Poetry Bulawayo

Just as my scarred hands hold these rails so the tiny drops of my faith make me live, too. I, who never asked for this blindness, The scarring of my face and body that erased my existence to the real world… embarassed… in fear of the stigma and of prejudice that bubbles from the mouth of the co mmunity I was once belonged to. I am a mother turned into a baby, desperately dependent… I am a teenager who forgets how it was to be a teenager… I am a lively lady that used to enjoy the co mpany of my peers… A victim of vitriolage, I am shunned now… and relive the vivid memories that lift me to another level of distress, of such agony, that my mind almost shut down, they called… a psychologist for in-depth intervention, co unselors… A brilliant mind may give a hand to restore my damage skin tissue; surgical treatment… Yet I will never be free from the memory of such pain, such punishment nor will I be Me again…

Carnage littered  the battlefield. Bodies of soldiers serving their country lay twisted and turned on the bloody ground. A gruesome battle had raged; neither side would back down. At dispute was a strip of land and a handful of little towns. This barren strip has little redeaming value. Sun drenched and parched; this is the Ogadan. Somalia invaded feeling it was their right to expand their empire. Ethiopia fought back. The two haplessly became pawns in a ugly game of chess. Two super powers supplied each side with arms resulting in a stalemate. The Somalis finally backed down. What started out as a regional war; a dispute over a piece of land became a grotesque thing  ironically, The Ogadan is a piece of ground that nobody really wants. This war became a clash of two ideologies with both Ethiopia and Somalia the losers.