IN SOLIDARITY
The forensic human heart
The Pan-Africanist spirit
Led the goat in me
To fly like a bird
To survey African cities.
Being nomadic
As a sojourner bird
Roving like a dove in flight
Blown by the winds of history
Equipped with a bird’s eye view
I scanned the landscape clinically
To record and report the findings.
Compelled by unassailable facts
I can’t shell the cries in pain
Of my littlest brothers and sisters
To avoid the fray.
With my pen not guns
Without editorial watchdogs
Without national censorship
I inform the ancestors
Of their sacrifices betrayed
I alert the living
Of the future mortgaged to doom
By African political vultures
Driven by burning greed.
I walked the streets
Like a surveyor
With a searchlight
I looked under the bridges
I inspected the dark alleys
I went to the orphanages
I came face to face
With the chilling realities
Of my littlest brothers and sisters.
In the streets
Under the bridges
In the dark alleys
I saw them live in squalor without refugee tents
I saw them try to forage for crumbs to stay alive
I heard the children’s chorus of begging hands
I saw the vacuous stare of their cloudy eyes
I felt the open sores in their hearts:
All enveloped in a chilling homelessness.
Then with feminine curiosity
I ventured like a cartographer
To the obscured corners of the metropolis
Where I met women-agents of change
Toiling with their soft armours of faith
Like farmers nurturing crops planted
As they waged wars on many fronts
Against the demeaning cruelty
To offer children a fair shot in life.
With the cold facts in hand
I know the depraved rulers
Betrayed a proud history
Siphoned off resources
Left the young exposed
To invisible forces
In a grand scheme
To maximize greed.
With the brutal facts
Of the raging greed
Burning the children to ashes
Like demonic tropical fire
Flattening all in its path
I feel torched to tears.
Now in solidarity
With my littlest brothers and sisters
I expose
Their inferno of hell on earth
Their torment to carry the cross
For the treasonable crimes
Of African political vultures
Growned fat like maggots of powers:
In the calling
Their plight
Is my cause
My pen
Is at their service.
As a roving bird of peace
I pray the cold facts
To unshackle the chains
In African sordid politics
To unleash communal solidarity
To free my littlest brothers and sisters
From the inhumane cruelty.
Now under cover of darkness
I must command the nights
To leave me
To flee disguised as a black man
So that I escape sinking
Into a slumber with the rulers
So that I may chronicle and trace
The plights
Of my littlest brothers and sisters.
As the day unfolds
In my sojourn
From the routine
Of raw politics
I must commit to build
Shrines of peace
To offer healing
For all of us.
Amii Omara-Otunnu