THAT GIRL I AM ON THIS AFRICAN SPOT

Today is International Day for the Girl Child. So I wrote my sentiments while growing up. Thoughts that made me a woman instead of a girl. Thoughts that helped me see I had to work extra hard to break through the chains to have my voice heard. I hope for a future where girls will not have to break bones for recognition in Ghana and Africa as a whole. 

I came as a human being

With no tag

No feelings which are like rags

Never knowing my future has an added name “hag”

In a pained heavy bag

That society has specially prepared to have me gagged

And to tag me a nag

If I so try to scream

II

I came to this spot

Hoping to bless

Not to curse

But my first name was “an animal”

An animal who slowed down the celebration of a born being

And is regarded as a pot to shape for water fetching

Painfully they waited to have me grow

So I could be exchanged for things

Like cloths, cows, monies or debts or positions

Poor me! Poor us! Poor Creator who made us!

III

I am sure God specially built us

Like men specially build His church

No wonder we are human buildings,

Sacred places for fragile future to be in safety

Sharp intents for protection 

An unquenchable love

But how can these important beings be subjected to so much?

Caught like a goat and sold

Bought like a doormat for doors

To step on for ins and outs

Used like a cheap tool to trap and tarnish

Operated on to remove the voice which beg to be heard

Oh God!

IV

I am the gate of creation

The fate of man

In the shape of adoration

Not a beast for cessation

So why the parcelled pain?

Why do I have to carry burdens I help to carry

Only to make them my burdens in worry?

Why do I always have to hide?

Why do I have to grow like an uncooked yam?

Soft on the surface

Hard within to withstand torture

And eventually fall like a weak plantain

Leaving stains of my life for more torture?

V

What will the world be without my kind?

Why are these hands caged by mouths which need my waters to live forever?

What do they wish to attain by making me a thing?

Why is it taking so long to have them 

Take off the shroud of low self confidence

To see their creators and hail

Rather than make them pale to wail?

A world like this is stale

A world where I am like a possession is no place for me

And without me you are not to be

So please look

Look past the horrid façade of your superiority

And be sane to quench this insane  train of pain

Let the crying society

Which hates dynamism wail in change for the better

Than making we partners divided to eventually fade

Into the unknown

I am a girl to lady in womanhood

A promise for your future and mine

With a head which can battle on thought ground

Please cut my chains

And walk your walk as I walk in mine

Until death hawks hunt us in serenity

After all our wishes are birthed 

Amoafowaa Sefa Cecilia (c) 2015