This year I was compelled by my mind to think about Valentines in a way I have not thought before. Yeah, I have never thought of how Valentines was when I was ten or eleven years old. You might be wondering where this is coming from. I will tell you.
This year I was compelled by my mind to think about Valentines in a way I have
not thought before. Yeah, I have never thought of how Valentines was when I
was ten or eleven years old. You might be wondering where this is coming
from. I will tell you. At the age of 9-11, I never left home except in the company
of my mother, my father of my brothers as chaperones (not that I left when I
grew older- when I left as a young adult, it was one way, never to return).
My mother had this idea that I will rush off with the village boys and minute.
Her imaginations were so vivid that if she saw me near a boy or greeting one at
the church, she would shout something like; “Now you want to get
pregnant!?”. I am not sure if it was a statement or a question. And for the
longest time I didn’t know how boys made girls pregnant. So, I would go home
and really scrub my hands just in case I had carried some pregnancy after
greeting some boy at the church. Sure, maybe she had reason to worry. I was
always with the boys. What would you have done if you were brought up with
four brothers and never let out of the compound and your school girlfriends
were not allowed to visit you? And if they visited you got the beating (kichapo
cha mbwa)? Tell me, what would you do? Spend time with the boys, your
brothers of course! Yeah, and that is what I did! My brothers were always
there. I grew to know their games, to love their games. And to hate my
brothers because they were rough, they beat me up, especially my immediate
follower. Boy was he rough! And yet, he was my best friend though. Any evil
thing I did, he was party to it. He taught me the evil things, children evil not
adult evil like snapping the head off a grasshopper and roasting it. So, boys
were my company. I identified with them. I was one of them. Unknown to my
mother, I never saw them as anything special. They stunk! And I think they still
do! Did I write that? They were just company and good company at that. They
were just like me. On the other hand, my mother saw them as harmful and
dangerous to my entire life. She reminded me of how they would ruin my life.
At the age of ten, I really wondered how they would do that. I spent 365days a
year every year with these boys. So, what was so wrong with them? At least
they hadn’t ruined my life yet. Okay, maybe they were doing so in small ways. I
cannot remember how old I was, but we smoked maize pollen! And made can
bombs! And it was fun, fun, fun.
I am sure you are wondering what all these has got to do with Valentine’s. this
is what is happening nowadays. On the twelfth of this month, February 2021, I
was called on an emotional emergency rescue of these bunch of almost thirty
10/11-year-old girls who were very heart broken three days before Valentines
because each of them had asked a boy to be their date on Valentines and all
the boys except one who is said to like girls had said no. So, the girls had no
dates for Valentine’s. And the boys did not say no in the kindest way. They said
no by saying yak! And made faces that made them look like they were going to
throw up. The ones who were polite said they wanted to play football on
Valentines day. These girls could not understand how boys they had crushes on
could choose football over them. They were hurting. They were experiencing
rejection. They couldn’t concentrate in school. It was bad!
I am with the boys though. I stand with the boys. Football is more interesting.
Far more interesting! And as the boys ask, what can a 10/11 year old boy tell a
girl? He doesn’t even know how to love. For him love is more like football.
Basically, doing what they like, what they want, when they want it. Being with a
girl can’t allow for that. “All she wants is sit around and ask you a million times
if you love her. I don’t love her. I love football man!”
I had to be the deliverer of the truth. Truth is never pleasant. Many times, it is
not pleasant. I had to tell the truth about boys at the age of 10-11.
Developmentally, a 9–10-year-old boy identifies with his gang. He wants to be
the best in everything they do; football, computer games, dancing, jokes and
disses, even shooting pee furthest. They are self-centred. It all about them as
boys. A boy doesn’t want to hang around a girl. As I write this, I start to wonder
whether I was abnormal or if these girls are normal. Is this how much we
human beings have changed in a couple of decades?
But I discovered the answer to some of my questions many years ago but there
is one question whose answer I only discovered a few months ago. I will start
with the answer discovered many years ago. Yes, I am normal, these girls are
normal, and yes! The boys too are normal. The environment we grow in