ABYSS OF REGRETS

By Adol Akuei, Eldoret, Kenya

(A single mother address to her daughter who has been a way to a foreign country for a period of seven years in search of a new life, the talk took place in their small hut at the heart of the village called Narus, South Sudan expressed in poetic form)

Look at her,

My daughter

She has totally camouflaged like a chameleon

She respect me no more as her mother who brought her into this poor world below

She has grown horns of a buffalo to even stub me in the stomach

So Painful

So Remorseful

A child of your own to do you that “devil’s mission”

It’s a heavy price that she will pay when I am off this planet called earth

Look,

She has completely become another person, another child, in the streets of that city

City of cities that eat into human life gradually

I don’t know what she ate there, in that damn city usually

Tell me good people of the city what my daughter has eaten to become a “little devil”

A betrayal to my soul in the eyes of God

“I wish I had not allowed you to go there in the name of this damn thing call education”

– 

Look at her,

My daughter

Her dressing cord has completely changed, cladded in trousers like my deceased husband

Her language has changed, more to foreign language, she gossiped me with her comrades

Her body skin has completely changed, I knew that she was dark skinned, now light skinned

My God, what is the hell that make people light skin in that city?

Look at,

Her lips, stained with some red, purple colors of unknown chemicals

Her eyes, tinted green with bluish zapping flourishing color like a devil’s servant

I was a girl but that never happened during our days

Could it be a change? Then that must be a hoax change of the “curse generation”

Her wits has become more lazy and more to strolling and rolling in the hood

Her hair is of very new style that I cannot comprehend

What is all these? I am wasted ……..My God have mercies on me

 –

(She sobs as she burst into a pillar of loud screams that almost beckoned on the neighbors)

People,

Tell me good people of the city what my daughter has eaten to become a little devil

“I wish I had not allowed you go there in the name of this damn thing call education”

 –

My daughter,

I suffered here on this land; this “cursed land of Kush”, raising money to educate you

I prepare local brews to support your education in the absence of your dad who is long dead

I toiled and moiled the whole day under that hot fire to make you a better person my only daughter

I sent you to go and stay with my sister in that foreign city purposely for education; I heard you called it Nairobi

She was even not careful to raise you up as a discipline girl

You were left to live on your own but too foolish to know your identity and remain focus

You instead join that bevy of ladies with a common agenda of influencing the sober souls

You converted and diverted my sweat into this nonsense barbaric behavior I am seeing in you

Is this the only reward you are offering me after that long struggle my daughter?

 –

(She is now shaking vigorously as her tempers flared)

“Carrying that child inside you won’t make a difference in my life

It’s even going to worsen it

Me, taking care of an outcast child that you said it’s a foreigner who is responsible for it

Even if your vagina was for sell my daughter, you just cannot sell it to your country men?

You just got it in that city, a balloon, from that Kenyan, in the name of enjoyment, where

You burst into a pillar of laughter with your damn allies to bounce

Thinking that all was okay, a granted freedom dearly to pounce

You allowed your precious body, God forbid, to be swayed gracefully

By these hooligans men from that city

By these cunning men from that city

By these irresponsible men from that city

Who are just there, hustling and bustling in the city

You went and squander all the money I sent you instead of being in school with “them”

So that they pregnant you dearly at your expense my daughter

Don’t you just have a heart to safe my struggles my daughter?

And you are proudly standing here in front of me, that you have something to tell me

Is this the reward I am supposed to get from you my only daughter, my only child?”

 –

(Her voice became low in pitch as she talks in a full abyss of regrets)

Can you think back my daughter?

We of the village knows life, I did it for your sake with my all heart

Do you know what I went through in raising you up to that level?

Do you know that I am feeble and sick and didn’t go for medication just for your sake?

Look at my body my daughter, full of bulges and scars

Look at my left breast that breastfed you, it’s burnt

Look at my legs, full of edema

Look at where I sleep, that small grass thatched house, always leaking during rainy season

Look at the raiment I am wearing, so old and torn

Look at that mate I sleep on, so torn

Look at me, do I look like am gonna exist anymore?

Even God will not blame me if I die now because I did all I can to raise you up and you wasted me

You were good while with me, what went wrong?

Are all these the only things I was investing in you my daughter?

Expecting child and all those nonsense you were brainwashed with by your city mates

I expected you to change the situations I am living in

Is this the only change you can afford to bring home my daughter?

– 

I wish your father was alive

I wish you had brothers

I wish you had mentors

I wish you had good friends around you

They could have blocked this bump and I would have lived long

– 

My daughter,

You now cut my life short

No educational papers that you came home with

Nothing indeed, it’s all in vain

You never completed your studies

Foreign language that you boost around with, gossiping me that I am a nuisance is the only thing you brought me

But you lack characters a great deal, the only thing that make you a full human being

And the pregnancy is also another reward that you came home with

Why my daughter, why doing me that?

WHY? WHY?

I ….a….m   no….no…..m…o…r…e…

 (With tears dropping from her eyes gradually, she fainted)

CURTAINS

(Her daughter standing next to her with her hands akimbo and mouth agape, startled)

(PS, the above poem reflects on the true sufferings of the most single parenthood in raising up the kids that are a throwback to their struggles and tend to live in a deep world of thoughts accompany by an intense abyss of regrets, 2015 draft)

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