IF Poem: Yesterday I saw God

Yesterday I saw God,

He was not in Israel nor his kingdom,

Rather he walked on the streets of Arusha

He was dressed in filthy old rags

And looked exhausted, not like a king

Nor did he look to be a great healer and being

For he had blisters and skin disease

God did not have disciples,

Neither did crowds rush to, him

But rather, avoided him

As dreadful as he was,

The man was serene.

There was pity in his eyes

As stressed faces swooped past him

He was sorry.

For he knew,we had lost direction.

The man could easily pass for

A poor homeless mad man,

But surely this was God.

We are blinded yet believe that we are sane,

Our senses are deceitful

And it is the likely that we fail to comprehend.

For surely this was God,

But only the sane could see.

This poem is by a talented young Tanzanian, F.B.Marwa, who I met in Ethiopia and who is now studying in Kampala, Uganda. The images below are pasted in the illustration and represent some of the places and people I saw and met in those three countries.

I chose to represent the city of Arusha with a collage of buildings and people from other cities in Africa because they have similarities in that they have many of the poorest people on earth begging on the streets and yet churches and mosques also dominate the landscape. Mount Kilimanjaro, the highest mountain in Africa, overlooks Arusha in Tanzania so I have included that image. The beggar figure below was one of the poorest people I met in Africa; herding sheep at 4,070metres trying to keep his dignity and stay warm in a thin ragged blanket.

I decided not to include the 'stressed faces' swooping past him as I believe that they are people, like myself, who are sometimes afraid to look in the face of poverty.

The original photographs below show Mount Kilimanjaro, an Orthodox Church being built in Ethiopia, a Catholic Church in Kampala, a hostel in Kampala, a market in Kampala with mosque behind, minibuses in Addis Ababa, a priest and man walking in Addis Ababa and the shepherd in the Simien Mountains of Ethiopia.

If you would like to read more of F.B.Marwa's poetry please keep checking this blogsite.