Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor.

— James Baldwin

 The Film That Stirred the Ashes

It came quietly, like a whisper from the margins. A DVD in the mail—When Did I See You Hungry? by Gerard Thomas Straub, narrated by Martin Sheen. A gift from a friend in South Carolina, sent after reading my essay on poverty. I watched it once. Then again. And then I wept.

The film did not show me anything new. I had seen hunger before—in the eyes of barefoot classmates, in the bellies of children bloated from malnutrition, in the silence of mothers who had nothing left to give. But this film did something else. It stirred the ashes. It summoned the ghosts of my childhood and the fire of my rebellion.

I remembered the beatings. I remembered the uniform I gave away. I remembered the food I carried from our farms to children who had none. And I remembered the fury of my maternal uncles, guardians of a feudal legacy, who struck me for daring to share.

That was the beginning of my exile from my own family in silence, from complicity.

 Born Into Feudalism, Baptized By Rebellion

I was born into a matrilineal tribe in Adeiso-Armaaman, Eastern Ghana—a place where my great-grandfather and his ancestors ruled as kings. Landowners. Lords of a colonial legacy. They owned the soil, the harvest, even the cemetery. My uncles groomed me to inherit this “small kingdom.” But I rebelled.

I questioned the unequal distribution of land and harvest. I gave my school uniform to classmates who had none. I shared food from our farms. And for that, my uncles beat me. The more I gave, the more they struck. That was the beginning of my exile—from own family, from feudalism, from silence.

Even as a child, I knew: power without compassion is tyranny. I began to rebel—not with weapons, but with witness.

 Kinship Not Only to My Bloodlines

Thank God for my father.

He was a man of kindness, with farms and a village of more than a hundred families—Sui-Attohkrom in the Western Region of Ghana. When I left my maternal family, I found refuge in his world. A world of generosity, humility, and communal care.

I embraced his ethic. I housed Liberian refugees during their civil war—including relatives of Justice Minister Jenkins Scott, who was in political exile in Guinea-Conakry. I fed them. Clothed some of them. Funded two who were in Guinea-Conakry to their travel to other Countries in West Africa

I sheltered Dragon Noire, the African world record wrestling champion, along with his wife and son, when they were in crisis. I gave them what I had. Not because I was wealthy, but because I was willing.

My kinship is not only to my bloodlines. It is open to all humankind. I walk alone in America. But I stand with all who hunger.

 Poverty Is a Global Wound

Poverty is not a local wound. It is a global affliction. I have seen it in Ghana, Liberia, Guinea in European Countries, and the streets of New York. It wears many faces, but its eyes are always hollow.

It is not just lack—it is theft. It steals dignity, voice, and breath. And yet, we dress it in theology. We call it “God’s will.” We birth children into scarcity and say, “It is written.”

But I say: we must rewrite what is written.

We must think outside the box. No—think as if there is no box. We must exercise possibility thinking. We must calibrate our minds to be each other’s keeper.

No man is born poor. Society makes him so. And only society can unmake it.

 The Walking Cane as Mantle and Witness

I do not carry a cane for weakness. I carry it as a symbol of witness. It is the staff of memory, the rod of rebellion, the walking stick of those who refuse to forget. My grandmother, who saw children bulldozed in Germany at age 14, taught me that silence is complicity. I walk with her stories. I walk with the weight of history. And I walk to remind the world: we have seen this evil before. We must not see it again.

America: Exile and Empathy

I live in America without kin. No family to greet me in the morning, no one to mourn me should I fall. But I am not without witness. In a New York restaurant, a Ghanaian man recognized my father’s name. Even in exile, the roots remember. I walk alone—but I carry a village, a lineage, a rebellion. I write not to be heard, but to awaken. Each word is a drumbeat. Each sentence, a march.

Faith Communities Must Rise

I am a chaplain-in-training. I do not preach comfort—I preach conscience. The Riverside Church is my sanctuary, but the streets are my pulpit. Faith must not be a sedative. It must be a summons. We must stop dressing poverty in theology. We must stop calling injustice “God’s will.” The sacred is not in silence—it is in solidarity.

The post The Walking Cane and the Mantle first appeared on Dissident Voice.

This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.