Hum If You Don't Know the Words

by Bianca Marais

“I am sorry! Yoh, I’m sorry, see? I am almost finished. Almost, almost. You are a brave girl.” You arra brev gell.

What greater gift can you give another than to say: I see you, I hear you, and you are not alone?

“It is fitting that the next generation are the ones to rise up,” Odwa is saying in that singsong preaching way of his, “because it has all been for them.”

The young people are singing a song, one that is accompanied by the beating of a thousand drums and makes my heartbeat quicken. Yet, as much as I want to sing along with them, I do not know the words. Perhaps that is what it means to get old: you must let the young ones sing their own songs.

“When in doubt, just do what I do, Robs. Hum if you don’t know the words.”

Dr. King’s words move me exactly because they are a more eloquent expression of my own feelings: “We did not hesitate to call our movement an army. But it was a special army, with no supplies but its sincerity, no uniform but its determination, no arsenal except its faith, no currency but its conscience.”