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This is Her Story

Mamboleo, an award-winning Kenyan based a poet, share’s a poem touching upon the uncertainty and challenges girls are presented with due to COVID-19, but above all the hope that follows.

Her Story

 

This is for all the human beings

Not for the VIP or the MVP

This is for you and me

This is her story

 

Beautiful is the only word to describe her

Dutiful her second name

Retrogressive cultures are there to blame

Renders them lame, traditions hard to tame

This is her story

 

Have you ever fought an abstract enemy?

You fight so hard but you lose finally

You have the urge, and breathe energetically

This is her story 

 

Meet Naomi elegant and calling

At class 6 she is simply stunning

Thanks to COVID she is out of school lamenting

So strong exams passing and the ball kicking

Chilly mornings are her company when school calls

Right answers when the teacher asks

This is her story

 

Now she is at home her mum dreams,  her mum weeps

She dreams of a queen leading queens

She sees her daughter prosper and become a star

A doctor, a teacher, or maybe pastor

Now when there is no school 

She looks after cattle beside the road water pools 

This is her story

 

Naïve as she is, Naomi knows peace 

Until her peace is torn into pieces

Inhuman best describes those men

Brutality at its best, they fetch the bird from the nest

They pick nectar from the flower

At that hour

 

Her purity thrown into the bushes

Her smooth face roughened into bruises

Bright becomes dark, dreams become nightmares 

Her answers become questions, questions become answers

Her happiness doomed

This is her story

 

Dreams shuttered, ambitions slashed

Intentions gagged, school dropped

Sad and lamentful 

Naomi becomes pregnant 

Lonely like a lost ant

Her mother angry and blunt 

Her father roaring and disgruntled

They don’t want to see her nor listen to her words

Which feels like a pin scratches on their liver

This is her story

 

Lost and wandering

This is one of the many stories

That faces young girls in our countries

Teenage pregnancies are a bigger menace on our faces

Even bigger during the COVID phase

A hurdle to education and a pin to the ball of our economy 

Rape is real and a mammoth challenge

It blocks dreams and is a stumbling block to change

This is her story 

 

We dream of Naomi as the communal light 

After she goes back to school, showing her might 

Her child is memory  enough

Evident that wheat is different from chuff 

Message for all to be keen and tough

This is their story

About Dominic Kimitta: Dominic, popularly known as Mamboleo, is a poet based in Kajiado County, Kenya. He writes and produces poems on Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), teenage pregnancies, child marriage, and other social issues. He is a Program Associate at NAYA (Network of Adolescents and Youth of Africa) Kajiado County and leads innovative and creative approaches to ending FGM, teenage pregnancy and child marriage. He was awarded Best Urban Swahili Poet at the “KUMIKUMI” Awards held in Nairobi Kenya, as well as Anti FGM activist award by the Guardian UK under the Global Media Campaign. Currently, he is a Global Youth Ambassador with Planned Parenthood Global.

4 thoughts on “This is Her Story”

  1. Wow! It’s touching my brother. This is the exact picture of ‘Nailantai’ a girl looking after sheep in the heart of Mosiro.

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