Children of the Street

Children of the Street

By Lora Akati

(published in The Daily Graphic July 19, 2009)

Hear now, the voice of the voiceless,

Of us, who have no representatives.

We are the children of the street

With nothing but dust to eat.

Policies have promised to save us

But instead like maladies,

We are stuck in the abyss of hopelessness.

Education is alien to our world

For though we have heard of rights,

They are meant for the bright.

Despise us or dismiss us,

We are still the homeless, children of the street.

We may not have homes,

But we do have hopes.

Just as the earth has never ceased in its orbit,

So our dreams grow each passing minute.

We do not beg for respect, for it is foreign to us.

All we seek is a tomorrow,

Where education will replace rape,

Where food and shelter will exist.

Where we will be bright enough

To demand the respect of our ‘rights’.

This is the dream we hold on to

As we wake up each morning under the bridges

And bare our souls to the dangers of the street.

This is our silent prayer,

That one day, our voices shall be heard

By none, but ordinary people with respect for lives.

Ordinary people like you.

The writer graduated from Keta Secondary School in 2008, where she read General Arts. She has been admitted to the University of Ghana, Legon, and looks forward to reading political science, English, and social work. Currently, she is studying French at Alliance Francaise, Accra.