THE CLINIC ON THE HILL

The Clinic on the Hill

This clinic on the hill, they say, is new,

But nothing's single use .

The same thin gloves, washed with soap, it’s never too clean,

The bandages stretched as thin as hope, on busy hands.

Oh take me back to what I was taught

That a needle's pointed kiss,

Like Cinderella’s wish a one-time journey,

The sterile here is clean

The strength here is but a thread

That stitches patient after patient closed,

The way of healing is a patchy, unfortunate path .

I see cupboards breathe a shallow, dusty breath,

They survive on positions and not oxygen

Their hollow shelves humming echoes of need.

They are as silent as me

We are all failed by a system

The same system causing systems to fail

We improvise everything including courage

We are becoming the country we are forced to tend.

The younglings are trained for a lost battle.

One greater than the everyone

Combined

They come full of zeal and determination

The system with its big boots waiting to crush their potentials

And they speak of newer, cleaner ways;

Addressing problems but not the right ones.

Preaching things they themselves can never practice

Blame games! Who is the judge? Who won?.

The younglings can only dream

As for the elder;

They do not dream of any other sun, Or question why the same old clouds remain.

The bests are the worse

No new maps come to chart the inner roads,

No training fills the canyons of the mind.

The team is just a word, a scattered sound

Each works a lonely plot of tired ground.

So we, who see the rust upon the blade, Who feel the weakness in the ancient beam, Must stand and watch the dedicated flaw, A silent wound in this Sierra Leonean dream.

One that is vividly a nightmare.

©️GIMA