Humans are emotional beings, our ability to feel and respond to specific emotions defers based on our level of self-discipline. The most common type of emotion known by every human on earth is fear, it is like a living organism whose life span is eternal. For minds touched by fear it makes you do what you never thought possible. It is capable of changing the psychological orientation of any human, it is a plague with no definite cure.
Humans exhibits all kind of emotional traits when we are in scared such as paranoia, anger, hatred e.t.c these emotions makes a human being fixates, clingy on something for relieve. Sadly one of the many ways in which average people do this is to find something or someone to blame for the pain they are experiencing. Anything they could wage their war against, it doesn't really matter if the object of their hatred is innocent or not as long as they could feel sense of relief or closure.
When you think about it, one of the things that most humans result to, when we are experiencing fear or hatred towards something, is to cancel it from the society. In the olding days people find ways to eradicate the object of their hatred or fear, even if it is a human being. But in recent times, when there are laws to restrict us from specific actions such as jungle justice. Our ability to take our anger out on a thing or a person has been caged by law. Humans will always find ways to experience their emotions and that is when people result to stigmatisation.
Have you or a loved one ever dealt with stigmatisation? On a petty level, in terms of religious beliefs and all, I have experienced it few times. But when it comes being stigmatised on a grand scale , I have only experienced it once and I'm glad I wasn't the target.
It happened about 18 years ago, I was still very young but I was old enough to understand what was going on. In those days my family and I still lived in our previous neighbourhood in ketu. There was a particular kid I used play with whenever I'm back from school, we did not attend the same school but we were neighbours and we were fond of each other. Due to our closeness, our family kind of became a little bit close to each other. He was not the only kid I played with in the neighbourhood but he was the closest to me.
It all happened so fast because all I heard was stories and everything changed. A rumour started spreading that the father of this friend of mine was involved in a kidnapping case, I mean he was arrested publicly and you know how Nigeria police can be when making an arrest. The man was detained for few weeks before he was granted bail. The case was ongoing but eventually it was dismissed and the man was found not guilty. It turns out it was a case of him being in a wrong place at the wrong time.
But despite this man being found not guilty by the court, it wasn't enough for the community to believe that truly he was not guilty. Though in those days, child kidnapping and trafficking was very rampant in our neighbourhood which added to the hatred of people towards this man and his family. Even before the case ended, my family had already cautioned me about going anywhere close to the man's family. It was not only my family, this occurred to every other family in the neighbourhood.
People were just so scared of their child going missing, so this man and his family became the target. Every parents in the neighbourhood prevented their children from getting close to the man's house or any member of his family. It was as if they were marked in the community. every step they took, people gossiped about them and refused to associate with them. Months passed but this hatred remains the same to the extent that, other children in the neighbourhood started taking it out on this man's children in school.
They suddenly became ghost in the community and everytime a child goes missing just for few minutes, the concerned parents go towards the man's house and start banging on his gate, requesting for their child. The man had to report people's behaviour towards him and his family to the nearest police station but this did not help the man situation at all. Eventually people started leaving our neighbourhood because they couldn't withstand the presence of this man. This man and his family barely lasted 8 months after the incident before leaving our neighbourhood for good and we never saw him again.
The most tragic aspect was that, this man had to put his property in our neighbourhood on sale, it didn't get any buyer because people called it the kidnapper's house. It was as if everyone believed the house was haunted and this news spread like wild fire.
What tips can you share about dealing with stigma? I don't really have much experience with it but from what I have experienced, there is no definite solution for it apart from "Time". As time goes on people tends to forget what has happened. The best solution I could think of is to avoid being stigmatised and if it can't be avoided, it is better to just exit the neighbourhood to avoid unpleasant experience.
This write-up was inspired by weekly featured content titled "Effects of stigma" in hive learners community.
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