Tribute to all the women of the world
Also on the day following Women’s Day, thoughts go out to all women around the world and, in particular, to those in Kivu
(by Teresina Caffi)
Tribute to all the women of the world!
Especially to those who suffer the most in this time!
Not the successful ones, not the successful ones,
But the losing ones, the trampled ones.
The ones who get up when it is still dark to go to the fields.
The ones who live by trading a bowl of tomatoes
or mangoes,
saving every penny,
so that they eat once a day,
the small capital is not lost and something is left over for rent.
Until a child’s illness, when everything disappears at the dispensary.
Tribute to these women
Who go then to the ports or customs with their rope,
looking for a burden greater than themselves to carry on their shoulders,
at a lower price than the truckloads.
Tribute to the women whose beauty was smeared with flour,
of coal, of animal blood, of toil,
in the name of love to their children.
More so, in these times of war,
in this east of the Democratic Republic of Congo,
tribute to the women assaulted by soldiers made of drugs
who, forgetting that they have a mother, a wife, sisters
take them as trophies to be violated in groups,
often in front of their children and husbands.
And no way to refuse.
Homage to these women humiliated
And then abandoned by their husbands.
Tribute to the women who could refuse and were killed,
blessed Anuarite laywomen without name or glory.
Homage to the women who fled with their children to refugee camps
Under makeshift tarps, in the mud or dust,
daring to go out and risk again in the name of their starving children.
Tribute to the women who, with their families,
extend their hand to other women, because they know their pain.
Homage to the women who still on Sundays, praying, know how to dance,
because of their unwavering trust in a God who loves them.
Homage to the women of the whole world who sing with their lives, without tiring,
the song of self-giving so that the world may live.
Source
Image
- Photo by Fr. Paolo Malerba