Growing up in Africa meant a lot of things to me. To my generation. We were raised with a whip and aware no one questions what adults did or said. They (and with they I mean the whole village grownups) had the right to thrash your ass (if you were found doing something they deemed wrong) regardless of them being blood or not. I still think our generation gave life to the proverb that says it takes a village to raise a child.
Most of us were born to not so educated people and even those lucky enough to have knowledgable parents suffered out fate. We all grew up in very secretive homes where controversial subjects like sex could never be discussed. Some of us were left out in conversations that affected us like FGM, early marriages, abortion or rape.
Because of being raised in the dark about most crucial topics, we experienced teenage and puberty differently. Sex was dirty and immoral. The consequences of such vile acts were unwanted pregnancies and boy weren't we afraid of those. We thought of sex as the worst of sins. Yet they continued to have unsafe sex on the low and died in their millions leaving us scattered across this vast continent.
HIV and Aids claims and has claimed many of their lives but it is/was never credited for it. Somehow, people before my generation, decided it was great to blame witchcraft or the devil for this shameful disease. Respectable diseases (those uninvolved with sex) ends or ended up taking the fall. They buried their friends in that much 'honour' that no one of them actually mentioned HIV anywhere. It is still widely done.
Aids slowly became this ghost that has killed millions but the millions only exist in statistics never in burial ceremonies. Unknowingly, our generation started engaging in unsafe sex due to unavailability of sex education. Lucky ones got unwanted pregnancies and were forced into early marriages. Some of us were forced to do FGM. We are/were raped and shushed. Traditions, they call/called them.
On the other hand, inheriting young widows after the death of their husbands was a thing. This spread Aids like some wild fire. The elders kept insisting and some still do, that a woman without a husband lacks security. That she might 'starve sexually' and start sleeping around. Their reasoning is or would be that a widow is a fragile being. Those who refused or refuse to be inherited are seen as outcasts by the community for disobeying tradition and the all mighty elders.
Education was and still remains something many girls have to fight and have be forced to fight for. Boys are/were always favoured here. They are/were considered worthy paying school fees for which some communities still practice today. This special treatment though came and comes with the fully paid pressure to be successful. Africa would rather praise crooked but successful men but not those poor honest ones. A man has to be successful!
Men are/were also expected to be manly. Show less emotions or sharing. Men here are/were raised to be compressed warriors. They are meant to be feared by women and fellow men. Such ingrained egos can't be tainted with failure or worse, being gay. Most remain disgusted by the thought of even discussing homosexuality. And those who are gay, are either living openly with insurmountable stigma or in fear of ever being found out.
Men have been forced to carry around so much especially unresolved self esteem issues. This never gets to see the light of the day and there in the darkness, depression is born. This has secretly led to their suicide rates spiking in insane levels. In Africa, male suicide rates are three times higher than female. Some end up getting involved in crime and then flood in prisons. The rest waste themselves with drugs.
What if we had better and more open upbringing I sometimes ask myself? Would all this be still happening? What if we raise our children differently? Can we save whats left of Africa? I wonder.
