A Mother In A Refugee Camp
A Mother In A Refugee Camp Lyrics
Her tenderness for a son
She soon would have to forget. . . .
The air was heavy with odors of diarrhea,
Of unwashed children with washed-out ribs
And dried-up bottoms waddling in labored steps
Behind blown-empty bellies. Other mothers there
Had long ceased to care, but not this one:
She held a ghost-smile between her teeth,
And in her eyes the memory
Of a mother’s pride. . . . She had bathed him
And rubbed him down with bare palms.
She took from their bundle of possessions
A broken comb and combed
The rust-colored hair left on his skull
And then—humming in her eyes—began carefully to part it.
In their former life this was perhaps
A little daily act of no consequence
Before his breakfast and school; now she did it
Like putting flowers on a tiny grave.
About
The poem conveys in an understated but enormously effective way the tragedy of conflict and the effect on civilians, especially children. Yet, even in the most terrible of circumstances, the mother-child relationship is celebrated as beautiful and enduring.
Achebe achieves huge impact through simple language, vivid imagery and juxtaposition. For example, at the beginning the spiritual Madonna image is in sharp contrast to the reality of the camp — children with diarrhoea and swollen stomachs caused by starvation.
It is only through line-by-line analysis that the poet’s skill and craftsmanship emerge.
Structure
Though sometimes printed in five separate stanzas it is more often printed as one continuous, free-verse poem of twenty lines. The flow is achieved through linked ideas, smoothly enjambed. There is no rhyme scheme. Changes in pace, where the poet enjambs some lines and pauses at others, are used to great effect.
Language and Imagery
The language is colloquial in parts, easy to understand, but sometimes lyrical, as in the ‘humming in her eyes’ and the ‘flowers’ that adorn his grave. It is as if the subject matter is too important to be bounded by structure. The spiritual nature of the mother-child relationship — the Madonna and Child is the ideal that opens the poem — is juxtaposed against the cruel reality of diarrhoea and filth. The poet also uses a range of poetic devices, like the plosive ‘b’s in 'behind blow-empty bellies’; assonance as in ‘ceased’ and ‘teeth’; compressed noun-modifier as in ‘ghost-smile.
Q&A
Find answers to frequently asked questions about the song and explore its deeper meaning