The Unsung Heroine-Auxillia Chimusoro

A tribute to Zimbabwe’s most formidable daughter Against AIDS/HIV and stigmatization

By Primrose C Dzenga

What legacy surpasses life?
What more would one ask a parent?
Let alone a stranger, a sister
Opening her own wounds

Bleeding for you and me
Bleeding for her very torturers?
Bleeding, for many generations to come?
Telling the world
A community, whose bosom is bare,
Like the barren womb of a mare
Of pity, of understanding, of acceptance?

That she bears, the apparition, that feasts,
On you and me?
On our blood rich and sweet
On our lives young and promising
On our youth succulent and tender
On our old gracious and wise
On our continent age old and rich

AIDS bled her a little, for a pillar she was
But what little or more it left
Of her courageous blood
We, with out tongues, and empty   hearts bled
With taunts, teases, hisses, and slander
Of the woman, the one woman
Who came out of the gale like a pillar?
Who stood to weather your storm and mine

So your apparition could be treated like any other
So you children can stand up and say
Im positive and live positively
I have AIDS but im alive!!!!

Who stood up and said enough!
To dying quietly like a lamp
Who unselfishly sacrificed her peace?
Her privacy and her life, a few more days at least
For though she fought
Every jab, of stigma and hate
A second away took
From that life, the strong fighting woman

Nehanda was a heroine,
We sing and praise her
Why not Auxillia, Our unsung heroine?
Africa is at war, Zimbabwe more so

Not a war with guns
But at war with disease
And she was a general
Tireless, fearless,
Resourceful, graceful and strong
A tigeress, a true daughter of Africa

A true mother, sister, fighter and friend
A shameful waste and pity
If we sleep and forget
That today I got ARVS
Yesterday I got support
A shoulder to cry on
A forum to air my views,
Pains and tribulations

Snore and forget
Before the rainbow came a storm
The storm rages on but the sun shone
With hope and strength,
Formidable and undaunted
As none other than she
The true unsung heroine
Of modern day Zimbabwe

A light, a torch, a luminary
Out of Africa, for Africa
For I say Africa is at war
War with disease and famine
And its time we all sing
Our unsung heroes and heroines

Like she
A true daughter and fighter
Against AIDS, against ignorance
Against stigma, and
Against death by good measure
May her soul rest in peace!!!!