Tropical Disease

Kenya turned 50 this year.

A fifty-year-old patient

Is in the throes of a mid-life crisis

In such travails - of birth, or of death?

Shall we call for midwives, or spices?

 

Infected by a culture

Whose germs ride on a breeze from overseas

Upon TV- and radio waves

Like some airborne disease.

 

She has endured great trauma

Great abuse, and great misery

Now she suffers from amnesia

And forgets her own history.

 

Now proud Africa is broken

Begging-bowl outstretched for help

She mimics, so desperately

Those who taught her to hate herself…

 

A western breeze brings the tropical disease

That infests her every pore

Brought to her on foreign vessels,

Like the smallpox of yore…

 

 

 

 

 

 

Author's Note

Title/Theme >> I saw a travel advisory encouraging visitors to Africa to get immunised against 'Tropical Diseases'...