Mother Africa

There is a place where people continue to fight for land.

A concept I am not even going to try to understand.

It is a continent with many minerals and resources,

However the riches of the land do not benefit the people.

Heavily populated the yields of farms cannot sustain.

Young children leave school and barefoot they are,

Scavenging through feces infested dumps for metal scape

Yielding only pennies worth after long days never enough to feed them.

The water is contaminated and cause many to die prematurely,

Yet they bathe in it to strip the unkind heat away.

Small children commit sex acts for as little as a cob of corn,

And parents may even have to sell their children to slavery.

Poachers kill elephants for ivory thus making the elephants endangered,

Or kill tropical animals all in the name of sport.

Nomadic tribes continue to disappear as large corporations,

Burn down the forest for the price of industry.

Africa for centuries has been ravaged by outsiders,

As the cultures continue to die as does the wildlife.

The continent though seeming paradise is always in strife,

We know of the suffering yet continue to close our eyes.

While poverty and disease claim the lives of millions.

We watched youngsters become partisans of civil war,

We may offer monetary aid yet fail to realize how fruitless it is,

When the corrupt governments refuse to distribute donations to the uneducated.

Yet every time genocide does come about,

We swear we will never let happen man’s inhumanity to man.