Trying to Pull Down the Rainbow
By Joergen Ostensen
5.23.19
I read this poem after my classmates and I gave presentations about the service projects we did as part of Fordham University's Ubuntu Program.
For the good people of the Funanani Christian School, Lesedi Le Batho and Plots 174 and 175 and all the other wonderful people we have met along the way.
I
Welcome and yes they call this country
The rainbow nation
Under the blazing stars
And the rising red moon
Welcome and yes they call this country
The rainbow nation
Where the lions hunt the night away
And the baby elephant is comforted by her mother
Welcome and yes they call this country
The rainbow nation
Where apartheid has fallen
And the constitution is the best in the world
Welcome and yes they call this country
The rainbow nation
Where the once broken strings are being re-tied
And in eleven languages every shade of love is known.
II
But where, where are these rainbows?
On the dark fear clenched streets
Where the only bright colors come from broken liquor bottles
And shoeless men are kneeling down
Among the cars begging for bread in heartless suburbia
Here where the red dirt seems to derive from the history of senseless bloodletting
From Sharpeville to Marikana
And the twenty-seven rand in library book fines
Could have bought lunch for the homeless man who followed me into Dominos.
Where are the rainbows in the townships?
Where sometimes there aren't even crayons
And the children play with tires stepping around the broken glass
Their bare feet tracing and retracing
Paths through the piles of trash
While the faces of JuJu and Cyril
Look on always with paper thin smiles.
Where are all those rights?
As loose chickens and toddlers
Negotiate their way past broken glass and live electric wires
In the place that birthed the Freedom Charter
A world of orphans clinging to strangers
Men sleeping under train bridges
As people choke in the cigarette haze as they wait in line for medications
And the body of Chris Hani's daughter decays six feet under
While the towers of spiring Sandton evoke the Manhattan we all remember
As they cast shadows over the crumbling rubble of Alexandra that reminds me of Baghdad after my country rolled through
Here in a nation with tremendous white Waterkloof wealth
As smoke rises from burnt desperation protest tires as the kids go to school on a Mamelodi morning.
Where is the rainbow?
While a woman asks whether or not it is right to sell her body for a promotion
And a quiet child's mother will not be coming home despite what his grandmother says
Here where the babies of battered marriages are kept in blankets under the burning sun
And beautiful little African children stroke our white skin and ask why theirs is not the same
Or how it is possible for their parents to both love and hit them at the same time
While the black girls beg us Americans for our long curly hair
And a crowd of angry xenophobes gathers outside a creche
The day after a stabbing
In a settlement in the rainbow nation where every face is black.
Where are the rainbows, you ask?
I guess they're still just shimmering in the sky.
III
Thank you and yes we have come
We have come to see and to learn and to lend a hand where we may
We have come to see the places they would not let us see
Just twenty-five years ago
We are here to help in the little ways we can
We have come to assist the teacher who doesn't yet have her degree but still loves all the children
each according to their need
The social worker who is pregnant with her own child but still comes to the school to help all the others every morning
And the care workers from the red dirt settlement who do the best they can to help the children of their little world
Thank you for welcoming us and yes we have come
To help all the good people of this country as they try to pull their rainbow down from the sky.
Look at all their smiling faces
The faces of the children of this broken country
Can't you see them smiling?
So close to God and overflowing with hope and beauty and the wisdom only children have
As we lead them to see the wonders of the Pretoria Zoo
And they play with deflated balls and worms
While we hoe them a garden and plant carrots and beetroot
While someone else teaches the glorious mystery of how to bake warm gooey cookies
And another reads them stories about Solomon the Lion King and Mokgadi his Queen
As someone else teaches them to write their own stories
While another explains how we can all work together to save mother earth
And someone else helps the women to realize a part of their long overdue dignity
As a crowd gathers to learn that God loves us always and is with us all the time
And all of us are here learning together
American and African
Both experiencing our humanity with the help of the other.
So here we are and these are the stories
Of how we came to help the world in the small ways we can
How we came to grow together
And how we will return home with hope in our hearts and smiles on our faces
As we set ourselves to the task of pulling down that shimmering rainbow
So that it covers Africa and America and every other place under the stars and sun.
