The normalcy with which our children and young ones have been and are being exposed to things, objects and situations they should not be is no short of alarming.
Teenagers who should be in school, because they are after all teenagers hawking expertly under the vengeful rays of the sun on such a road and at such a time I wouldn’t even begin to describe.
Just this faithful morning, I met a woman in her late 30’s and her daughter who is not up to 15 years old fetching water, I found it amazing that they were both carrying basins of the same size and the mother was complaining of how slow the girl was. It’s something that happens but I found myself thinking within me, why should such a young girl be able to carry a bowl that size, and even if she could, should she have to?
Oh, let’s not forget the number of teenagers and youths who regularly fall victims to all sorts of abuse – alcohol, substance, sexual, or the ones who under the guise of home training have fallen victims to domestic abuse either physical, emotional or verbal. We can tag it whatever we want but in the end, abuse is really just abuse and it is plain wrong.
They are constantly reminded of sentences like; “They are all the same and they are just evil”, “it doesn’t matter what you have to do, as long as you get what you want, the end justifies the means”, “you are beautiful and well endowned, use what you have to get what you want”, “you are just so dumb, you can’t seem to get anything right, how do you expect anyone to love you” and on and on I can go. And so they grow up to be cynics, antisocials, criminals or what have you simply because they learnt all the wrong lessons while they were young, and every other person begins to cast stones. They grow thinking everything and everyone is fair game, children being mothers of children or better yet mothers of mothers.
It is more disturbing how everyone turns a blind eye, dumb mouth and deaf ear; if only we would protect our young ones.
The ones who should look out for our young even take advantage of them. Some say it’s not their business, what exactly is your business? Or you tell me about how we don’t live in an ideal world so some things should be overlooked, whose job is it to create an ideal world?
From as insignificant as helping a child cross the express road to as significant as picking up a teenager off the streets and helping to clean him or her up, they should be protected, they should be guided and guarded, no harm should come to them especially when it is totally avoidable.
We forget, our young ones are not just our present, they are our very future.