Voice of Diaspora, the One and the many who live in two worlds, pulled by the memories and attachments of their places of origin, resurrected from the dead by an assimilated life in the present pursuing their dreams in a new place of migration.
Voice of a lost generation, whose youth galvanized their will to break free from traditional culture, away from their history and their birthplace.
Voice of hundreds and thousands whose lives are torn by civil wars, ruthless dictatorships, forces of circumstance and calamity, abject poverty and oppression.
Voice of the countless who survived torture and unspeakable terror in the hands of their native brothers and sisters. We are the countless who survived the adversity of renegade governments, militant political factions, fanatics, mercenaries and opportunists who squelched human rights and caused us to flee by night through borders across deserts and high seas to become refugees in foreign lands.
We journeyed in foreign lands to realize the Divine Self and to find a small niche where we could build a life. We struggle with mental torment from being voiceless and helpless, where we am marginalized and made invisible.
Voice of the guilty and the shamed, humiliated and terrorized children of Diaspora who negate ourselves in the hopes of passing our children for first class citizens in a new country where we migrated. We come and go, labor and toil bearing the brunt of bigotry, racism and discrimination, in a world that has increasingly become more materialistic, more unjust and more blatant in its obliteration of human rights.
Voice of that child who never had a chance at the tender age of two or three tangled by starvation, and tripped by the giants like kwashiorkor and marasmus. The ones who are means of collecting money for aid agencies on whose behalf they plead, and you see us on your television screen, skinny legs and distended stomach whose eyes are the feast of dragon flies and whose wail is not heard across the Atlantic. Our fathers fled to make a life in another land, or whose mother became a young indentured servant forced into prostitution among strangers where she speaks not the language nor understands their culture.
Voices of thousands from Albania, Armenia, Burundi, Brazil, Bosnia, Chile, Congo, Croatia, Cuba, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Guatemala, Haiti, Kampuchea, Kosovo, Korea, Libya, Mali, Mexico, Palestine, Peru, Rwanda, Senegal, Sri Lanka, Syria, Uganda, Ukraine, Yemen, Vietnam, Zimbabwe and many other places, who left behind their dead siblings unburied, or dead parents un-mourned. We moved forward determined to make a life so that one day we could become one with the Eternal Voice.
Voice from beyond the material realm, the Spirit that has risen from the dead, who has revived and grasped the sweet honey of life and is now an embodiment of living in Grace. Voices of hundreds and thousands of immigrants illegal and unprotected by law who are abused by employers, wrenching in their sleep alone and confused with depression, post traumatic stress disorder from isolation and helplessness.
Voice of the Spirit, the One who desires all children of the universe to heal, all people to live in peace, prosper in harmony and rise to their manifest destiny.
I am the Spirit abiding in every home with each individual whose worries at night and by day entail how families have been torn asunder like the peas from a pod blown by the great wind across the fields.
Voice of the untold numbers who are unaccounted with whom we have an eternal bond, and for whom loyalty triggers emotions of guilt and a sense of duty.
We want a world of peace and justice and a human community elevated to the highest level of Divinity.
Hanna M. Kebbede (edited from original written in 1987)
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