tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-282320972011-04-21T10:54:28.557-07:00Tongyilohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04770471133488058151noreply@blogger.comBlogger11100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28232097.post-1147818621276955252006-05-16T14:25:00.000-07:002006-05-16T17:30:28.056-07:00By the setting sun we gathered,<br />Anticipating the moon and the log fire...<br /><br />I can still summon up the remembrance<br />Now so fleeting, so vague, so feeble...<br /><br />Yet in that moonlight,<br />Long gone and now almost forgotten,<br />I revelled and danced, and found ecstasy....<br /><br />By the log fire, now fading<br />Like the embrace of a forgotten lover,<br />There we sat in the ember glow<br />Thrilled by lores from our elders....<br /><br />Happy was the child<br />Who could sit at dusk and anticipate<br />The innumerable joys of a moonlit summer night<br />In the deepest heart of Africa...<br /><br />Bring me back those nights, and the moon too,<br />And let me whirl and dance and be a child again;<br />Return me to the savannah, to the heart of my Africa<br />Where I can be a child again on a moonlit summer night....<br /><br />But now I hear the moon comes no more<br />And darkness shrouds the summer night....<br /><br />Children, too young to walk<br />Are stalked by death and fear worse than death...<br /><br />Where we used to run and walk and dance--<br />There, they tell us, death now struts,<br />Licking its lips and mowing down the future...<br /><br />At dusk the moon comes no more...<br />And dark is the mid-summer's night in the heart of Africa...<br /><br />Dead children, maimed children, abducted children--<br />Children too scarred, too scared, and too traumatized to live...<br />These, I'm told, is now the new face of Africa....<br /><br />Call them night commuters, call them invisible children,<br />These are the children the world has chosen to forget...<br /><br />40,000, they say, flee each night to seek shelter and safety.<br />25,000, we are told, were violently abducted<br />And now stalk the night as killers and baits to be killed.<br /><br />I hear they are eloquent at the United Nations<br />And in the United States, they talk of a new world order,<br />Spending billions of dollars each month to fight terrorism...<br /><br />Yet these children, these little soots that have done no evil,<br />Cower and die in utter darkness for 20 long years,<br />One generation after another, living and dying in silence...<br /><br />Take up their battle, I ask you -- you who can still feel<br />And rejoice at the sight of a moonlit summer night;<br />Do not allow these deaths that you can prevent....<br /><br />How long shall these children wait for the moon to come?<br />How long will they live and be shrouded in darkness?<br />How long will their tormentors be hailed as protectors?<br /><br />How long can a child live in darkness without dying inside?<br /><br />I ask you--you who can still feel<br />And rejoice at the sight of a moonlit summer night,<br /><br />Take up their fight and banish this darkness.<br /><br />Ochoro E. Otunnu<br />New York, May 16, 2006<br />uNight Blog (<a href="http://www.unight.org">www.unight.org</a>)<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/28232097-114781862127695525?l=terokono.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Tongyilohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04770471133488058151noreply@blogger.com0