She was more bone than skin, her body was mostly still with hairs, muscles and veins that were hard to find.
She barely spoke, moved, or ate. She mostly watched. Her vessels had failed but you could still see and feel all the life in her eyes, eyes that found their way from body into soul because her presence evoked that kind of honesty. She was shy so her smile spoke for her: a smile that stays even in her absence.
When she decided to speak, we talked dreams she dreamed and the figure that stood ceaselessly beside her. A figure I could not see but that didn’t matter. She narrated her favorite books and how she missed Anita, her best friend at school. She confessed thinking about her sometimes made her cry, maybe because memories of them playing tenten or tinko seemed like they would forever stay memories. She missed the way things were and just wanted back home to everyone and everything she loved. Her mother was there though, day through night and that had to be enough. When the silence came, we simply sat and listened to each other’s ways: slight gestures that spoke volumes, learning ourselves patiently, quietly. Her suffering was constant, but you couldn’t tell through those eyes and that smile.
She had lupus, an autoimmune disease that can be managed if caught early,
but was left to eat through her as she lay for months in some church with words and spit being showered at her under the guise of spiritual combat, prayer and miracles. A church governed by a false prophet who watched her suffer more everyday but wouldn’t release her. She was taken to the hospital after her body had failed and could no longer move.
The hospital functioned more like a dormitory: crammed with as many beds as possible and children afflicted by the worst kinds of ailments but no apparent aid in sight:
just parents’ soothing screams and tears from pain. There was one nurse sat at the entrance whose coldness and apathy seemed strange and out of place amidst so much suffering. The toilets reeked of everything, with doors barely hinged and floors browned from wet dirt and tears. She was discharged too soon from the hospital, they needed more bed space as though the room wasn’t tight or heavy enough.
Her parents, consumed by fear, worry, not enough money and misplaced hope were led back to the church where she died: naked, shivering from cold, pain and fear on unholy grounds after being bathed with salt and cold water as prophesied by the pastor, ignoring that her skin was rid with open wounds.
She was 11.
Bodies on bodies are piling up on unholy grounds, hospital beds and on open streets, every day and every second without a trace.
I think about her eyes, her smile and her life that was lost to a body fighting itself, her future that will never be because of a broken country and I cry.
The world she’ll never get to see, the experience of life on this mystery and journey of self, the currents, tides and stillness that is love, the lives she won’t get to shift, the life she’ll never get to give. I grieve not just for her but also for all of us that have been broken by this system with leaders much like the nurse sat by that hospital room entrance, with coldness and apathy on her sleeves. Bodies with minds, ideas, potential and so much future drowned to silence by the flood that is our system, consuming everyone and everything in sight leaving suffering, broken spirits and heavy souls behind. I think about the many lives, minds and dreams this system has killed and I grieve everyday.
Yet and still, though plagued by suffering, greed, tribalism, terrorism, gender inequality, human inequality, false prophets, bribe, identity crisis, brown water or no water, low current or high current or darkness, no compassion, ignorance, holes in the ground, gutters for sidewalks, trash for roads, traffic, generator sounds, fuel scarcity no worthy infrastructure and far deeper crimes,
Nigeria is still my country, my home. My soul is here, everyone I love is here, everything I am is here, my reality and future is here, with more hope, potential, vision and essence than I have ever known.
Hope that exists because every one of us still breathe life with body, mind, soul, purpose and will. Hope that brings forth imaginations, visions and ideas for a time that is coming and will come, a future we all see and must now begin to interpret in order to build layer by layer, piece by piece for all of us, our children and their children. Hope that is my light in this darkness.
Hope became Exodus, a think tank for developing ideas in sectors and states through design process, imagination and compassion.
A movement of thinkers, mentors and partners with a collective purpose to shift the condition of Nigeria and the mind of its people, one vision and imagination at a time. A space where dreams and ideas are nurtured to life, where imagination is reality, where we gather to confront the things that plague us and the core where ripples begin. We cannot unsee or undo all this madness or suffering but we can choose to hold on to hope and plan for a future that will come, using our imagination and ideas as building blocks fortified with mind, body, soul, integrity, honesty, patience, compassion, hope, faith, time and most of all, will.
Exodus cycles will function as incubators, guiding the process of bringing ideas from imagination into reality with weekend sessions and gatherings. The first cycle will begin August 6th 2016, join or seek further and apply if you are willing on http://exodus.ng
The post For Her appeared first on Zikoko!.