Something about the child usually disquise the fact that it is the most active, the most dynamic capsule of our past – that it is indeed a natural historic
time capsule. What we traditionally
associate with the child invariably does not
particularly equip us with the most
appropriate regimen to adequately prepare
him for life and what he is. The ignorant preoccupation
with nursery the by-word,
innocence the atmosphere and delicate as of
form. Some have called this stage, the most
beautiful of man's natural existence,
perhaps.
Other animals however fare better as of
essence at this stage than man; watch a baby
cat a.k.a. Kitten grow, you would be
knowing about cat but the same thing cannot
be said unqualified about man's child. There
is something inherent about the essential
form of cat that makes the baby-cat cat but
does not make the man-child man; what in
the form of essence am I, is easily answered
by the cat but not man. This basically is true
of all man's offspring irrespective of tribe or
race. However, in addition to this human
inconsistency, an uncharacteristical essence,
the African Child has some rather salient and
acute variation which makes him, in a way
peculiar.
M a n ' s n a t u r a l
disposition towards the
child is of a responsibility,
of indispensability to a
helpless, harmless new
comer into a completely
strange and sometimes
hostile world. This is not
totally true. That the child
needs help is not a point for
discussion but whether the
'help' man gives from his
own experience is the right
kind is; whether his
'experience' is the right one
for the child is indeed
f u n d a m e n t a l l y
contentious. Since what
becomes of a child is
consequential on the
unsifted predisposition of
his birth, his immediate
environment, which determines his habits
hence his manness, we could accurately infer
that the child, the man-child, could still be a
different kind of man. In sterner times, when
racial dichotomy was thorough, when races
were thoroughly pure; when the factors
determining race was not only physical as it
now is, he African child as a segment in a
cherished chain had a genuine fundamental
process of growing up. He would naturally
compliment the innate self by the nurturing
assistance received from older members of
the household with all the essential rites.
That was then, when man was man as in
purity and impurity, when
growing up by the African
child was as essentially
expressive as a cat. If those
times were the pure, the
present is its extreme other
end. The African child
from the moment of birth
has to encounter he
incohesiveness of the
persona of his progenitor.
Whether he ever overcome
this, is open to conjecture,
but we can procrastinate
while we attempt to
discover the enormity of
his maiden war. In the most
latent form are the traits,
the transmitted gene of
pure times made very
volatile by the dynamism
of the child. By nature, the
first of his growing up
stage should be an acknowledgment, an
acceptance of what by its very being is the
foundation of his own persona but, instead
this, for what is unknown is shunned. The
child from that point, helplessly enter into
lifelong struggle of discovering his reference
point, his anchor. Moreover, because of the
extra potency of the child at the stage, the
accumulation of all the materials that hover
around his very active cells does nothing to
help him in discovering or solving his
original all-important puzzle. Hence,
growing up without a root, an impossible
task, which makes the need to survive often a
rather meaningless endeavour.
Knowledge about the self like discipline is
only self effectual but what is left of the
intended self of the African child is a crude
cocktail of variant personal that is no self.
And just as the solar system has the sum as its
centre, the ultimate measure of its place and
state, is every child by the law of nature
supposed to have a centre, a fundamental
standard serving as the pillar and measure of
his existence. In the recent past, a lot was
written and said about the African child –
that he has a comparatively low aptitude,
others think in view of the continuing
inability of the grown up Africans to
demonstrate they can live peacefully and
progressive for a sustained period of time
without everything falling apart like if it is in
the gene, the African child must lack the normal human sense of organisation and
management. A very plausible conclusion
when one considers that at the best of time
and condition, with all other factors as best
as it could, Africans often cannot deliver.
It is inevitable that the natural aptitude of
the African child would be hard to measure
with his totally confused introduction to the
world. To start with, growing up is not what
it should be in Africa. But the child grows.
Yes – the child do grow, the question is what
the child grows to; it is right to say it is not
African since that was not acknowledged at
birth. Which means it must grow to
something else, but since there was no
particular alternative choice made – nothing.
The African child is pitiable – torn between a
natural self and something that cannot be;
suspended between the natural necessity to
grow and the unnatural absence of nothing to
grow to.
There is now a universal appreciation of
the role of education and the importance of
this to the African child in particular.
Unfortunately, for the African child, his
present education is in actual fact a rejection
of his self and an irreconcilable acceptance
of the adapted form of education. Language,
an essential beginning of learning is muddle
up for the child as he often has to learn his
own tongue through an alien language
whose knowledge at best is bare. With this
background, it is an aberration to discover a
natural African potential as it is a further
confusion to talk of how to measure this
(potential) meaningfully. The cry heralding
the arrival of the new child, amounting to his
only weapon and means of communication
with his new surrounding is symbolic. This
skill is natural and comes
with expectation of
availability of innately
recognisable speeches of
older members of his
immediate household.
For the African child, the
acceptance and early
embrace seem natural,
but this is where this
stops and nightmare
succeeds, where any
further advancement
would only be measured
b y n e g a t i o n a n s
subjugation of his self
through assimilation of
an adopted tongue. He is
the only child in the
world whose worth is
measured not by his own
natural endowment but
by the dictate of a
secondary allegiance.
So how does he fare
under the circumstance?
Wi th the mode of
measurement, poorly,
very poorly. He does not
appear to have a choice
since reversion to the
p r e - s e l f a p p e a r s
impossible and the
prospect of ever successfully becoming the
real self is not auspicious hence the
continuing blank and purposeless
existence.
However, there is the other African
child, whose spirit and existence is not
blank, whose self by the force of his nature
and his own unique heritage he has not
allowed to be mirrored by the imported self.
He is the escapee, the anormally, the defiant
who does not owe much admiration as
expected to the generation of his immediate
ancestors, who took all their nursery lessons
without forsaking his original self and has no
living hero. His only solace is in a glorious
past, a past only little is known about, but a
little fair enough to be cherished. It is
his own centre, his only anchor,
his own indispensable
standard of measure.
H e t h e r e f o r e
c o n s t i t u t e a n
island, an island
e n e r g e t i c a l l y
preparing for the
tide. Whether the
tide will come
does not appear
to matter much
to him since
there is no
other choice.
He i s t h e
p o s i t i v e ,
p r o u d
A f r i c a n
child and
the hope.