Girl Soldier poem made into a Song

Words by Standtall-The Activist Song/Instrumentation written and sung by Donald Molosi

I wrote and blogged this poem in 2009 and Donald has made an outstanding job of making it more meaningful by making it into a song. This is fantastic! 

Girl Soldier -
Injustice, corruption, discrimination she saw.
Deeply entrenched in her society. Ruling all and sundry.
She carried a gun to fight. Gun of truth. Gun of passion. Gun of selfless service.

Originally blogged on Black Looks 

Original Poem here: 

The Girl-Soldier:

Injustice, corruption, discrimination she saw

Deeply entrenched in her society

Ruling all and sundry

Her youthful innocent heart bleeds

She shields blood and not tears

She was too disappointed to understand

Then she carried a gun to fight

A gun of truth

The gun of passion

The gun of selfless service

Her gun is her passion to make a difference

The courage to be the change

The determination to make a change

There goes the girl-soldier

HELP SUJITHA GET TO KENYA

Sujitha, a niece of Bill Hess, (my friend and cat lover from Alaska  who raised life saving money for my cats neuter in 2009)  intends to take a trip to Kenya soon in honour of her late sister Sandy. Sandy's parting was particularly sad as she ended her own life after the tragic accident that claimed her husband's life. Moving on has not been easy  for Sujitha since Sandy's passing. One thing that has kept Sujitha going in the midst of turbulence emotions is the remebrance of the kindness of her sister to others. Her devotion to helping everyone. Sujitha has decided to make a trip to Kenya where she will be helping orphans with HIV infections at Nyumbani's children's home.

Sujitha says:

Dearest Friends,

I pray this email reaches as many as possible and I hope each one of you will take an action: either to donate or forward this to your family and friends. 

For everybody who knows me, you will easily get why I am doing this. For others - just trust the person who has forwarded this to you. He/she is definitely my friend and knows me well.  

Past: I have always been emotional and since my childhood I remember giving alms to everyone on the street. Maybe I picked this up from my sister who would have learned it from my mum. I remember not taking change from vegetable vendors on the street because I felt deeply for their poverty. When my Doctor aunt started living with us, I used to visit her clinic every evening and was deeply moved by her nature – how she helped her patients who could not afford to give her a mere 5 or 10 rupees. This was in the early 90's. 

Present: Things changed when I started my college and never took part in any volunteer services. My sister, on the other hand, devoted her life to helping others. She worked with many NGO's and her dream was to build an old age home. Then the accident happened. I lost my sister and brother-in-law. Then things changed even more. I started looking at her work and understood that it went deeper even than I had realized - she touched people’s lives in many different ways. She was born to serve – not only people, but creatures big and small. So many times she stopped to pick up cats and dogs hit by cars or trucks on the busy streets of Bangalore. She even broke taboo to rescue an electrocuted crow! This is how my sister was and if she were still alive I am sure she would be caring for a cat or dog she had recently rescued even now, at the very moment I type this. 

Future: The time has now come for me to help make my sister’s dreams come true. I am motivated – more so than I have ever been before. I am honored to announce that I have been accepted into a volunteer program at the Nyumbani Children's Home in Kenya. Please have a look at their website here:

 http://www.nyumbani.org

This is where my heart belongs. This is what I want to do. As my sister always did, I want to help others. 

am currently raising funds to get me to Kenya and to help support the work I will be involved in at the children’s home. My sincere request to all of you is to please share this with your friends you trust. I have been asked to come down in early November* or anytime I am ready. I am ready now.  (New target date: April).

I know many of you are already doing things elsewhere and this might come as an unexpected expense. But please do spare whatever you can from your savings and transfer it to my account details below. A generous contribution of even 1000Rs will help greatly – about $18.00, but why not round it out to $20?

Below are some details I have taken from the website to help you understand the expenses we need for the future of Nyumbani children:  

As you might imagine, meeting the medical, educational and daily living needs of each child requires significant financial resources.  Each month it costs approximately $11,000 for general maintenance including salaries to operate the children’s home. Within the Nyumbani community, here are some of our monthly expenses:

• General costs to cover basic needs (e.g., food, shelter, clothing) are  $250 per month for each child

• Medical attention for each child (e.g., general check ups, lab work, immunizations, sick visits) is  $30 per month for each child

• Medication, excluding ARV medications is $50 per month for each child 

• Educational needs (e.g., public school fees, books, uniforms) are approximately $99 per month for each child in Secondary School and $ 20 per month per child in Primary School.

