Thursday 25 October 2007

Ever Beautiful She Was


One of the blogs I visit quite frequently is TumainiKids. It's a blog written by orphans who live at the Tumaini Children's Center in Nyeri, Kenya. The blog is part of the Hope Runs project which was started by these two amazing girls Lara & Claire (see TrippingOnWords.com) who I've mentioned before.


Normally the kids write an account of their day, or their hopes for the future. It's usually pretty random. But this poem, written by two older kids; Caesar 18 & Gititi 20, just took my breath away.

Ever beautiful she was
The young and optimistic teenager
From the villages to the cities
Everyone had his or her eye on her
The old and the young
Praised her beauty.

Both the old and the young
Whoever felt thirsty in this journey of life
Asked for some water whose source was her
The old and the young
Praised her beauty.

And there she was
Ready to quench anyone with her water
Be it the old and the young
The old and the young
Praised her beauty.

This sudden chilly morning
Disillusionment filled the village
For there lay her skinny corpse
With the spirit already gone
The old and the young claimed
She was once beautiful.

A fortnight was not over
Cries of the affected filled the air
From morning to evening, day after the other
Funeral ceremonies conducted
All weak and dying said
She was once beautiful.

Why this suffering and afflictions?
Was the cry of the few left
The cry of the lucky survivors
And innocent children.

Just a minute's warmth, changed
A family and a village to a pool
Of orphans, widows and widowers.
A signal of the foreseeable poverty
As all weak and dying said
She was once beautiful.

Weak and dying cursed the once beautiful
But where was she?
Far beyond the beautiful white clouds
Only to be followed by
The ignorant and the innocent.


2 comments:

Unknown said...

Wow...this gave me chills. I'm glad I got the chance to come and visit...and i'll be back again, in fact I'm going to add your blog to my blogroll, so that others will find you too.

Unknown said...

I'm back again....I've tagged you to play 8 random things meme-tag; visit my posting at http://tinyurl.com/2wkast (this is shortened to a tinyURL to fit in comment spaces) to get the instructions on how to play, and do have fun! It's a great way to get to know fellow bloggers, and to have them see your site.