Monday, June 4, 2007

The Longsuffering African Woman

The African woman is lionised in several poetic verses in Alila's Thirteen Curses on Mother Africa, perhaps justifiably so: The African woman is largely localized, often passed by rural urban migration, yet she must feed, protect and mould the character of her son only to lose him to the corrupting influence of urban life. The African woman must continue to walk 5 miles to the spring for water, must till the same piece of barren land of thirty years before, she must feed her orphaned grandchildren the way she fed her children, only with even fewer resources. The African woman must face the vagaries of weather, disease, hunger and poverty, often alone, as the husband is either inebriated, lost to some urban center, or simply overwhelmed by his situation

Do you aggree?

JR Alila