Monday 10 October 2016

Poems to Child Miners in Central Africa.

I am thinking about the children being sent down the mines in Congo and it reminds me of William Blake and the chimney sweeps of London Town and this week the Artists of Africa are exhibiting their artworks in the Capital. This is an ideal opportunity to draw attention to these humanitarian issues.

https://www.bl.uk/…/william-blakes-chimney-sweeper-poems-a-…

Let us write poems for them..This is my poem.

CONGO ORPHANS

You send the children because the adults are just too big to work in a space that small...I understand, it is hardly your fault, these children have nobody to parent them, so they become the victims of our Modernity. Working for motoki, black-eyed beans or rice and warm sugary cups of tea. Some as young as six years old, wearing battered t-shirts marked with mud, and ripped shorts housing thin grubby knees and feet covered by tattered old stained plimsolls as they squeeze inside holes digging like moles for a dime size metal worth billions.Winners and losers I guess..

Somebody has to suffer so why not the African orphans? Who will care for them in our visible world of maps, drones and high spec cameras based in Outerspace, which can detect all kinds of resources from all around the globe? The child miners are invisible from us here, as we type on upgraded keyboards and thumbing up every message written on smart phones....I wonder how many of these orphaned children think our phones are smart? Capable of making them work like dogs in confined spaces when they should be playing in safe open fields; in parks and learning to ride on stabilized bicycles and swim in chlorinated waters whilst making friends with other kids their age and eating ice-creams? I guess...Not for them hey...This is a disgrace that has not been sanctioned by the Users. It makes us criminals, guilty of having no conscience. We need to resolve this yesterday, not today and tomorrow it will just be too late. Wipe that blood off your hands #Apple #Vodaphone #Nokia #Samsung and I will wash my hands after typing out this poem. I feel sick being apart of this heartless Modernity.

Kofi Mensah 09/10/2016

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