Kindness Begets Kindness Poem by Tony Adah

My mother pounded foo-foo for me
Away I was in school
And kept it to warm
By the hearth
I came back hungry
She drew my attention
To the hearth
I shied away
Because of the visiting crowd.

My peers stared
Hungrily at me
Watching me, my mother
And the hearth
I stared away
Until they left.

When I was hungry too
I strolled to the neighbourhood
To where they were eating
They reluctantly
Accepted peer names
I got a hard lesson
As their hungry faces riled up
And my famished frame waited
Anxiously like Rwandan refugee
For the red cross.