By Peter Kidi in Kakuma
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?
This poem was first published by the New Humanitarian
