Aketch by Elizabeth Opiyo

Aketch told me that her lips know the bitter taste of poverty,
Like Nelson Mandela knew his way to liberty,
And that’s why she gives to charity.

But I told her that,
You only know what poverty tastes like,
if your mother or your grandmother, sat on stones waiting for jobs that never came.
or tirelessly tilled other people's lands,
while her stomach was always a flat tire
because all the bread she earned she let you have.


If you were washing clothes without soap,
When your friends were watching soap operas,
And the only view you could afford, was the vision of owning a television someday.
You watched your Koroboi go off,
And with incomplete homework you crashed out.

I told her,
that you know what poverty tastes like,
if your old soul still remembers the cold sleepless nights,
when you tried to sign peace treaties with your empty stomach,
but in vain it chose war.
and you gazed into darkness in the middle of the night wondering,
if the small intestines are the Mau Mau fighters,
and the colons are fighting to colonize them,
making you realize that some wars take place within us,
and resilience is how we fight back.



I told Aketch that you only know what poverty tastes like,
if your elder brother dropped out of Primary six
because education could wait,
but the rumbling stomach of his hungry siblings could not.
A problem he was shot on the head trying to fix.
The sound of that bullet sent the ghetto into dead silence,
as if it took their voices away,
or just a moment of silence for a big brother who became a father before he was a child.
The next morning rumors said it was robbery with violence.
The only reason you still see through your schoolwork.

Convinced that the freedom out of your chronic poverty is through education.

*koroboi –paraffin lantern