• Cottage expenses (e.g., school supplies, cleaning materials, staff support) are approximately $225 per month ...

Once you have done this, rest assured that you have brought a smile to a kid’s face and touched his and her life in your own way, whereever you are , whoever you are.  You will make a difference. 

Thank You, 

Suji

She needs about £900 for this trip. To put a smile of the face of these orphans and to feel close to her sister whose act of kindness lives on. Bill has now opened a pay pal for her. Pls donate if you believe in putting a smile on the face of others... For the donation button and details kindly click http://www.logbookwasilla.com/logbookwasilla/2012/10/25/sujithas-own-words-on-why-she-has-volunteered-to-work-at-the.html

 Together we make the world a better place.

Children without bright future

I have decided to blog on one of the reasons for my profound and perpetual sadness these days. It is all about the disasters happening around me and in the world. I cannot blank my mind to them because in any of these unpleasant issues, incidents, it could have been me. I could have been one of the numerous children on the street of Bamako or Nigeria begging for food and struggling daily for survival, I could have been Yerima's child bride, I could have been one of so many victims of earthquake in Haiti or I could have been in the Afriqiyah plane that crashed!

For me, it is not about thanking God for making me safe and giving me hope,  but it is  about thinking and wishing to have solutions to save the World to put smiles on every faces on earth, save the habitat of our animals, to protect trees and our greens. I was not with a perfect childhood but I had a good one compare to many children I see on the street without education, without food, without decent clothes, wihtout any reasonable shelter and without hope! This makes me sadder each day!

One cannot be blind to the fact that extreme poverty plaque many homes but at the same time one cannot but ponder on why many parents would rather have children they cannot cater for and still keep having and throwing them to the street? Is this sheer irresponsibility or strong in belief in God's provision at all cost? Many a parent had good job, good source of income before disaster or sickness befall them and all their hopes throwing out of the window. There is no one way to look at this situation but there are many ways of looking at a solution. For example in Mali, I am not sure if there is any NGO or goverment project in place to address the needs of these children who in my very eye keep multiplying by the day. No matter the street or place I go, I see at least 10 cluster of children begging, waiting for leftover food in their filthy clothes. How sad can that be?

Many of these children that I see on every corners of Bamako are more male and less female. Is this as a result of having more male children on as a result of early marriage for female children which I am yet to investigate. As I strongly believe that many female children will be faced with the same fate as the male children. Mali is predominantly a Muslim country even though I am yet to understand if child marriage takes place as they do not practice Sharia law but secular law. The provision for the rights of adult and young female since it seems that women have lesser rights in marriage will be interesting to know. Is this the terrible way many children will keep surviving in thier own country, in a place where their growth and education should be paramount? What is the future of such a country and such a people?

I still cannot imagine how these children will grow to be responsible adults, by luck some of them would. But they would have still grown without education, without health care, if some of them won't be faced with serious diseases from lack of good hygiene; nutritious food, good water, clean clothes to mention but a few and if some won't have died young! Where is the hope, where is the love, where is the safe haven and where is the future for these numerous children? They have even lost thier childhood before they were born!

Perhaps, we can all think together for other solutions since the work of organisations like UNICEF, UNDP alike seem not to be enough to tackle this epidemical situation. What do we do? What can I do? What would you do? Where is the government???

Your pains, my pains.

If only you knew...

How I feel your pains

How I imagined what you are going through

How I put myself in your painful shoes

Forced to marry as a child bride at 13

Forced to have sex with a man five times my age

Forced to get pregnant, have babies when I am yet a baby

Forced to learn the adult ways

I don't even know how to dream

Or what my tiny little dreams would have become

As my future has being stolen from me before I am awake

All my known and unknown dreams gone!

If I were still so unlucky in my highly unlucky situation

I will lose some of my babies

I will lose the control of my bladder I will get VVF

I will be force to leave his house

After he has ruined my life, my future, my hopes!

Not that I will have a place to go to

Have already being sold by my foolish parents!

I am now an outcast, with a worthless life

The one forced to give up her childhood

The society cares not, my parents cared not

And this is how I die!

I do fell your pains

I do want madly to change the World

I do want to fly around the World and rescue

Rescue all the poor innocent girls

Kill all the perpetrators of evils against children

And have a big, satisfactory smile of victory on my face!

