YO SPACE:

She Isn’t a He

What is she?

Who is she?

Where is she?

Whom is she?

In abuse she is mother-cum-wife

She is the scapegoat

For the avenging spirits

She is the maid and breadwinner

One married against her wish

She is in the family of the not so discerning parents

She is the little vulnerable girl child

She is one whose education is sacrificed

She does the cooking

Dishes

Laundry

And ends up in bed with unscrupulous babamukuru

She does all household chores

Goes to the fields

Tends the cattle

Goes to the market

Looks after siblings

Those speaking for her rights

Hold meetings in five-star hotels

Deliberate over three-course dinner

Drive posh cars

Live in spacious, low-density mansions

At tender age

Initiated into prostitution

By anatete

Older sisters

Ana amainini and the harsh economic environment

In the city, by the corners she stands

Bowl for begging in one hand

The other sniffing glue

She sleeps in the open

Gets her meals from rubbish bins

Frowned upon by society

At extremes, taken for

Child pornography child labour

Child gangster

Child prostitution

All this done to a she

Thanks to affirmative action

That is only in words

Only applies to the better-off

Thanks to girl child organisations

Who shower themselves with perks

Concerned about self more than the girl

She remains disadvantaged

She remains a she

She remains with bare boobs

She remains with an uncovered butt

She is not a he

Indeed she is not a he

Had she been a he

She would then be

Dada’s hero

Owner of the house

Heir to the throne

The bully in the family

The one momma won’t send for errands

But then she is not a he

She is only a she

Condemned with a single dress

Exposing her infant breast

Behind almost bare

Transparent as democracy

Never to open her mouth

In complaint

Or in comment

In the presence of elders

Only sitting cross-legged waiting for orders

She is an example of human weakness

At birth announced as a mistake

At rural school does scrubbing

Does the teacher’s dishes

Waters the school garden

Carries the teacher’s books

To be sometimes sexually abused by the teacher

She will never be a he

Who the girl child to liberate?

Dhihwa Ignitius