The rich widow may have everything at her back and call. But the poor widow left wallowing in squalor, has a mountain to climb, supporting herself and her children.
"At ten every night, I lock my kids in, till morning to 'put food to table"
Says Hellen, a certified member of the Survivors group-commercial sex workers.
Conceive our chargin!
But we each hold our horses. We may all have been there. Where a child’s hunger pang and cry and expectant face await you at the end of 'fruitless' workdays. Others will get into risky liaisons to catch the proverbial shilling later to scale the heights or die a tear at a time.
What is a poverty riddled woman to do?
Godless?
Granted, few people wear your kind of shoes, they may not even know your presiding status, unless you shout out for help, nor care if you do.
Jobless?
Nothing compares to your daily struggles to provide. Nothing! To the 4 winds you will go oscillating here, there, strong for your own, each struggle distinct. What will they eat? Wear? Learn with? Cure ailments with?
Much of the society around you moves on, paranoid at your valid insecurities and regrettably unbothered. Most of your female friends move on, paranoid at your "available now" status.
Indeed in-laws may support you or turn a very blind eye, a very deaf ear, and a mind disturbingly irrational to your plight, notwithstanding their potential abilities. Others will grab property sans remorse.
Has not their son left?
And as your kids drop out of school, many of them do not even see.
Nor reflect on how they survive.
Till later when their maker remembers them.
"Where is Baba?"
Will cry for your hunger-riddled orphans.
Stomach in knots, you will weep in the dead of the night, empty, sleepless, anxious, afraid...
But the chair is eerily empty!
The providing voice, directing voice,
and voice is gone,
Forever.
Godly, you are never alone.
Heaven decides.