…Precious…

President Issias will tell one whopping lie right at the start of his speech on Independence Day… let us not let that lie slip by this year…we owe it to ourselves to  challenge this one if not the countless other white lies that he just slips in along with his bare face ones! I will come back to the big fat lie right at the start of his speech in a bit…

…how much is an Eritrean worth? Well it depends who you are talking to these days… to a Rashaida people trafficker it is anything up to $20,000… and that is after the person has been damaged well the truly… burnet, beaten, raped, spat at, kept in the dark… hungry … been made to live in a pool of their own excrement… suffering from diarrhoea…and having just seen fellow travellers being killed or having just witnessed the barbaric gang rape of a girl barely past her teens.

To an Eritrean smuggler an Eritrean is worth a cut of that sum… to be collected from anyone including a mother or a grandmother selling the very last of her jewellery and the sums being collected anywhere across the globe by more Eritrean aiders and abettors…to them an Eritrean isn’t worth more than a phone call to their relatives who are shocked into not questioning who the person at the other end receiving the blood money is…

To the fat cats over in Asmara an Eritrean is worth fifty thousand Naqfa, that is collected from anyone left standing in the extended family, of the person that they just smuggled out of Eritrea to be sold into the hands of the traffickers who are willing to sell them, whole or in body parts to the highest bidder…

To an organ harvesting criminal an Eritrean is worth their kidney (either or both)… and we come in a range of shapes and sizes all young and healthy fleeing for our lives only to loose it because someone only sees young healthy kidneys and not our soul…

To a cruel party functionary, in the guise of an ambassador and Eritrean is worth 2% of the merger income he earns driving cabs and buses or filling boxes in factories or indeed on benefit meant to keep him barely alive. 2% of a human being who lives to line the pocket of those who live to lie!
 
To the ceatures in the Mediterranean an Eritrean is a feast that breaks the monotony of hunting and gather food (whatever fish do to gather food)… to the unquenchable desert sand an Eritrean blood is a relief from arid parchedness …to the lonely foreign streets, a scared-for-life-Eritrean ends up in, an Eritrean is only worth a cold comfort that a pitying stranger could afford but would not miss at all… used clothes perhaps… borrowed shelter… temporary leave to remain… and tabloid headers that won’t kill but do utmost damage to the soul…

But to his mother an Eritrean is worth all the hope in the world… all the love in the universe… all the care in a heart… to an Eritrean father an Eritrean is worth all the pride in a gait… all the joy in a glint… to me their sister every single one of those who are perishing fleeing the hopelessness that is haunting us is a hole in my heart…every death changes every gaze into my own future… that is precisely why I am not going to let IA off for his big fat lie next month…

When he begins his speech with his customary kubur hizbi Eritrea (precious Eritreans) we should reject those utterances with all our might… in his hands we have become the retched of the underworld… the scum of the earth… whose bodies get washed ashore once the fish had their fill! Or buried in the shallow graves in the sand once their kidneys are scraped out… for the desert vultures to dig out and finish off… or who dangle from tight nooses in lonely borrowed abodes when all else has dimmed… he of all the people in the world should never be allowed to use precious and Eritrean in the same sentence… he took our preciousness and squandered it and made us beasts of no man’s land!

Enough of the tearless grief that bleeds the heart! Enough of the silent tears of quiet protest… enough of the looking the other way in the hope that it will all go away… the time of reckoning is now… the precious souls whose bodies we have yet to claim still are counting on us… the precious souls whose kidneys are held for ransom are counting on us… the precious souls languishing in named and unnamed dungeons in the country that claimed their youth are counting on us… and empty promises and lame excuses for doing nothing is  a worse response than that of the one who dares to utter the phrase ‘Precious Eritreans’ whilst rendering every Eritrean worthless… those who are poised to clap and dance as he utters these words next month will be dancing over the bodies of my brothers and sisters and clapping with blood dripping off of their hands…the rest of us should use the opportunity to show how precious Eritreans really are to us…  

Selam