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Imagine watching your son fading away slowly because he has diarrhoea and there is not the simplest drug to give him. He just stools and stools and gets weaker by the hour yet all you can do is cradle him in your arms, whisper ‘it is well’ to your weeping wife while you die inside.
Imagine you, a landlord six months ago, now sleeping on bare floor of a tent so your children and kid can share the student mattress that is the only bedding for your family of four. You watch helplessly, wondering where and what you did wrong. The mattress is so small it could only serve as pillow really, they are actually lying on the dusty floor of the tent. Your daughter is shivering from the cold, you are cold too but you still remove your shirt to cover her. Your wife is dozing, exhausted after hours of fanning mosquitoes away from her children. The children are bewildered asking questions you have no answers to:
‘Daddy, when are we going back home?
‘Won’t we go back to school?’
Now, it’s Christmas and you are there, homeless, wiping tears your children must not see. You are still father and head of your family but you cannot provide anything. There is no toothpaste and the only chewing stick you all take turns to use. You are worried about your wife because she doesn’t look so well. You know it’s because of her blood pressure issues but she has run out of drugs. You are scared she may suffer a cardiac arrest or stroke but what can you do? Will your family ever come out of this place, this hopeless dark hole? Will you all come out alive? You offer another heartfelt prayer to God as you work barefoot (the slippers you arrived camp with are in tatters, worse than your wife’s two wrappers) to the nearby bush to ease yourself. God, please do something, you whisper, your blood-shot eyes searching for God’s eyes somewhere in the dark sky.
Life in the camp of the Internally Displaced People (IDPs) is hell right now. Not just because they are cooking rationed food in the open but because they don’t know if they will ever wake up from this nightmare. This time last year, they bought Christmas clothes for their children and cooked special rice and slaughtered the biggest cock in the compound. Today, for no fault of theirs, they are refugees in their own country. This time last year, they had a roof over their heads, they had dreams for their children, hope of a better tomorrow. Today, they depend on other peoples’ leftovers and discarded clothes to cover their nakedness. I wonder how the women cope while having their monthly period. Do they have toothpastes, bathing soap, simple analgesic, sanitary towels…? Do they have doctors in the camps? Is this the end of the children’s education?
One day they were happy families working towards a better future and then boom, a loud noise, gunshots and angry tongues of fire swept through the village, consuming everything and they ran and ran and ran, for dear life, barefoot, with only the clothes on their backs, their children tired, asking where they were running to.
The devastation of Boko Haram, the pain and wounds and scars of insurgency all over the north. So many homeless and hopeless. Nigerians living in refugee camps in their own country. For how long ,oh Lord will you forsake us. Please let the wickedness of the wicked come to an end.
Dead policemen, missing soldiers, orphans and widows of war, let’s spare them a thought. The men who went out in the morning and never returned. The men who laid down their lives to stop the advancement of this dreadful army of occupation. They went in search of their daily bread and their careers ate them up. And when the head of a family suddenly dies, the vultures gather to feast on whatever they can find. The widows still stunned and numb may be dispossessed and even when they are not, their precious possessions are gone all the same. Daddy will never come back or at best, his remains return in a coffin draped with green-white-green. Those children may never become what their father desired them to be. They may never reach their destination because their means of transportation there has been taken away.
Let’s not just spare these distraught families a thought. Let’s all find widows and orphans of policemen and soldiers and help them. If you take an orphan and I empower a widow, we’ll be doing more than our bit but gladdening God’s heart. I’m not talking about giving them rice at Christmas alone. I’m talking about helping with the rent, school fees, feeding . If you find the widow of a slain cop or soldier with four children, just take over the education of one child and call three other friends to take care of his siblings. Call your friends, please. You and I know how much we have spent on ‘aso ebi’, perfumes, shoes, jewellery in the last one month. Do you know what difference a bottle of your designer perfume or shoes will make in the life of a family?
How much thought have you given to those poor girls in the coven of the insurgents? But that is a question for the government, those in authority, really. How do they sleep at night, what kind of dreams do those, whose responsibility it is to bring back those girls, dream? When they gave their daughters money to shop for Christmas a few weeks ago, how did they feel, knowing that the Chibok girls are still missing? Is this administration really going to wind down without finding those girls? Is this government going to explain to us on May 29, 2015 why it couldn’t do its duty, deliver on the security vows it made to us? From where I sit, that will be openly, shamelessly or shamefully admitting that Boko Haram won. We all know fighting insurgency is not a war you can win in a day but not finding those girls… that’s admitting failure. And before those who have read big big books about how difficult fighting insurgents is, first imagine where those girls were, what they did last Christmas and what they are doing now? Yeah, you can pocket your security expertise treatise, it does not help the pain of a grieving mother.
As we dance, eat turkey and clink glasses that we made it this far, let’s spare a thought for those who in bewilderment are wondering how they ended up in refugee camps or as internally displaced persons. Let’s deny ourselves a little comfort and help them back on their feet.
May 2015 be a better year in every way than 2014.
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