The voiceless hero

dreams-from-my-father:

What does a mother tell her children when she can’t feed them? 

How deep are the tears made to her soul from hearing her child crying for food?

Poverty is not merely material but also a state of mind. Poverty is shame, powerlessness, despair, fear and lack of agency.

I was staring at the picture of a mother and her dying, skeletal child in her arms. This is the typical picture of the pornography of poverty that westerners use to dehumanize, commodify, objectify and exoctify the whole continent of Africa and its thousands of peoples. On this picture, they don’t see a mother and her child, they don’t even see people, they see a blank canvas on which to project their darkest neurosis and delusions of grandeur. 

This woman had the grace and poise of an angel. She was tenderly holding the soon-to-be corpse of her child with motherly love. Yet her face was stoic and expressionless and the light had gone from her eyes. 

I imagine her walking days and nights on an empty stomach with her hungry  child strapped to her back desperately looking for food. I imagine her singing lullabies, counting the tales of the glory of her people, making jokes and funny faces just to divert her child’s attention from hunger and appease his suffering. 

How did she cope? Where did she find the strength? Where people would usually see the darkness of Africa, as they would call it in the west, I see the amazing power of love, courage and strength. This is beauty!!!

She is the true definition of a hero, a hero that the whole world despises and pities without compassion or humanity.

Had any of the UN workers standing in the background stopped to ask her how she was doing? Obviously NO. Because they don’t care. No one cares about her. They wouldn’t even care to ask her her name, she is just another nameless brown face in pain. No one cares about the voice and feelings of a poor African mother with her child, the child she bore, brought to this world, cherished and promised to protect, that child was dying and a part of her too. 

UN workers dump bags of rice from the sky. They are sent from those same evil nations who create and sustain the misery of this woman. Westerners physically feed off her impoverishment and psychologically feed off the spectacle of her destitution. It reassures them that they are on the right side of humanity, that their civilization is the best, that their lives are better, that they are better.  And in their ‘white savior’ high, they may even think that they care, that for dumping bags of food from the sky on the people they have condemned to a slow and painful death, THEY are the heroes. But they are not!

The only heroes are this woman and millions like her around the world who courageously fight through the misery bought by the white supremacist axis of evil.

Everyone claims to care and want to help her but no one would sit on the floor next to her, hold her hand and listen to her story*. 

*They are far too busy taking pictures of her pain and masturbating to it.

I can’t believe that I could ever write something this powerful, well to me at least. Sometimes, bewildered by the senselessness of the world, I am touched by grace, I guess.

This dedicated to every single woman in Africa, every forgotten and disregarded woman who manages to make it through, to cater for their loved-ones and who has the courage to be as an act of resistance against a vile system dedicated to crush them. 

weddedtothemoon:

women in my eyes are such beautiful, sophisticated and complex creations and i have a reserved amount of love and respect for all of womankind. i have such a profound respect for women as individuals and an immense passion for women as a whole, yet i’m a young heterosexual man whose never engaged in sex with a woman or even exclusively claimed a woman as my girlfriend. i’ve never been one to be possessive of a woman and despite my dating girls in the past, the relationships were never completely exclusive and i was adamant on not placing titles on one another. aside from my fear of commitment, i felt many young girls are obsessed with the hyper-romanticized ideals of relationships portrayed in television, films and books and when they weren’t fulfilled with their unsuccessful attempt at a fairytale relationship, they were on to another casanova and entered adulthood with a long list of ex’s. i never wanted any girls i cared about to fall victim to the damsel in distress lifestyle and i damn sure didn’t wanna play a part in their fairytale. but on the contrary, i was also intimidated by girls with strong, dominant personas and expressed their immortality with steady composure; not because i didn’t want a woman with those qualities, but because i, myself, lacked those qualities, making me unfit for a woman like that. i took things slowly in relationships with women in an attempt to avoid the speed, crash and burn relationships of my peers but many girls saw my actions as procrastination, which it may have been, but my intentions were pure. maybe too pure. my inability to take things to the next level caused me to break hearts despite my “mr. right” title many girls often deem me with regardless of the warning and advice i give them when i hear them call me that. i would always say, “stop worrying about mr. right and worry about mister just right FOR YOU.” all that did was make them see me as mr. right even more. i’m now 21, haven’t kissed a girl in three years and am still stuck on my crush from Jr high. the same crush who had an even bigger crush on me but got over me after i turned her down countless times. i was shy and didn’t see any good coming from me officially dating her so i kept things casual, unknowingly broke her heart and lets just say karma is now taking her course. despite what most people think of young male adults, chasing girls is not on my list of things to do and i have much work to do on myself before i can include a significant other in life and bore her in my issues. i’ll just keep living life and if i come across a young woman who catches my eye, i’ll approach her. or hope i catch her eye and get approached by her. it is get prerogative after all.

*Eating pop corn, waiting for more*

(^_^)

Look at me,

Notice me,

Love me,

Let me be yours .