We all know how African parents can be sometimes, it’s not news to us at the point. But hey, use this example and derive whatever meaning you can from it about some African parents. Growing up, we used to have this night Arabic class sessions in the evenings. So, we would go to the mosque to pray our Margrib prayers which was around 6pm and after, we would sit in the mosque to recite and learn the Quran with our Mallams (teachers). After prayers , we were all required to move to the men’s session where we had our recitations up until after 7pm when we would pray Isha.
For our mosque, our teacher didn’t accept lateness and anyone who came late would get caned or would be made to stand till we are done as their punishment. Due to this, all the kids would come as early as 5:30pm. At that time I was a bit older and so these rules didn’t apply to me and the other older kids around my age.
Now, to the interesting part, we had this one girl who stayed just a minute away from the mosque but she always came extra late and would even fall asleep when she was asked to stand. One day, she came late and was asked to stand and she was sleeping. Then, it was her turn to go for the teacher to teach her. This girl hadn’t revised what she was taught about 3 days ago and that made the teacher furious and so he decided to cane her. After two canes, this girl run out of the mosque and went home because bro, it was painful.
In about 5 minutes time, the girls dad showed up with the girl. You’d think he came to beg for her, no. He brought her to get caned some more because apparently she was lazy. But then, the teacher just decided to leave her and advise everyone else. This is an example of some typical African parents. I always say that the day I decide or even attempt to sue my parents is the day I’d stop having parents. In Africa, most parents are big on discipline and if you were raised in a family house, you’d know what I mean. In these kinds of settings, your child is not yours, the kid is for everyone and so anyone has the right to correct the kid if he was wrong.
In recent years,I have heard of kids in the western world having the right to sue their parents and we have a lot of kids doing that. Even here in Ghana, kids can do that but will you dare? No! One thing I know for sure is that, your parents would discipline you even if it is very extreme but at the end of the day, they still love you. Most of our parents then believed that harsh punishments were the way to go but now, it’s way better. What matters is for them to be open minded and pick up new ways of disciplining their kids.
Personally, if every child could sue their parents for any random thing , I believe the word would have a large population of deviant kids because most of these kids need guidance in one way or the other. Even though it would look like a safe space for kids, these kids would probably lack the required skills and habits to correlate with others. As they say, what an old man can see seated, a young man cannot see standing. Instead of allowing kids sue the same parents who are there to guide them, why don’t we rather find a way to make both parties see things from the same perspective so as to promote understanding and peaceful living.
all images belong to me.