Born Free

Born free is what they call us. I do not know the face of war, the sorrow of conflict or sound of gunshots. I do not know the fervor of protests or the resonance of gumboots hitting the tarmac road standing tall against a battalion of soldiers. Born free is what they call us. I am greeted by flashes of my family and I sitted under a starlit sky. In the darkness, my mother’s voice transports us to a time, where for once I can stand and not be born free. Her words paint and capture emotions that had me seated on the edge of my chair. She has me wielding a gun in my hand, running on the streets, screaming, protesting, kill the enemy! But, Born free is what they call us. Sometimes, alone, i sit with my hands curled up in fists. These hands that love, these hands that feed would curl up and hold onto the most unimaginable words, the words my mother told me. Run, hide, breathless, no school, rape, fire, passport to walk at night, dissident, terrorist, shona, Ndebele, black, white, parties, sister, aunty, bush, Mozambique, AK 47, genocide. All these words, I held in the palm of my hands and watched them grow. Each word connects to tell a story. So yes fine, I may have never worn a t-shirt sporting the President’s face or hurled bullets at the frontline. Forgive me if I cannot speak but a born free fights a different war. A tyrannical terror that’s left the nation at its knees, genocide that has gone unseen. Born free is what they call us.