Mekelle፡Telaviv, Nairobi, Pretoria, London, (Tigray Herald).
The Silent Strength of Fathers the World Tries Not to See
By Tesema Nadew
On a day like Father’s Day, most of the world reaches for celebration brunches, ties, and hand-written cards. But some images demand a pause, a deep breath, and a reckoning with the many forms of fatherhood we rarely honour. One such image: a father sitting barefoot in the dust, knees tucked up, arms crossed above them not in rest, but in vigil. Beneath him, his young child curls between his legs, nestled into the small haven his frame creates. There is no roof, but there is shelter. There is no wealth, but there is love. And in this quiet, protective gesture, there is the kind of fatherhood we overlook far too often.
We do not know their names. We do not know their exact location. But we do know this: this father is not unique in his pain, nor in his power. Across refugee camps, drought-hit regions, war zones, and dislocated communities in the Horn of Africa and beyond, fathers like him do not disappear they endure. They go unseen not because they are absent, but because our gaze rarely reaches the margins where they stand tall.
His child is not smiling. The father is not posing. This is not poverty porn. It is a mirror one that reflects a truth too often cropped out of our global consciousness: that fatherhood in its most essential form is about presence, not provision. It is about watching the world for danger while keeping your child folded into your shadow. It is about being the barrier between a child and chaos.
In Tigray, in Sudan, in Gaza, in the Congo, in parts of South Sudan and Somalia and yes, even in under-resourced urban corners of so-called developed nations this version of fatherhood persists. It does not get framed in glass or printed in glossy features. It is the fatherhood of rationing food so the child can eat. Of standing in aid lines for hours, clutching identity papers. Of digging through rubble to find a child’s toy or an inhaler. It is not poetic. But it is profound.
The Western imagination has long sentimentalised mothers and cast fathers particularly African and brown fathers as either violent or absent. But this reductive narrative wilfully erases men like the one in this photo. It flattens masculinity into a monolith of neglect, stripping it of its tenderness, its nuance, and its quiet sacrifices.
The child in the photograph is chewing a finger, eyes fixed on the camera a gaze not of innocence lost, but of wisdom earned too early. And yet, the small hand rests against their father’s leg, a sign of trust. That trust is what fathers like this protect every day. With nothing but their presence, their bodies, and a will forged in hardship, they build worlds within the ashes.
This Father’s Day, let us resist the temptation to universalise fatherhood through a middle-class, Western lens. Let us instead acknowledge the fathers holding their families together under unimaginable pressure. The ones who do not have gifts to unwrap, who do not know if tomorrow will bring food, but who show up, every hour, as both shield and spine.
They may not be featured in viral Father’s Day ads. But they are the reason many children are still alive.
They deserve more than our pity. They deserve our recognition.
