Last week, the world received the sad news that Chinua Achebe, the great Nigerian writer and poet, had passed away. The Women’s Refugee Commission’s Geneva Representative, Rachael Reilly, remembers one of his poems, “A Mother in a Refugee Camp,” that had a profound impact on her as an 18-year-old in England. Rachael has devoted her professional career to advancing the rights of refugees, particularly women and girls. As she wrote us the other day, “In a way, it all started with Chinua Achebe’s poem.” We are honored to share that poem with our friends and supporters.

A Mother In A Refugee Camp

No Madonna and Child could touch
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.

—Chinua Achebe