The Meditation of a South Sudanese Refugee. A poem by Geraldine Sinyuy

The Meditation of a South Sudanese Refugee

Why has the ground under my feet become so shifty?
Why has the comportment of the government become so dirty?
When and how did we get here?
Why are the mountains grumbling like a charged diarrhea?
How long shall I walk these winding roads of displacement?
I behold cracked feet and broken faces,
Starveling children clinging to dehydrated mother’s breast,
Can’t you see the eyes baked white in hunger?
Oh you that cause this displacement,
Tell me,
Can one person occupy a whole nation?
Why can’t you let the people be?
I mourn the loss of loved ones
Slashed by the swords of the enemies,
Swarming in on humans like bees,
The senseless helpless gun bearers,
How long will you wait to repent?
You soldiers
 of death!
How long will you torment the innocent with your charged irons?
How long will you keep doing wrong?
Let there be peace in Sudan,
Let the sounds of joy and gladness be heard in her streets.
Though I walk this winding road,
 I still expect a return call from home,
A ceasefire, a call to celebrate,
And though my feet are cracked and weary,
I shall happily return,
And rebuild the ruins,
Clean the graves,
Patch the huts,
And light a fire,
A fire at home that’s always the warmest.
I hope that someday, very soon,
A call shall I hear,
A call of ceasefire,
And though my feet are cracked and my limbs are weary,
I shall gladly return,
Though the journey be long and the road winding,
The way home is never too long,
I’ll happily walk back home,
And till the fields once again,
Feed the cattle,
And pray to my God.
Yes, I expect a call to return home,
That my people shall again walk on the land of their birth.
I expect a call to return home,
A home safer than what it is now.
A safer home,
Yes,
A safe Sudan.
And like babies in their mother’s arms,
We shall once again sing songs of holiness,
South Sudan shall once again smile,
Singing the songs of victory,
The songs of peace,
The songs of unity.
I expect a call from home.

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Dr Sinyuy Geraldine is a budding creative writer resident in the North West Region of Cameroon. Sinyuy trained as an English Language and Literature in English Teacher in the University of Yaoundé I in Cameroon. She earned her PhD in Commonwealth Literature from the same university in 2018. Dr Sinyuy started writing poems in her teens and most of her poems and folktales were read and discussed on the North West Provincial Station of the Cameroon Radio Television (CRTV) Bamenda where she was often a guest writer for the programme: Literary Workshop: A Programme for Creative Writing and Literary Criticism.  She is a critical book review editor at WordCity Literary Journal. She is also does copy editing and proofreading under the cover of the comply she founded in 2022, ‘The Rising Sun Editing Company Ltd’. 

Sinyuy Geraldine has had the following awards; Featured Change Maker at World Pulse #She Transforms Tech Featured Change Makers Program; Featured Storyteller on World Pulse Story Awards, May 2017; Prize of Excellence as Best Teacher of the Year in CETIC Bangoulap, Bangangte, 23 October, 2010; Winner of the British Council Essay Writing Competition, Yaoundé, 2007; Winner of Short Story Runner-Up Prize, Literary Workshop: CRTV Bamenda, 1998.

Her publications include: Music in the Wood: and Other Folktales (September 2020), Poetry in Times of Conflict (Eds. Meera Chakravorty and Geraldine Sinyuy, 2020), “Stripped” FemAsia: Asian Women’s Journal; “Invisble Barriers: Food Taboos in V. S. Naipaul and Samuel Selvon.” Tabous: Représentations, Functions et Impacts; “Migration related malnutrition among war-instigated refugee children in the northern part of Cameroon.” South African Journal of Clinical Nutrition; “Cultural Translocation in Three  Novels of V. S. Naipaul.” International Journal of English Language, Literature and Humanities. Vol. IV, Issue XII; “Journey without End: A Closer Look at V. S. Naipaul’s Fiction.” International Journal of English Language, Literature and Humanities. Vol. IV, Issue IV; “Which Other Way? Migration and Ways of Seeing in V. S. Naipaul.”  Migration, Culture and Transnational Identities: Critical Essays. She is a contributor in an international poetry anthology: Love Letters to Water which is pending release.

Some of her poems are featured in, WordCity Monthly, Time of the Poet Republic; Africa Writers Caravan; For Creative Girls Magazine; and Fired Up Magazine. Dr Sinyuy is an advocate for organic gardening and environmental care. She equally runs an online cookery group via WhatsApp where she teaches women how to cook good and healthy food for their families. She is also a lover of photography and spends her spare time taking photos. She is currently working on a collection of poems and her first novel. Above all, Sinyuy is philanthropist and has been working as a volunteer at the Garden for Education and Healing Orphanage (GEH) Bamenda since the early 2000.

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