The Horn of Africa

In a plight to to give my 2 cents worth to the crisis in Somalia I have decided to make beaded bracelets in an effort to raise a few rands to at least feed a family or two. We all know what hunger feels like I can't even begin imagine how dire hunger to the point of starvation feels like. The helplessness and hopelessness that consumes a mother in between her staggering efforts to ignore her children's loud growling stomachs....must ache more than the hunger pangs.

I dedicate songstress, Sade's Pearls lyrics and writer Chinua Achebe's Refugee Mother and Child to the people of Somalia ,its of no tangible value but its something.

Pearls by Sade:

there is a woman in Somalia

scraping for pearls in the roadside

there's a force stronger than nature

keeps her will alive

that's how she's dying

she's dying to survive

don't know what she is made of

i would like to be that brave

she cries to the heaven above

there is a stone in my heart

she lives a life she didn't choose

and it hurts like brand new shoes

hurts like brand new shoes

there is a woman in Somalia

the sun gives her no mercy

the same sky we live under

burns her to the bone

long as afternoon shadows

it's gonna take her to get home

each grain carefully wrapped up

pearls for her little girl

hallelujah

hallelujah

she cries to the heavens above

there is a stone in my heart

she lives a life she didn't choose

and it hurts like brand new shoes

Refugee Mother and Child by 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 odours

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-coloured

hair left on his skull and then-

singing in her eyes0 began carefully

to part it...In another life

this would have been a daily

act of no consequence before his

breakfast and school; now she

did it like putting flowers

on a tiny grave.

I tend to question whether there is God when such events take place or perhaps this its just one of God's many mysteries.......