And now that I scarcely throw food down my belly
I’m learning the art of enduring the rumbling goddess,
for the land is in dearth of all I need to appease her.
We have now devised the ritual where an entire family
would orbit around a tiny dish of yam or rice or beans,
battling for a spoonful into the mouth.
But a spoonful does not quell the achy rumbles in my belly.
And not only me—all over the land are people trudging
about with empty bellies, some wearing their ghost look—
seeing them one visualises their stiffened corpses.
And here also are little children modelling malnutrition,
crying out their plight before their worn-out parents.
How we strode into this mud of starvation, we can’t tell.
We aren’t at war. There is no drought. Our soil is arable.
The only story we could tell is that a countryman told
us he could chauffeur us to paradise, and we were so
agog that we came in unison to crown his head.
And hence, we plummeted into this abyss of famine.
Read – Raptor – A Poem by Hanai Elizabeth, Tanzania
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