These poems are born from life in a refugee camp, but they speak to experiences shared by displaced communities everywhere. They explore the tension between hope and hunger; between the promises of programmes and the realities of daily survival; between policies designed to help and the barriers they sometimes create. Each poem reflects on the ways that procedures, categorisations, and assumptions intersect with human lives, showing how families, children, and youth navigate systems often blind to their needs.
At the heart of these pieces is a simple truth: The experience of displacement is not only about survival, but also about dignity, creativity, and resilience. These poems are testimony, witness, and inquiry. They ask what it means to be seen, to be included, and to be allowed to dream – even in the midst of scarcity. While each poem focuses on a particular aspect of camp life – hunger, representation, market access, bureaucratic labels – they are united by a larger question: How can hope flourish when structures meant to protect fail to recognise the fullness of the human experience?
The Empty Stomach Entrepreneur
This poem explores how business training programmes often speak the language of opportunity, of entrepreneurship, of sustainability, and investment. But for many of us in camps like Kakuma, survival itself is the only business we know.
They gave her a notebook,
lined with promises,
a pen heavy with hope,
and words like “business plan,
market access, sustainability.”
She sat in the training hall,
counting profit margins
while her brother at home
counted his ribs.
“Invest in growth,” they said,
but her siblings had nothing left
to invest except silence,
their stomachs growling
louder than the facilitator’s voice.
What future do you plant
when today’s soil is dry,
when hunger eats the seed
before it touches the ground?
She dreams of green fields,
hands full of harvest,
a market where customers smile.
But reality is a ration card
that buys less each month,
a promise that feeds tomorrow
while today goes unfed.
They call her entrepreneur,
but she knows the truth
she is only trying
to buy time,
trading empty lessons
for one more breath,
hoping tomorrow
does not bury today.
The Forgotten Households
This piece responds to the language of procedures, targeting, and “expressed interest” that increasingly shapes humanitarian programming. In the documentation from aid agencies, participation in livelihood opportunities is often tied to registration, assessment, and demonstration of “interest”. In camps like Kakuma, such requirements can become barriers that leave entire households outside the safety net.
He stood in the sun at registration,
his name trembling on dry lips,
his ration card pressed flat like a prayer.
But the officer shook his head:
“You were not in the list.
You did not express interest during ESR.“
Interest?
His children’s bellies were already
shouting interest,
their tears were already
signing every form.
He walked back to his shelter,
dust heavy on his shoulders,
to find his children crying,
their hands clutching emptiness
as if it could become bread.
That night he dreamed of sneaking in
sliding into the back of the training hall,
listening through walls,
stealing knowledge not meant for him,
as though hunger itself needed permission
to learn survival.
They call it procedure,
they call it policy,
they call it fairness.
But he knows its other name:
exclusion.
Forgotten households are not silent;
they are songs sung in cracked voices,
they are footsteps tracing fences,
they are fathers turned thieves of hope,
trying to steal a future
because the present has abandoned them.
And when he sits at night,
watching his children sleep,
their ribs rising like questions,
he wonders if tomorrow’s training
will ever teach the world
how to count the ones it leaves behind.
One Seat at the Table
The policy logic of “one representative per household” is a rule common in humanitarian programming. On paper, it ensures fairness and manageability: Each household has a seat at the table, a voice in decision-making, and a chance to participate in training or assistance. But in practice, this reduction of a family to a single voice often erases the complexity of who carries hunger, who shoulders care, and who can dream of the future.
Six mouths in one shelter,
but only one voice invited to speak.
The paper says: one adult only,
as if hunger shrinks a family
to a single silhouette.
The father pounds his chest:
“I am the man, the pillar.
The table belongs to me.”
The mother lifts her weary hands:
“I am the one who stays,
who measures hunger in teaspoons,
who knows the names of our scars.”
And the eldest daughter whispers,
her voice small but fierce:
“If tomorrow belongs to me,
why must I remain silent today?”
The walls hear the argument,
thin canvas quivering with grief.
Children huddle in corners,
their ribs like counting sticks,
their eyes asking:
Who will fight for us if all you do is fight each other?
But the rule remains
only one seat at the table.
As if dignity can be rationed.
As if hope can be divided
without breaking.
One seat.
One voice.
One story.
While six bodies starve in the shadows,
and the table of the powerful
sways beneath plates heavy
with our silence.
We are not one seat.
We are a family,
a chorus strangled into a single note.
And that note is pain,
cutting through the room,
asking the world:
How many lives must be erased
before the table learns
to grow more chairs?
Changing Lives or Changing Narratives?
