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AFRICA’S CHILDREN

Mel Waldman

Far away, in Africa’s heart of darkness,
unspeakable crimes are committed.

(Listen to the ululations of Africa’s children.)

There, young girls are sexually abused.

(Listen to their shrieks in the endless African
nights. Disembodied voices weep and wail,

lamenting loudly, but swallowed up by Africa’s
miasma, noxious vapors of secret sins causing an
epidemic of child rape.)

Throughout this vast continent, and especially in
Sub-Saharan Africa, the number of child sexual
abuse cases is rising.

(How do we explain such evil? Why is it tolerated?
Perhaps, as some experts suggest, the tradition of
gender inequality is a very important factor.

And in an antediluvian climate of bias toward women
and girls, perpetrators are often set free.

Courageous children who speak out are abused by the
criminal justice system, that forces them to face their
attackers.)

South African police reported over 22,000 cases of child
rape for a one-year period that ended in March 2005.

(Listen to the howling of Africa’s children, smothered by
oppression.)

As this secret plague sweeps across Africa, destroying and
killing her children from sexual abuse and AIDS, the vast

fortress of silence is now under attack.

Yet I ask: Is this enough? What can I do? And what can
we, the people of the world, do to save these children?

Far away, at night, I listen to the silent shrieks of Africa’s
children. I listen and pray and launch secret ululations,

hidden in the labyrinth of my psyche, to the Heavens,
my soul screaming and on fire.

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