Wrath

Wrath is great anger that expresses itself in a desire to punish someone: Noah saw the flood as a sign of the wrath of God. Wrath is also used figuratively of things that behave in a violent way: Earthquakes are the wrath of the sea.

It was a terribly hot day and I was on the way back from a long walk to the second orphanage I worked for in Bungoma, Kenya. I was breathing slowly and I remember feeling terribly thirsty . Suddenly, I heard a man, screaming and hitting a dozen cows and calves with an immersive wrath and violence just in front of me. At this very moment, something just cracked inside of me and with an incredible speed and agility I started running after him and in a second, jumped over to prevent a severe hit with a stick on one of the cow’s back. Then I tried to calm down myself and explain to him how wrong it was what he was doing. When I looked around, there was already a big crowd around of us just observing a white young girl “mazungo” shouting at a shepherd across the road.

One thing I cannot pass by is the violence.

Every act of violence we close our eyes for, will eventually grow and become worse. We are responsible, today is a dozen of cows, tomorrow would be the man in Bungoma, who in fact pushed me hard to jump the queue in the supermarket, tomorrow could be Matadjuma.

This is Matadjuma and she was beaten multiple times until loosing conscious by her own father. Today, she is a young kid with special needs because of her several traumas. She is now 10, but her brain is a of 3 years old kid. Her mother is dead, because she had the HIV virus and she didn’t treat it on time. Her father is in prison, not because of his severe damage he caused on his daughter, but for many other crimes. Matadjuma is one of the 12 seropositive kids I was working with, during my volunteer experience in Africa. Despite being a HIV carrier, her life expectancy, thanks to the new medicines ,could be extended with up to 20 years or more. I hope during my month’s visit over there I brought her peace and smiles and helped her learn new things.

So the next time you see someone being violent against an animal or a human being think twice before doing nothing about it. This time is Matadjuma, next time could be your own daughter.

I write to you – people who don’t see the reason of helping if no one is asking. I to those, who prefer to close their own eyes in front of the injustice. We have been taught that silence will save us, but it won’t. And everytime you do nothing you are actually doing wrong, because the absence of choice is a choice of itself. We are all guilty for all the good we didn’t do…Keep that in mind.

Love,

Paris