There is a tension between humanitarian narratives and lived realities. In policy documents and donor reports, phrases like “changing lives”, “market access”, and “mentorship opportunities” are presented as evidence of progress. Yet for many of us, these narratives exist in sharp contrast to the hunger, protests, and police violence that define daily life.
He carries a notebook,
not for business plans
but for testimonies.
Ink stains his fingers
like wounds that never close.
In the morning, he films banners
“Mentorship, Grants, Market Access!“
bright words stretched like shade
over an empty stomach.
In the afternoon, he films streets,
stones in children’s hands,
mothers running from tear gas,
police boots pressing down
on hunger’s throat.
They say changing lives.
He writes: changing stories.
For every glossy report,
there is a family boiling leaves for supper.
For every donor handshake,
a child collapses in a queue for water.
He interviews hope,
but hope speaks in whispers now,
afraid of being beaten.
He interviews truth,
but truth’s voice cracks
too hungry to finish sentences.
At night, when he plays back the footage,
he sees two worlds colliding:
He carries a notebook,
not for business plans
but for testimonies.
Ink stains his fingers
like wounds that never close.
In the morning, he films banners
“Mentorship, Grants, Market Access!”
bright words stretched like shade
over an empty stomach.
In the afternoon, he films streets,
stones in children’s hands,
mothers running from tear gas,
police boots pressing down
on hunger’s throat.
They say changing lives.
He writes: changing stories.
For every glossy report,
there is a family boiling leaves for supper.
For every donor handshake,
a child collapses in a queue for water.
He interviews hope,
but hope speaks in whispers now,
afraid of being beaten.
He interviews truth,
but truth’s voice cracks
too hungry to finish sentences.
At night, when he plays back the footage,
he sees two worlds colliding:
the slogans of tomorrow
against the bones of today.
And his pen trembles with the question
no programme can answer:
Whose lives are really changing
ours,
or the narrative written
to make our hunger
look like progress?
The Market Without Buyers
The policy focus on market access and livelihood opportunities is seen as central to resilience and “graduation from aid” by humanitarian and development agencies. Entrepreneurship training is celebrated as a way to transform refugees into self-reliant traders, equipped with the tools of sustainability. Yet there is a paradox: Training may make the baskets, but empty pockets mean those baskets return home unsold.
They came with baskets full of hope,
tomatoes shining like tiny suns,
flour packed tight in brown paper dreams.
Graduates of “Changing Lives,”
they carried their future to the market
as if salvation could be sold by the kilo.
But the stalls faced silence.
No hands reached out.
No coins clinked.
Only eyes lingered,
hungry but broke,
counting their longing instead of money.
What good is “market access”
when every pocket is empty,
when hunger is the only currency
that everyone owns?
A woman clutched her cabbage
like a child she could not give away.
A man weighed his beans
against the weight of his despair.
They stood in rows,
traders without trade,
merchants of nothing
but unsold hope.
They called it opportunity,
but it felt like another ration cut
a promise measured out,
leaving the stomach hollow.
The market without buyers
is not a market at all.
It is a mirror,
reflecting the truth:
you cannot sell bread
to those who have already
sold their hunger to survival.
And so they packed their baskets,
tomatoes bruised by silence,
flour dusting their hands like ash.
Dreams carried home again,
too heavy to eat,
too fragile to keep.
“The Silent Category”
The bureaucratic logic of aid categorisation divides refugees into groups – Category 1, 2, 3 – which determines levels of food assistance, training, and opportunities. Such targeting is defended by the aid system as necessary for fairness and efficiency. But for those in the lower categories, it feels less like fairness and more like exclusion written into policy.
He found the word on a notice board:
Category 3.
Next to his family’s name,
printed small as if it could hide
the weight it carried.
“What does it mean?” he asked.
The neighbour sighed
“It means less.”
Another muttered
“It means waiting.”
Someone whispered
“It means forgotten.”
He walked through the camp
as if numbers were fences,
as if categories were borders
cutting through the same hunger.
Category 1 eats first.
Category 2 trains for tomorrow.
Category 3 watches silence
served on an empty plate.
How do you explain to a child
that his hunger has been ranked?
That his worth has been filed away
under numbers he never chose?
The boy touched his ribs,
counting them like tally marks.
Was he still himself
a son, a brother, a dreamer
or only a line on a list
that says: not today?
The Silent Category
is more than a label.
It is a shadow at distribution,
a missing seat at the table,
a story erased before it’s spoken.
And in his small voice
he asked the wind:
“If hunger is the same in every stomach,
why does justice taste so different?”
