A Whiff of Nostalgia

I woke up this morning with a very strong feeling of nostalgia. Yes, sometimes I miss my country dearly and more so I miss my childhood, a time when I was cocooned in an atmosphere of relative protection and peace and oh! Life was sweet. I remember that my two main worries while in primary school were firstly how to ditch my well prepared packaged lunch and flask of milk and secondly how to get through the day without being beaten with koboko (cane) for various types of bad behaviour (as judged by the teacher) or for failing a few mathematics questions. The former was easily solved; the latter however was a major problem and something I spent a lot of time worrying about. It was bad enough that the day’s mathematics quiz result was made public, but even worse still was the humiliation that one had to bear from being publicly flogged - the number of strokes being equal to the number of questions failed. Like any normal person, I detested the public humiliation, so I worked harder at my mathematics and it paid off. The visits to the front of the class quickly reduced and became almost non existent by the end of the school year. Let us just say that at a very young age, I learnt that if one worked hard, school and life in general was a much more pleasurable experience.

Why did I start rambling on about my childhood? I guess it’s because while being nostalgic, I started pondering on what our country Nigeria has to offer the children today. Kids these days are all under intense pressure. Constantly surrounded by political instability, strikes and violence, any vestiges of safety finally went out the window with the rise of ‘Boko Haram’. Children are also constantly being bombarded with the negative press that Nigeria seems to be getting of late and are exposed to the greed and corruption of the general populace, making them feel that ‘keeping up with the Jonses’, and knowing the right people is all that life is about. What happened to the spirit of hard work and competitiveness that was prevalent in my school days, cramming timetables to show off to friends, committing to memory as many words from the dictionary as possible just to claim the titles of whiz kid and Spelling Guru for the week?

Now, no one really cares, all that has been replaced by talk of the newest TV channels, the last vacation abroad if one’s parents are affluent enough, and computer/video games, the likes of Play Station and PSP to name a few. As for spelling, why bother when there are computers and spell checkers to boot, and why work hard at school when one’s parents can sort one out because they know the right people. With so many parents holding down full time jobs while running businesses on the side to afford that latest car, vacation and the big houses, being at home to make sure the kids have a siesta after school and do their homework is ironically a luxury a lot cannot afford. Instead kids are shipped off to private tutors so they become someone else’s responsibility. As for the kids from less affluent homes, they end up on the streets idle, passing away valuable time while being unwittingly exposed to the attention of unscrupulous individuals.

What am I getting at? Children are the Leaders of tomorrow. The environment to which they are currently exposed will mould them into what they will become in the future. The future of the country lies in the hands of these little ones. It is left for us all to provide a safe, loving, challenging environment where they can be exposed to the right stimuli and influences that are required to empower and equip them for the future. I do not have kids, and observations based on general interaction, so any comments to prove me right or wrong and to suggest a way forward will be highly appreciated.

A lot of my peers who were educated in Nigerian institutions but work in the UK are highly regarded for their engineering prowess and quick learning capabilities and I am sure the same goes for my peers in other fields of endeavour.

Food for thought: Will this be the same story in the next 30-40 years?  You tell me.

xxx

Yvonne