BEING YOUNG
BY BRIAN MOSETI
It’s a curiosity that grips you and
thrusts you back into childhood. A never ending barrage of questions and
arguments and “why’ questions that brings back reminiscence of adults fed up.
Of beatings earned and unearned. Of growing up.
Do we ever remember to be kids?
Ake The years Of Childhood, a memoir
by acclaimed author Wole Soyinka seems to explore the little child in every
personality. Usually we are too caught up in the throes of adult life that
memories of childhood seem fickle. And when we get our own kids we are too busy
to try to understand their world but instead realise or not realise at all,
that we have turned into our parents.
Wole writes about growing up with
romantic nostalgia. Even the way he describes Ake, and the changes it has gone
through throws me back to when I was a kid growing up in a little town with
iron sheet roofs that bled rust, and looked picturesque. Everything was a
mystery, a new thing, a new experience that awed. Every adult was revered, a
different creature full of a world that looked as tall as them. Our prejudices
only covered what was our immediate surrounding.
The priest was to be feared, he had
demigod status. Wild Christian, Wole’s mother was a force to reckon with. Were
our mothers any different? Did we not always wonder how they almost came up
with anything we wanted unless we looked too spoilt? Or how they always knew we
had erred and were always ready with their knuckles or slaps? Headmaster,
Wole’s father lorded over his school like a kingdom. Our fathers ran our homes
the same way. Our fathers were the best in the entire world. And how we came up
with nicknames for everyone. Now that we are grown, past teenage, we only whisper
nicknames of bosses and people we don’t like in coded hushed tongues.
Wole follows the Police marching
band past his home, experiences stereotypes of the woman who looks like a
witch, wonders how one could finish all the salt that is being sold at the market
place and ends up totally lost. Not only does this bring back nostalgia of when
we experienced new things first and the joy and fears that they aroused in our
hearts but also the reckless abandon we could exercise to enjoy them. It’s
scary because life has curtailed us to the point we can’t really enjoy the
simple pleasures of life without the weight of the world and responsibilities
tying us down.
Who here did not try to run away as
a child or even think that running away could solve everything? And then we’d
have nowhere to run. Wole had his guava tree which was his sanctuary. I used to
hide in the tea plantation behind our home when I knew a thrashing was coming,
but then mum, just like Wild Christian could let it go for a day but raise the
issue on a different occasion and only God knows the amount of times I was on
the wrong.
The lessons Wole learnt in his
childhood are entrenched as he progresses from class to class. For instance
don’t fight your brother, but if we did not engage in petty squabbles with our
own blood while young, then how will we have grown to love them, because
remember we fought over everything. We were jealous of one another over the
haziest reasons. Wole learns not to cry when he gets initiated. We all grew up
in societies that frowned upon men crying as it portrayed weakness. This
nonsense circling about in society lately that men should be emotional is
unAfrican. He learns through his father that you shouldn’t destroy other
people’s property in the part where another teacher cuts his father’s rose and
is forced to cower in fear the whole day, or when Wole himself destroys the
Rose bushes.
To me perhaps the two most important
lessons Wole learnt were reading and when to say “enough is enough”. The first
lesson he picked from his father who loved books and arguments and the second
his Mother when they protested against paying taxes. I thank my mother for
introducing me to books at a tender age. If perhaps more people encouraged
their children to read more, then we could a society that is not full of sheep,
a society that questions why dirty deeds like corruption are happening and why
we tolerate them.
Why then do we forget to be kids? To
laugh freely and play in the sun and live in a world of mirth? Must we break
our backs with the confusion of adulthood and forget to smile. There are too
many depressed and sad people out there who have forgotten to laugh. Too many
people raising children the way they want and not letting children be
themselves for that’s how they discover things albeit with a little guidance.
Just remember to be a child once again, and you never know everything might
turn out alright.
ENDS.
@Mossetti
Photo credit: Photo.net-Anthon Jackson;
Photo credit: Photo.net-Anthon Jackson;
