My heart hurts and I am trying hard to quiet the pain as I watch the anguish of parents who have lost children to Kidnappers, bandits and armed robbers. I am a mother of many birth children and countless numbers of adopted children across the world. First you birth them, then you groom them, then you send them to school, then you laugh with them. Believe me, you become a child again and grow up with them.
You have tears when they have pain and your joy is full when they do good and when they are happy. You fight, you disagree, you eat together, you make up and you watch them have their own children, if God permits. You literally adore your children and hope that they think of you kindly and as you age that they are there for you. It’s a beautiful circle of life.
To lose a parent is hard enough; to lose a child is incomprehensible
But your heart jumps out of you when you hear and read that people’s children, people’s wards have been kidnapped and eventually in some very painful and heart-rending situation they are murdered.
I have sat quietly through the night in the eerie darkness of things known and unknown and thought about the young people who were brutally murdered. What were their thoughts? Poor Kids who we laughed with and cried with and celebrated. Did they pray? Did they call for their Mums like George Floyd? How were they kept? Were they starved? Were the women abused? Were the men tortured in mind boggling ways? What happened? I am sunken in my spirit as I think of their last moments. My heart has escaped my mouth. I am in deep sorrow for the Parents of these children who have lost their sleep. They sit alone at night and howl to the God’s of heaven and earth. To lose a parent is hard enough; to lose a child is incomprehensible.
I have imagined without comprehending the unspeakable horror that these parents are going through. When we lost my younger sister, our days turned to night and my mother refused to leave the darkness of burying a child. In the end, the sorrow devastated her until she fell ill and simply yielded to the pain. My sister was ill. I can still feel the pain and I can hear my mother’s wailing on the day and the endless nights of crying after that. And now we hear of things like beheading, like bodies found, like the senselessness of it all.
I have sat in my night of croaking frogs and whispering trees and wondered about those who take the life of another. Those who have bathed themselves in innocent blood. Who have taken what they cannot give, a life, so sacred, so spiritual and asked severally, what happened to you? Who do you serve? How much can you make? How do you sleep with yourself? What is all of this in aid of? I have asked numerous questions with no answers but the hooting of the night owl returns to haunt us all. The diminishing of humanity. The end of sanity.
I remember the story of a young child soldier in Sierra Leone who got named General at 14 years old for being an expert in killing people. A young man who got sucked in by the rebels as he went out. High on a mixture of cocaine and gunpowder, he would set a whole village ablaze and shoot those who tried to escape. He had been initiated in a dance of death. He was only 14 years old. His name is Ishmael Beah and he wrote the book, A long way home. Everyone must read it. After being rescued by the UN he said if he opened a tap, he only saw blood not water. He was losing his mind. He was lucky to escape that horrible life. How many of our children are in the forest doing their master’s bidding? Those abducted who are now trained killers.
The businessmen are in town living large. The small fries have become unwitting killers. Something has got to give soon if we are to rescue our nation. The business model of Kidnap does not end well. How many persons, parents, sisters and uncles are living large from blood money? They look perfectly normal but they are relations of kidnappers and they ride big cars. Blood on your head does not augur well. Time to take our nation back whatever needs to be done. Blood money, blood in our eyes. The sacrifice is enough.
