So today, from my many wanderings to the bookshop, and after countless minutes of looking around, I spotted this book, I had no mindset of buying a book but this, well it drew me, ok to be truthful, it was the illustration on the cover page and inside that got me interested… ‘illustrated by Bruce Onobrakpeya’ (didn’t even notice that at first) and Bruce Onobrakpeya is a legendary artist, this had to be a good book I figured. I routinely flipped through the pages, it was a collection of poems. I didn’t wait to read through carefully, saving the contents for later was best I thought. And so, I’ll share the very first poem I read in this book…this one is titled ‘The little boy’ … A simple tale of kindness and what happens when you chose to turn the other eye…

THE LITTLE BOY
The little boy
from Ayorou
– skin and bones,
    a paralysed leg,
  rags round
  his haunch –
the little boy
from Ayorou
follows me round the market
all day long.

He points to a car,
and proudly declares
that this to a relative
belongs-
a doctor
far off in town.
In fantancies
he suffocates the shame
of misery.
But I took it
for the truth.

As I departed
at the end of the day,
with shyness
he asked me
to give him five cents
for bread
which he wanted to buy
at the opposite stand.

But I didn’t
believe him
for I remembered well
the wealthy relation.
And just before that,
wasn’t I cheated
by somebody else
and lost fifty marks?
My anger was
still being felt!
I was deaf
to his begging,
and didn’t
believe him.
And yet, I could
have gone myself
to buy the bread,
giving it to him
instead of money.

The little Boy
from Ayorou
now heavily lies
on my conscience –
with the bread
in his hand,
which I refused him.
Heavier and heavier
he weighs,
until with shame
in my heart,
he will offer it to me,
when the end
of my life draws near.
He will offer
that bread
with the love,
which I,
mistaking his need,
had failed to give.

Africa on her schedule is written a change by Barbara Haeger