Last updated on August 14th, 2025 at 10:39 am
The experts dig state-of-the-art multi-purpose open gutters
For a festival of sewage, refuse, sludge, mosquitoes and sellers
Our food tastes delicious when sold right there
And when the skies darken, we invite our bins to the festival
To vomit our waste into them
Ready for a journey to blame the government when the floods arrive
Somewhere in Africa
Dodge one pothole and embrace two manholes
If there are none, dodge the police
They are not your friends
But if you carry their friends along in your right hand
And shake their left hand with your eyes fixed ahead
You can cross the red light with a full chest
Somewhere in Africa
The roads are blind and naked
Bleeding with defiled streetlights
Purged of their virgin wires by metal scavengers
Moving to commissioned bridges to uncompleted buildings
Dragging knives and sacks at the back
Harvesting metals from taxpayers’ money
Somewhere in Africa
The roads can only hope to be healed every year
In the mouth of pot-bellied men at the hustings
When they promise to build new roads and ultramodern hospitals
In exchange for thumbs for the next four years
But at the harmless cough, they take the next flight overseas
To seek medical care on a foreign bed of metallic origins
Somewhere in Africa
In the heart of town, the roads are drowning
Barely able to hold onto the embattled cars
Bobbing in the thick soup of abrasive pedestrians
Dickering and bickering their way in the business pot
Hand clasping their sides with four eyes
Looking out for the skimmers of unguarded pockets and bags
Somewhere in Africa
What’s next in Peter’s Box? ¡Hasta luego amigos!
Hmmmm!!!! It’s time for us to make the change Africa needs.
You are right about ‘us’.
This is striking, it reads like truth wrapped in poetry. Painful, yet dignified in the way it reveals reality.
Hopefully things will change sooner in Africa. Fingers crossed.