International Day of the African Child: Please Allow me Vent!

Dear Reader,
I would like to share with you a feel of how the day of the scenic African child can be better now and for posterity.

I use the antonym “scenic” as though the word itself is simultaneous to having pleasing or beautiful scenery. The state of affairs is not one of beauty or pleasing events.

This year’s theme is “Eliminating Harmful Practices affecting Children;Progress on policy and practice since 2013.”

What does it mean for something to be harmful? It means that the “thing” is detrimental or causing a bad effect on something or someone.
This theme is purposely picked to torch the practices that are detrimental to the well- being of the African child. For centuries, the African Child’s mind has been poisoned by toxic societal practices that seems fit for their growth.

Like when a girl child begins budding breasts, she is ready for marriage, when a boy child begins seeing his pubic’s darken with hair, he can now look at the need to have his own family.
These societal glitches were harmful and are still harmful to the African Child. Please allow me vent!

#1. Education The African child deserves to grow up and go to school

It started with the fearless, courageous and daring students who were massacred in Soweto, South Africa, in 1976 for protesting against education injustice and inequality in the apartheid era.

Early and forced marriages. This has been one of the most colossal challenges that has affected the wellbeing of the African Child, especially the girl child. It is eating up the dream of the girl child. Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 2 was to ensure that all children in the world are in school and learning and Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4 kept the dream alive through provision of quality education.

For this to happen, the vice has to be curbed as a preventive measure and solution to early marriages. A campaign to end child marriage across Africa was launched in May by the African Union, However, this launch has not reduced on the rate of early marriages happening in the community due to poor policy implementation, manpower to effect change as well as a resource constrain.

Every good teacher knows the impact of good education. It is not about learning reading, writing and arithmetic at school. Instead, formal education is about gaining the knowledge and the skills needed to become a better person and create a better society to live in. Malcom Forbes said, “Education’s purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one”.

#2 Drug Abuse

The media’s portrayal of illicit and narcotic drugs through advertisements makes use of drugs inevitable. Children are influenced by what they see, therefore, if what they see is depicting being cool; they would want to simulate what they have seen. The tabloids have led to usage and addiction through the ads shown on televisions, radios, newspapers, magazines, internet etcetera

Today’s societal outlook of a youth who smokes, drinks themselves silly, does weed and other drugs is “cool”. Cool! Like what is cool about smoking narcotics ?

Drugs are also being done due to peer-pressure. The “cliques” as they call themselves, have led to more harm than good. Energetic youth are wasting their good days on drugs thinking, “It relieves them of stress, and it is for having a good time”. These pleasures are short lived. What happens when the drug is out of the system? They revert to continue the state of being in “comfort”.

Parental negligence has also led to many of the children now doing drugs. Most parents are workaholic. They do not get an “alone time” with their children these days to know what the children go through. A father or mother leaves the child with lots of money to keep the child “comfortable” but do not question what the child does with the money.The child is sent to school; however, no follow up is made on the child’s progress and well-being at the said school under the guise of “I am a busy person”. Do you literally know what the child is going through?

No. The teacher at school has to attend to the needs of hundreds if not thousands of children, so focus will not be only on your child, charity begins at home as the saying goes. This has hence led to many children coming home and isolating themselves in their rooms and doing drugs under the “nose” of their parents. Comfort should not be sort in drugs, those addicted can overcome. We should learn that “one of the hardest things is learning that you are worth recovery”.

As Joseph Addison said “Tradition is important help to history, but its statements should be carefully scrutinized before we can rely on them”. This statement calls us to give a deep thought on some of the practices that affect the African Child. Female Genital Mutilation, a hard fought for tradition and those who call for FGM are fixated due to their long conditioned thinking.
deal of conception of its grave effects. This particular practice remains to be one of the worst experiences an African child endures.

To date, it appears Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors and their backward practices . It is a democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to that arrogant oligarchy who merely happen to be walking around. This notion has led to defacement of those considered modern. Tooth removal, facial markings, earlobe enlargement, and neck elongation, etcetera are some of the harmful realities that continue to exist and have effect to the well-being of the African Child.

The beauty of a woman is not in a facial modification or the adding of foreign gears on the body.
The adage by Jose Bergamin should be adopted, that, “Tradition simply means that we need to end what begun well and continue with what is worth continuing”.

Warm regards,
Sinadada Arnold

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