading your feb 4 2020 to the editor article

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