Unsung Heroines Poem by John Agandin

The sun is searing hot and pitiless
Hurling down fierce fuming rays.
The earth roasts under his angry gaze
As meat over blazing coals.
Everything bows in submission
Men, birds, beasts, and beetles
Trees, shrubs and every blade of grass
Droops in defeat and compliance.

On this sweltering March noon ablaze
Upon a deserted torrid path in defiance
A solitary figure lumbers on.
Bent forward with a stern grit
And a double load of wood and flesh,
Labouring on, towards
The distant din of a village market!

A mother, carrying her precious son
And a hefty load of firewood
Trudging to the market
To buy salt and pepper
That she may feed her family!
Her man, probably lounging in a bar
Had shoved at her a bowl of millet
With nothing else for soup.

She had gone to the mortar
To thresh that millet with sore palms
And upon her grinding stone
Milled it all into flour.
She went to the river with a big pot
Till all the bigger pots at home brimmed over.
But not before she had swept
All the house and compound,
Mended every crack and crevice,
Scrubbed every cheng and chimoin spotless
And pounded her rags in the river soap-less.

There she goes down the burning path!
Along the wearied unwavering road,
With hardly enough cover for her feet
Bleeding from the blistering path.
For the journey did not start from home
Though it began there in the morning
When she rose at cock crow for the forest

And tore through thorns and stumps
To gather the precious firewood
That she cannot afford to use at home
But must of need send to the market
So that she could buy salt and pepper
That the children may not sleep hungry.

This little baby boy that she carries
She will feed and cuddle and treat
And blow his nose with her mouth
And clean and cover his lidless rectum
Until he becomes one day a man
To shout and rave and rant at her
And beat her up in drunkenness
To show that he is a man
Living in a man's world.

She will return down this road
Jostling with many other mothers
Destined for smoke-filled kitchens
Dimly lit by smoking kerosene lamps
To steer T.Z. for many hungry mouths.
Whilst the men wait upon the rooftops
With peppers and gin in their blood
Impatient to leap upon them
Like locusts upon fresh green saplings
And thrust them full of more little babies

Hail the women! Hail the mothers of Buluk!
Hail the unsung heroines of the land!
Yes, indeed they are…
The blood that waters the plains green.
The manure that feeds our crops
The donkeys that carry our loads
The wood that feeds our cooking fires
The breasts that nourish our young
The menders of our walls
The nurses of our aged
The housekeepers
The dishwashers
The laundry machines
And etcetera without end…
They are the women that make us men
Hail the mothers! Hail!