dreams are dead in the land of food

Disillusionment is easy
when dreams are dead
when beliefs are questioned before
they are formed
self-esteem, trampled upon
even before it has a chance to rise.

They play dead, these youth
From desperate backgrounds.

They have burdens to bear,
These young souls,
The burdens of becoming
And those of making family dreams
Turn real.
They come, afraid of what the city walls
Will offer them,
Of what they will learn from a foreign language,
When they haven’t learnt from their own.

Before long, the sparkle in their eye is gone,
Their dreams, buried over the heap
Of crumbled egos.

Who cares about dreams anyway,
Do dreams put food on the table?



have been at a training session for final year students. it's so easy to discard them as good-for-nothings. and it took great effort to look beyond them. and then we saw, a faint flicker of hope. and then we saw it extinguished by wisdom-givers. so-called wisdom givers. it's not the young that will kill the hope of this land. it's us who have already killed.