Hitler, Osama Bin Laden And Jeffry Dahmer Rolled Into One Poem by Diana van den Berg

What can I do?
I have no money.
I have no time.
My sobs and
this stupid little non-poem
don’t help
a nation in crisis
unnecessarily.

Seven hundred million US dollars
will beef up Zimbabwe’s primary health care system
and bring health care for all.
I don’t have seven hundred million US dollars.
Do you?
All I can do is pray
power-punch prayers
and to ask you
to do the same... please
because sincere, heartfelt prayers of faith,
especially powerpunch prayers
work -
I know -
I truly know
and miracles happen.
I know that too.
I have known many, many miracles,
and, if you, like me, look around you,
and into yourself,
you will see them too.

Zimbabwe, once-thriving,
in the 1980’s and 1990’s
had one of the best primary health care systems
in the world.

Now, one in three children in are malnourished.
Eight women die every day
from pregnancy-related causes.

The structures are still there,
but dilapidated
and without resources.
With ninety percent unemployment
nobody can afford to pay for primary care
and people die for want of transport
in a non-existent ambulance
or even rickety private transport
to the nearest rural hospital -
which in any case
has no blood, no electricity, no sutures, no gloves -
nor can they travel distances of two hundred and fifty kilometres
to a provincial hospital that has slightly better resources.

Since 2000 the economy has dropped by half.
Mugabe and his crazed supporters are systematically
and without conscience
strangling Tswangurai’s efforts.

UNICEF is helping now.
Rural clinics are opening their doors.
The government,
despite everything,
is launching a program
which will abolish user fees
once and for all.

This is good news
but will take time
and doesn’t help
a woman dying of loss of blood
this moment, as you read this,
nor a child whose bones are
bursting out of his or her body
from malnutrition right now,
and it should not dry our tears,
nor our consciences,
nor our prayers.
Please care.

(13 November 2011)