Voice Of Our Time Poem by Affiah Odhiambo

We have to be the voice of our time,
we have to tell the story, the story of a nation,
a nation of a people, a people of diversity,
diversity of wealth, wealth of resources,
cultures, tribes, peace, love, unity,
envied wealth we ‘unenviably' forgot.

We have to be the voice of our time,
do you remember the gunshots?
Gunshots! Gunshots! Gunshots everywhere!
do you hear that screaming?
children, women, their husbands,
crying,burning,dying,
neighbor against neighbor, tribe against tribe,
A Kenyan against a Kenyan!

We have to be the voice of our time,
did you hear the trauma, the trauma of the girls?
Nancy barely sixteen,
"They tied me up, they beat me up, then one by one,
They brokeme,staining me,
They made daddy watch, daddy chose to die."

We have to be the voice of our time,
Nancy's father, hundreds of innocent souls,
brutally forced to their graves,
hundreds of thousands robbed of their homes,
billions worth of property wasted in flames!
For what... politics! ?

We have to be the voice of our time,
Our leaders let us down,
Our institutions: the ECK, the media,
The police, the church, let us down!
You, I, we all let us down!

We have to be the voice of our time,
In the spirit of Kenyanhood,
We have to speak in one voice,
we are one tribe, we are one nation
NEVER AGAIN!