7. CE 201 - Refugee Mother and Child by Chinua Achebe
Channel: Ishan Marvel
Date: 2020-11-02

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLTSoWRKkWJTYMu6FhrV9JzlNVJaRU4HeI
From Ripples on the Sands of Time

Chinua Achebe (1930-2013)
* Most well-known Nigerian writer and academician from the Igbo tribe.
* Wrote his most famous novel, 'Things Fall Apart' in 1958, capturing the effects of colonialism and Christianity in Africa, and reflecting Igbo oral tradition, folklore and culture.
* Wrote in the "the language of colonisers'.

Refugee Mother and Child
* Portrays the pain of a mother at a refugee camp whose son is on the verge of dying. The poet states that no picture of Christ and Virgin Mary can match the poignancy of the image  of the refugee mother and child.
* Subsequent lines conjure up the horror of a life at a refugee camp with images of disease and death, and refer to the exceptional resilience of this particular mother, who unlike the other mothers, continues to take care of her child as if she was about to send him to school.
* However, the poet states that in her case, it is an act that has a tenderness equal to putting flowers on a tiny grave of a child.