"WHAT IF WE SPOKE!"

We are all afraid to face and admit this. Aren't we? That there is an orphaned teenage girl in the dark alleys of the city's streets, being lured by some stranger to the sins of this world. Turning a blind eye to the young girl, holding hands with a man who's supposedly the age of his father, lumbering around the coast line, leisurely, whilst we do nothing about it, more than say, "Ni maisha yake. Wachaneni na yeye." 

Think of all those boys and girls getting carried away by the hype from their peers, and the wrong justification of ills by everything around them including the media. A rotting generation is all I see. A filthy nest that I am scared in the future, of breeding my own children in. Lips stained with liquor, and lungs all sooty, if not tobacco, Marijuana, is all I see in young people these days. 

"Watoto wa sikuhizi...Nkt...", they keep on branding them. Singing the same song over and over, for a very long stretch of time, repeating the same lyrics, until somewhere along the melodious mix up, the young souls mess up! They become regretful earthly creatures, feeling worthless and dumped in a pit of misery.  

But what if one courageous man/woman went straight to the orphaned teenage girl by the dark alley, pulled her hand away and spat shame on the face of the stranger? What if those people at the beach stopped looking at the girl saying, "Ni maisha yake" and confronted the ruthless monster disguised in the filthy wrinkled human skin? What if our own parents talked us into good morals, instead of remarking in desperation, "Watoto wa sikuhizi...Nkt..." What if the media showed us the truth, and the realities of life, instead of the worthless justifications of ills and sins, that they avail to our screens, for their selfish revenue? What if youthfulness was not what it is today? What if we spoke!

"What If We Spoke"

Drew Poetry

~Andy Mwalasha