Exile: A Poem of Hope

Exile – away from home!
Fleeing from political persecution,
Fleeing with a bag of just a few essentials,
Fleeing with my children on my back.
My two sons on one shoulder each
And my daughter on my back.
Fleeing from the murderers,
Fleeing from the abductors,
Fleeing from those who kidnap women and men
Simply because we are in the opposition.
Exile – a place to breath uuuu aaaah
Without fear of death,
Without fear of arrest.
Exile – a place to dream and dream again of liberation.
Exile – a place to tell stories of when we were home.
Remember, Baraka, when we were home.
Remember, Wasswa and Kato, when we were home.
Exile – a place to think about the dictators who have forced me to flee away
Just as my mother and father fled away when I was a child,
A young-young child.
Exile… exile…
They call me “an exilee.”
They call me “an asylum seeker.”
They call me “someone waiting for refugee status determination.”
They call me “a person who ran away from home.”
They didn’t say “ran away from home.” No, no, no, no, no!
They said, “she fled from home.”
And yes, I fled to exile:
Exile in Kenya,
Exile from Uganda to Kenya,
Exile in Africa…
An African in Africa – is that exile?
Is exile about Africans in Africa?
Exile – dreaming of home,
Thinking of home,
Wishing to be home.
The taste of matooke on my lips would be good,
But it’s a taste I am learning to forget too soon…
Huh, exile!
But exile will not be forever.
Exile is not forever.
Exile is not surrender.
Exile is just retreat to re-strategise.
To tell my child,
“I gave you the opportunity to start afresh.”
To tell my daughter,
“Now, you can go to college!”
“You want to go to London School of Economics? Child, you will go to London School of Economics!”
To tell my son,
“You will have a mother everyday overseeing your homework and teaching you those chess moves. You play chess, but you don’t play as well as you would have played if you were playing against your mother every night!
To tell my other son,
“Hey, son, exile is a moment for you not to wait at night…”
Has Mama come home?
Will Mama come home?
Have the police taken Mama away?
Exile…
I am an exilee with a daughter aged sixteen,
And two twin sons aged thirteen.
And yet I am dreaming of a day when I will return home -
Not an exilee but a Ugandan living in Uganda,
An African living in Africa,
A world citizen living in the world.
I refuse your name as an exilee…
My name is Stella Nyanzi.