Himba Mother and Daughter in Namibia
Mother, what is the monetary value of a human life?
Are humans weighed pound for pound, like slaughtered goats and sheep?
Or, are humans bartered and sold like bags of cotton and sugar?
Do you think the returns are good for enslavement, dehumanization and murder?
Why are our people hunted and shot down like game? Are we sport or food?
Mother, tell me, what is the monetary value of a human life?
Why do we work and maintain the money hives, with little to no reciprocity?
Perhaps the value lies in guns, diseases, and abject poverty…
Mother, they celebrate and boast about plunder while we quietly watch and suffer!
Mother, I insist that you answer me! Your life, too, was taken, because of money!
My daughter, my love child, why such rage?
Cast away your bitterness — this is unlike you!
Why do you ask that question? When you already know the truth?
Money cannot buy a life; death for love is the only true sacrifice.
Like Jesus, this is what generations of your people, have been doing for you…
We fought on the battlefields mighty and proud!
They had guns and they were many!
But we gallantly chose death, to save you.
Daughter, the value of our lives has always been our intense love for you.
Now our spilled blood — like liquid fire — flows through your veins,
So look at the world, my love, and put a smile on your face!
You have such a pure and untamed energy;
Your very hair grows to defy gravity!
Nature simply adores you; so much that even the sun has kissed you!
My daughter, I smile, your fiery African spirit makes you truly mine,
Go now, tell the world our story; let them know that our people are divine.
