TRAVAILS OF A FEMALE CHILD REARER ....

"Jamila delivered a baby girl few days back, have you heard'?

My jaw immediately dropped, a vague feeling flushed my entire system, a mixture of surprise, disbelief, disappointment, and then belief.

Jamila is our former Mai-Guards daughter, they live in the Boys Quarters of one of our flats, she is a girl of about seventeen who is on my sisters payroll for helping around the house with some chores since she is otherwise unemployed. I know Jamila well, though I never had a serious conversation with her because she's seems to be the kind of person that is rather shy but obviously corny.

Some months ago when I was away from home, chatting with my sister, I enquired about her and her siblings, my sister told me that she had eloped with her boyfriend. I was totally shocked, I had never envisaged in my wildest imagination she would do such a thing, she was somewhat timid. Then I learnt she returned some months later. Her dad, who was obviously enraged, grounded her.

Since I came back home I haven't seen her.

What I find most intriguing is that her father (our former mai-guard) apparently did not know that his daughter was pregnant until the day of her delivery. He came home and was bewildered, seeing a lady he knew to be a midwife frantically entering and exiting his daughters room, he peeped into the room and saw his daughter 'pushing' and just then the baby dropped! This came to him as a total shocker. Oh well that was to be expected because he didn't know his daughter was pregnant for nine months; ''this is the girl I grounded, how did the baby enter"? He must have wondered.

The enraged man went and grabbed a knife and swore he'd cut the baby into pieces - He must have meant it because he is known to have problems with anger management. I laughed at the foolishness of the man, why cut a baby to pieces? An innocent child oblivious of the situation in which she was conceived, an innocent child that just arrived this troublesome world. Did he not hear the foolishness in his voice?

This is a man that had been setting up expensive bride prices for his daughters (Jamila Inclusive) when suitors came willing to marry them, he wouldnt give out his daughters except to the rich, the ones that could afford the prices he set, now that one of his daughters set out and got herself pregnant and now he threatens to cut the baby? This is a daughter he had high hopes for, but rather than bringing him wealth, she shattered the dream he had been desperately clinging to. I guess this was the main worry and cause of aggravation.

There are many supposed fathers who only bring children into the world but do not involve themselves in grooming them, though I can't blame it entirely on grooming, because even some well-groomed children bring embarrassment to their families. However, this father showed clear signs of irresponsibility; how is it possible for your daughter to carry a child for nine months without you having the slightest idea?

These are often the kind of parents that see their children as liabilities, as burdens. The children greet them in the morning, they answer with a mumble without even looking at the child, till the following morning, to mumble another reply. They do not talk to them, neither to they care what is going on with them, they do not listen to them and they do not educate them - you advise them about educating their children, and they see you as an agent of Lucifer, the one whom the devil has sent to come and tell them to send their children to his chamber. School to them is where children get corrupted and learn how to get screwed - but this one got screwed anyway. They see schools as the devils workshop; as such their children stay at home, wasting and waiting to be disposed to the right, rich man.

Those supposed fathers also treat their wives no better, like pieces of garbage but at night the wife has to know where his bed is and in the morning she is nothing but a piece of garbage again, like the children she bears for him. They do not really matter until they become of age, and they are ripe for marriage, because they are not educated the only pursuit and career goal is to marry them off to a wealthy man that can foot their bills. The greedy man sets prices and targets for suitors that scare them away, and their over ripe daughters keep going out to be sampled and come back home with presents that only become apparent after nine months.

It very much is a pity that this is almost like a norm in this part of the world. Parents see their children as liabilities and enlightening such parents is harder than going through the proverbial eye of a needle. These are people who mix religion with life and this is where they lose, this attitude has got nothing to do with religion and is completely opposite to what religion preaches, it is a mockery of religion.

What they need is serious enlightenment, and prayers. I doubt anybody has put these as prayer points: "God deliver hostile parents", "God give blockheaded parents the wisdom to educate their children" but unfortunately, prayer won't solve it all, we need action.

This attitude of not educating children is like an infection that spreads like a wildfire. The parents are not educated, the children are not educated, the children of the children will not be and the accidental bastards delivered of those uneducated children will not be and so the chain goes and on. Have you paused to consider what will happen in the next twenty years? A world with plenty illiterates means a world with people that do not know their left talk more of their right and this will leave us with a serious problem, a tragedy, a menace.

To prevent this we need a serious overhaul of the educational system - compulsory education. The girl child MUST be educated; the male child MUST be educated. If it pleases you, marry off your daughter, but she MUST be educated, she must go to school. All states in the north must take up this challenge because this is where the whole thing is endemic. Even if we cannot educate all at least at the end of the day we will have a large number of wise people around and by that even those that didn't get to educate their children can be enlightened by those educated but as it is now, we have a lot of both uneducated and unwise people supporting the cause of each other.