Luapula Province, Zambia
June 19, 2007
Her name is…
She stands naked at a door post.
When did your mother die?
Tears come to her eyes.
It was 2002, yet five years later her eyes still get wet.
Her hand clasps the edges of a piece of fabric wrapped around her hips, a kind of skirt, but the edges don’t meet and it is a safety pin that helps her. The edges don’t meet so it is her hand that blocks her womanhood from being a public spectacle.
She stands thin and tall like an African giraffe. She is silent like one too. She is like an African giraffe without its majesty, without its stride or towering countenance. Instead of towering the open plains, she towers poverty.
She haunts me as she silently taunts me.
I cannot sleep. Completely exhausted, I lie in bed with her looking at me. It is a rare sight to see a broken spirit. The human spirit is resilient. The African spirit is among the most resilient. So, to see hers has left me without peace.
I cannot settle. Feeling helpless isn’t the state I settle for. There must be some solution. How easy can it be to swoop her up and take her to restore her life, give her a complete life lift: shoes, shirt, skirt, soap, etcetera, etcetera? If I find her another home, adopt her into another place of plenty what will happen to her grandmother? Will it unburden the aged one or bring further burden upon her without the assistance of this grandchild? As a wave has an up and a down stroke, so does everything in life. What we do has its ups and downs, too. Living life requires finesse to know what to do that will cause the least amount of waves. I’m not the best at this and I often fail this test. I must believe that if something is done out of love, the ripple of love will prevail even though tsunamis come from doing, saying, and changing too much, too quickly.
This is a holocaust, a silent holocaust that happens without journalists, without the world press. It is a holocaust without the gas chambers and ovens. The killer isn’t orating in front of millions. This is a silent holocaust working behind the scene silently out of sight, out of mind. The bodies decay slowly and steadily disappearing without trace. Even the memories of those dead fades as the children left behind were too young to remember their birthrights: a mother and a father. It is only the grannies that live to collect and care for the specks of life that dare to stick around. But they are too frail and make no sound themselves. They are the real heroes of compassion. But what can they offer more than love and a piece of cassava from time to time. They are otherwise helpless and sing a song so soft that it is unrecognizable. So, how is the world to know about them? It is the rare and uncommon neighbor who steps outside her own doorstep and steps into the world of the grannies. She tells the story to the rare and uncommon one coming from afar to bring a little glimpse of those being buried alive bypassing the chambers and the ovens and going directly into oblivion never to be seen or heard about again.
This is a silent holocaust that is orchestrated and managed by poverty. And the root of it? The story is so convoluted that it is too hard to tell. Is it the broken condom or the woman who sells herself for a piece of rice to feed her fatherless children? Her man abandoned her before baby was born. In fact, he abandoned her somewhere between the time ovum met sperm. He left the scene shortly after dumping his polluted pool of man to ravage her and her soon coming baby. Dead or alive it lives a life not worth living.
And the root of it? The millions of millions paying off the people in power or the diamonds that adorn the people of plenty? Or is it the unnourished mind or soil that has long since been famished? What is the root of this holocaust? Like crabs in a basket that need not be covered, you are rest assured none will leave the basket. Anyone nearing the edge will be thwarted and returned by gravity through the reliable guard of the others.
Poverty doesn’t let you go. It goes with you. What is the root of it and how do you uproot it? Please help me. Please help me to understand where I stand. Please help me to stand.
