Our hearts go out to those who have been displaced from their homes, and lands, because of conflicts, wars, famines, floods, etc., as we have seen with the conflicts in the East of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, the earthquake in Morocco, the floods in Libya, the western funded conflicts in Sub-Saharan Africa, and much more. Among the displaced, women and children are particularly at risk, as they face violence, maternal health, malnutrition, reproductive complications, inadequate access to water and sanitation, and other diseases.

I found this gem of a poem by our venerated Chinua Achebe, “Refugee Mother and Child.” In this poem, Achebe highlights the case of the refugee mother who has to watch her child die because she cannot feed him, the one who still hopes for a miracle. Achebe particularly offers a comparison of a Madonna with her child in her arms, to the horrors of a refugee mother whose child is on death’s bead; or a normal day when this woman was not a refugee, to her life as a refugee. It is very heart-wrenching. This poem was written during the time of the Biafran war or Nigerian Civil War of the late 1960s; Achebe found poetry easier to write in the tough times of war. Let’s all send a prayer to our refugee mothers and children, and to refugees all over the world.

Enjoy!

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REFUGEE MOTHER AND CHILD
Chinua Achebe

No Madonna and Child could touch
that picture of a mother’s tenderness
for a son she soon will have to forget.

The air was heavy with odors
of diarrhea of unwashed children
with washed-out ribs and dried-up
bottoms struggling in labored
steps behind blown empty bellies.
Most mothers there had long ceased
to care but not this one; she held
a ghost smile between her teeth
and in her eyes the ghost of a mother’s
pride as she combed the rust-colored
hair left on his skull and then –
singing in her eyes – began carefully
to part it… In another life
this would have been a little daily
act of no consequence before his
breakfast and school; now she
did it like putting flowers
on a tiny grave.