A Poem By Catherine Murombedzi
Let the children speak
The inclusion mural is not just a piece of art
It is artwork depicting children’s voices.
Artistic impression, pictorial voice for the voiceless.
A vivid voice speaks through the still image
The images become a moving process
All children require inclusion,
More inclusion, until inclusion is normality.
Inclusion, access to education, health, access to everything for positive growth, every child, regardless of color or creed.
If the world could let children be children
Nurturing them to full blossom
But what do we do?
Pluck a budding flower for personal gratification.
A child is supposed to be rooted in society
The same society chokes the stem
Struggling, the destroyed plant weaves through with full potential on hold
Let children be children
Inclusion is the missing jig saw piece
I am a child,
A child to be heard, not only to be seen
I have rights to inclusion on my life.
My future is shaped today,
Today determines a bright future,
A future of possibilities to be
To be, or not to be, inclusion takes children into tomorrow
Hello, listen to children talking
Listen to their needs
Listen to their rights to inclusion, education, health, housing, clean water, food, a right to be children
Let children be children
They, too, deserve normal love.
Changing the river’s course
Where children were seen, never heard
Suffocated, they withered ‘alive’
Thinking on their behalf
The elders erred
Representing them as if they couldn’t themselves.
The result;
Half measures, excluding the child became a norm
Every child is differently abled
Give space to bloom and shine.
(The inclusion mural is artwork by several artists who listened to children’s voices nationally. The mural was made possible with support from UNICEF. It graces the National ART Gallery in Harare, Zimbabwe, as a stark reminder to society’s failure to accommodate children)
