Over here, life is on pause like Auntie Fafa’s uncompleted structure. On its half course walls, red markings read ‘Stop work, produce permit by KMA’. It has been there since I learned how to travel and left for the city.
Over here, we are short of oxygen. Goats and men walk down the same road with pale faces and heads of forgotten dreams. They are angry because they are hungry, and yet the crops are drier than they are.
Over here, children in dirty and tattered pants walk the hopeless path to the riverside. Stopping at the only school building to throw stones at the happy-go-lucky lizards that play hide and seek on the walls.
Over here, we, the travellers, have returned home to our native country. Alas, nothing has changed. And yet, we bring nothing in particular. We are as worse as the same old wind that carried us through the deserts, the clouds and on the roads to far away lands, only to find out the import of the axiom ‘Home Sweet Home’.
And we sigh out of our shame, our fears, our confusion, our tears;
Oh Lord!
My God
We are tired of growing.
Killing hope!