The Changing Face of the Gambian Youth - Le Big Fitna Series Part 2 of 2

Meanwhile, at home, the family as an institution is crumbling down like a house of cards. The father if still alive and at home, not killed by high blood pressure or toiling with some menial job away in Europe, is tired of being quarreled out of the house and marginalized. The whole household depends on the salary of one son or the periodic handouts of the boyfriend or bedmate courting the daughter. Where the family depends on the remittances of an overseas son or daughter, the coming of the monies is often an occasion to big fights within the family. If the mother wins the fight, the family is turned into a sort of a matriarchy in which the reversal of roles turn mother into the head and father into a grudging loser. In the case the father wins, it is likely that a new “mother” will be brought into the household and all hell will eventually break loose. Soon, likelier than not, one of the teenage girls will be impregnated by someone not known for certain by even the girl herself. Panic rocks the family as its honor is tarnished and it searches for a willing father or affordable illegal abortion. Whether the child is aborted or not matters little. Either way, the family’s sense of it honor would have already been tarnished and the girl’s virginity lost. This makes the probability of another teenage and unwanted pregnancy in the family either with the same girl or her sister very high. And it is not this alone that can be sure for disquiet. Official statistics say a little over 3% of the country’s population is going around with HIV or AIDS. Most of the infected do not know and the outdated schooling system provides only little sex education and almost no sex education. The problem is not only that many sexually active young people are so poorly aware of the dangers of the pandemic, but most are indifferent to it. So though the HIV/AIDS percentage is still relatively low, the rate of increase has been said to have accelerated somewhat over the past few years. If this attitude of indifference mixes with the air of emancipation or sexual promiscuity I observed at the beach parties are allowed to blend freely, it is almost certain to lead to a major explosion in the health sector in the course of the life of the teenage generation. So far, the problems outlined in on this piece are yet to appear on the radar of policy makers and there is still to be any comprehensive official youth policy designed to tackle the problems of the youth of the day. And yet the problems of the youth are many, varied and growingly formidable. But before we go any further, let us go back to exploring the landscape on which today’s Gambian youth must traverse.

The schooling system in the country tends to turn the youth into a creature that is neither fish nor foul. Having attained rudimentary elementary education from the schools, she/he thinks she/he is above all available menial jobs. There are certain jobs that even his or her own family would not let him or her try. It would be another family dishonor to be seen laboring with other people’s loads in the market; she would not be allowed to become a domestic maid in someone else’s compound. He may not wield the axe to fell wood and sell it at the local market. She may work in what is commonly call Fast Food joints amidst the sounds of loud reggae or hip hop music even if the viability of such enterprises are questionable, but he may not touch the business of the more lucrative business of selling cheap local food in street corner huts or low-class restaurants known as pascions. She may be allowed to sell imitation gold chains, bracelets and earrings but she must not deal in fish, meat, vegetables, and most reviling nettetu paste. What the unemployed Gambian youth is looking for is not work, but employment. S/he hates work because it is either too physically hard or monotonously boring. Neither school nor family has been able to inculcate in him or her the need for self-discipline and hard work. When cornered into a situation where he or she must work, the idea is to do the minimum possible. Allah’s time is the best, and a decent person should not let the pain of thirst drive him or her into drinking dishwater, is one of the popular wisdom of this country.

Another popular saying is that fortune is a bangle worn around the foot of the owner. The more you move the more chances that fate will shuffle out the chances of fortune in your favor. In fact in the Wollof language, the language most commonly spoken in the Greater Banjul Area, fortune, or “Woarr-Sak”, is not one but a two-word phrase meaning roam-create; roam around and create luck. So our imaginary family, with children chronically unemployed and teenage daughters being serially impregnated, the temptation is to let them go out and create their luck.

Nowadays, it does not matter much that looking for such luck may lead them into hands of some pedophilic European tourist. The family would readily marry out either daughter or son to any European man or woman no matter how old if it promises material and financial reward. The only lame condition may be that the European feigns to convert into Islam and assume a Muslim name, if only temporarily or occasionally. Such marriages of convenience are being met with growing acceptance in Gambian society as our value system changes and the worth of children is increasingly being measured in cash. It is this transformation of our outlook and our idea of children that is making life increasingly difficult for them to live.

Source: The Gambianjournal