Who made my baby cry (African edition)

If you are African, black, and probably come from one of the poor, unstable African countries, you've got the odds stacked against you. As an African child, you need to have the spirit of resilience. Your struggle starts on the day of your birth and ends when you go to your grave. As an African child, the day of death is the day of rest. You have to be resilient, perseverent and hardworking. If you are from the land where the sun never sets and never rises, you have to simply give your best. No government is there to save you. Your governments are corrupt and selfish. You have to struggle for acceptance wherever you go: East, West, North or South. Your various governments have sabotaged your future with greed and corruption. They don't care about you. All they care about is to sit in their cozy edifices, globe-trot in these government jets and watch the poor masses die of hunger and starvation.

As an African child, success isn't synonymous with your destiny. You have to fight and fight all your life for what you must own. You are regarded with suspicion everywhere you go. That's what your forefathers and ancestors created. As an African child, you never can have it easy. You toil and toil in the African sun and have little to show for it. You start running the race from your bubbly teenage years and will be surprised you're still running when you go grey in the head. That is the African child.

An African child understands the importance of hardwork and endurance. You have received the baton and have to keep running the race for survival. The glitz and glamour of the world can be yours but it'll take going an extra mile to achieve that. The top rung of the success ladder is almost a pipe dream to you, but still with hardwork and perseverance, it could be yours for the taking. As an African child, all your hopes lie in the life thereafter. Ask the dying children of Sudan and Somalia and they'll tell you death is going to be easy for them as living has turned into a living hell. Ask the mother who lost three children to drought in Chad and Niger and you'll know exactly what I mean. Talk to the women in the Congo who get raped every now and then and my words will make sense to you. Sit with the wives and children of the miners killed in South Africa and their wails and anguish will give you some hint. As an African Child, you are special. Although you have to cope with toils of hard labour and struggle for acceptance all your life, you know the true meaning of life. You have seen poverty and watched people die due to lack of medicines. You appreciate the life you have and you don't consider failure as an option. Even though the first time you step into an office you're greeted with suspicion and cold indifference, you know you have to hold your head up and square your shoulders to make your friends and family proud.

As an African child, you have all it takes as hard as it seems and when next you catch yourself thinking why you are an African child, don't blame the creator, blame your governments and ancestors. At least, all men were born equal!