Mother Africa
She is not just images of starving children with bellies bloated with air
She is not just dry faces and tattered clothes with flies circling her hair
She is not just voodoo priestesses
drinking the blood of a fowl
She is not just heartless warmongers
who shoot the innocent down
She is not just an impoverished land consumed by HIV and AIDS
She is not just a late night TV ad
requesting 15 cents a day
She is not just bare breasted mothers carrying infants across her back
She is not just corrupted dictators
and genocidal maniacs
She is not just elongated necks
adorned with rings
She is not just lip plates
and other "unnatural things"
She is not just steamy jungles
overrun with apes
She is not just shabby huts
all in disarray
She is not just Sarafina
or the miniseries Roots
She is not just hotel Rwanda
or Shaka Zulu
What she is, and will always be,
is the mother of civilization,
creator of humanity.
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