It is our society’s chronic disease
Like coronavirus and HIV/Aids
They scavenge our societal values,
And like fire, consume them.
Leaving families fatherless
And children growing in severe poverty
Some poverty lies within feminisation
Africa, my continent, my home

At the dead hour of the night
Amid the dreadful silence of the outer world
We sleep not, terrified about our children’s futures
Terrified about their whereabouts
Terrified about their unruly behaviour in the streets
Petrified about if the streets will contain our blood
We turn, twist and groan, knowing they are out in the streets
In search of a father figure, a matching male voice
The streets lure them and turn them into ‘street kids’
Where they drink their humanity in insanity
We are frantic, thinking of all the street horrors
Awaiting them to overcome in order to survive,
For it’s survival of the fittest out there

For they lack a male figure and a male voice
For many households have absent fathers
Thus, we are financially, and emotionally, haggard
We live under the poverty line, with a poverty inscription

I hurt when we, single mothers, get judged daily
No-one understands the sweet pains of single motherhood
Like a two-in-one blanket, we are the mother,
We too play the absent father’s role

We suffer solitude disorders
Because the world is full to capacity with ‘judges’
Waiting to sentence us for our failures
Never applauding us when we make it in life
It’s laborious to be a single mother
We get suspected of wanting their lovely husbands
We are dejected, despondent and we feel empty
Fill us…don’t judge us, we need your hand…
Our children need your hand, give them
Their fathers denied them, but YOU! Yes, YOU!
Don’t deny them, don’t rebuff them
Grant them the education they deserve
So that they can move towards self-realisation
Single parenting…is a scourge, hurting our societies