Trending:

Yerima the paedophile
Yerima marriage to under age Egyptian girl
Nigerian Women protesting Yerima's marriage to another underage girl

Child Bride in Yemen died of Internal Bleeding

The Male-Child Preference Syndrome

Some of the families I am going to refer to in this post are known personally by me so I will be discreet and mention no names. I happened to know a family that with the financial situation of their family, they cannot afford to have more than 2 children. These 2 children of course would be able to have all they need as children. They would have being very comfortable but their parents saw to it that they weren’t. They were all 8 in numbers because their parents kept looking for a male-child that will:

1. Continue with the family name

2. Inherent their property

3. help them conform to the cultural beliefs

So, they ended with 8 girls that are sent to low-standard schools and eat the crumbles their family can offer… Yet, they still lamented that they didn’t have a boy-child.

One of my numerous cousins though educated and influential ended up with 2 wives because he wanted a boy. The first wife made a boy on her 5^th delivery but cousin was already hooked up with another woman. This excuse of taking a second wife is still not clear to me till today. Because as a science student that he was, he needed not be told that it takes his X and Y chromosomes to make either a girl or a boy to start with. Yet, he took a second wife.

This lady that I admire so much married into an Igbo family. On her first pregnancy, she was worried sick that she should have a boy because this will make her feet to be firmly rooted in her husband’s place. She said whatever it takes…She gave in to the demands of her husbands family. She prayed, she was desperate for a boy-child. How will she be able to love the child if she turns out to be a girl. The girl-child will be seing as the one "who ruined her life". I want to assume.

I will try to spare us some bad stories of how girl-child has suffered cruel fate just because they were girls. I was thrilled to discover a family of seven boys looking for a girl-child. The man took a second wife because he wanted a female child. The reason? Someone to help in the kitchen!

This is the fate of some innocent female children born and unborn. A female child is desired by some for wrong reason while some just want to stick to the traditional role of male-child is more important and it’s a must to have…

This wrong mentality has destroyed many homes, has made so many home poverty ridden, led to complicated health history of women from too many labours and made so many women unhappy. I know that the custodian of this cultural preservations are both women and men. Mother –in-laws and father-in-laws. And those that should have no say in the marriage. In this 21^st century, it baffles me that we still talk about male preference even when traditional roles are being reversed, even when it’s glaring that no child regardless his/her gender or sex should be treated as inferior, some still find it pleasurable to choose the path of “male-child preference”.

I believe it’s time to wake up. I believe it’s time to count our blessings. It’s time to appreciate the children that come our ways and see them as blessings. It’s time not to make the mistake that Muhmmed Ali made when they asked him the number of children he had and he said “1 boy and 8 mistakes”. The only child that makes us remember Muhammed Ali today happens to be one of his “mistakes” has he referred to his daughters.

This is post is dedicated to all girl-child out there that are born into this kind of situation. I know and believe that no matter what you face today, you will be a blessing to this generation. Just believe you are not a mistake and that you are not less important than a male-child.

HAPPY INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY!

A RIDE WITH MY FATHER

I often felt it;
no one was blessed as I was for having you
Mother chose to fall in love well
and I thank her for making the right choice

You, daddy was the right choice

You loved her at the very best
You never cheated;
you said she was your equal

She came first in everything

You were a good example in all you do
 No domestic chore was too unmanly for you
You made us breakfast, lunch and dinner

you bathed me, you washed my clothes

You gave me a great mentality
You made me believed in me
You said I would excel
because I have got a good brain
You said too, that I was equal to any boy even better
I was happy to have you, daddy
Very happy I was

Though we weren’t rich
but I had the best father!
You and mother contributed to everything
You would hug and tell her she was everything
You bonded in a “too good to be true” way and I was proud

I rode with you to school
and to everywhere else
in you motorcycle I called “our jeep”
I could remember the way it made you laugh
I would cling to you
Laid my head on your back with no worries

Trusting you
Lost in my own world of sheer happiness

The ride with my father
was the best part of my life

I bonded with you as no daughter has
You told me I was worth more than a 100 boy-child
I was the apple of your eyes!!!

But now I ride with you no more

I could not impress you with excellent marks
and my silly little jokes any more
I could not compete with mummy as her rival
seeking your attention any more
You left without saying goodbye

All mother does these days is sit at your favorite spot
gazing into the sky, reminiscing the old times
and talking to know one in particular

Could you be the one she commune with?
 I wonder

I remembered our last conversation
Where you told me I am the best and
I should always remember daddy loves me
That was what you said
and now I ride with you no more


FYI: This is a fiction, the poem has no link with me