Nyachiro Lydia Kasese is a Tanzanian born, self-proclaimed social-political armchair activist.She is a writer and Journalist among other things and her undergraduate degree was pursued at the University of Rhodes in Grahamstown, South Africa.
Aleya Kassam, Kenyan writer, activist, Storymoja Hay Festival Coordinator and a close friend to Nyachiro said the poem was “deeply affecting”.
“It took me a while to figure out why this poem crawled into the pit of my belly and would not come out. The way she writes about something so horrendous as a child being abused, in an almost matter of fact way is where the power of the poem lies.” -- Aleya Kassam.
According to Kasssam, the language echoes this sense of numbness she has had to develop to keep living through something so horrendous.
“…the matter-of-factness that this is just what a girl, "a girl" goes through, and that is just the way it is…it makes me feel, as a society we are complicit and of course, aren’t we? Yet the poem has a movement and texture that makes it beautiful, when it almost shouldn’t be.”
The poem was published in A Thousand Voices Rising, a collection of contemporary African poetry.
Last week I found my seven year old cousin in the nude,
legs wide open in a sitting position and hands prying into her vagina as if searching for something there.
I wanted to ask her mother if maybe her new boyfriend may have dropped a penny there,
may have, lost his keys in the crevices of her vaginal lips so much so that it gave her an itch
she had to scratch, gave her an ache whose source she had to find.
I wanted to rush over and close her legs,
wanted to wrap them shut with the kangas my mother covered herself with as she explained how boys were haram.
But there were no words where they should have been.
I wanted to wrap my hands around her body and teach her how to pray to the gods,
but I feared my hands may feel like his on her skin,
I feared that my voice may break in the midst of salah
and she would smell his scent on my body and know that we shared the same demons,
that our scars made the same tracks only mine have been running for over ten years now,
and yet every night since I taught her how to hate the stench of submission,
we kneel with our heads bowed down and still say “inshallah”
Last week I found my seven year old cousin in the nude,
Legs wide open in a sitting position and hands prying into her vagina as if searching for something there.
I wanted to ask her mother if maybe her new boyfriend may have dropped a penny there,
May have, lost his keys in the crevices of her vaginal lips so much so that it gave her an itch
She had to scratch, gave her an ache whose source she had to find.
I wanted to rush over and close her legs,
I wanted to wrap them shut with the kangas my mother covered herself with as she explained how boys were haram.
But there were no words where they should have been.
I wanted to wrap my hands around her body and teach her how to pray to the gods,
But I feared my hands may feel like his on her skin,
I feared that my voice may break in the midst of salah
She would smell his scent on my body and know that we shared the same demons,
That our scars made the same tracks only mine have been running for over ten years now,
Yet, every night since I taught her how to hate the stench of submission,
We kneel with our heads bowed down and still say “inshallah”
