Positively empower the boy child

In our local fishing communities, boys are intentionally held back so they can support in cleaning the boats, organising the fish for the mongers, preparing the fishing bets and learning more because fishing is their ancestral source of income. Without it, families struggle with purchasing basic needs such as clothing, fuel for lighting, foodstuff, contributing to/organising social events and many other activities that require funding.

In cattle keeping communities, boys are held back to look after herds of cattle from an early age. As such, they are trained all about cattle keeping.

In farming communities, from sowing to weeding and harvesting, the manpower of the boy child is essential.

More than that, boys have to do the heavy domestic work such as fetching water, collecting firewood and engaging in other informal community activities such as digging graves, wells, slaughtering animals for meat and milking them, depending on the nature of each community.

At an early age, boys are busy with community responsibilities, such that going to formal school is now looked at as a girl’s thing.

They are disadvantaged at quite an early age yet before we know it, they have become men. These men, like any great men in other parts of the world, desire to settle down with great women.

On the other hand, their peers; girls, who mostly did not engage in time-consuming community work, have already finished school and cannot date these less or even uneducated men.

What next for these well-endowed energetic handsome young men?

Some cultures prepare their boys well enough for manhood through programmes such as cultural circumcision which exposes the boy-child to man up at an early age. Even when it is painful, it points the boys to look out for females so they can ‘test their masculinity’! Many believe that after healing, they are man enough to try out the ‘apple’.  Society, therefore, prepares the boy-child for the man that is zesty to quench his thirst.

Actually, in some communities, a big number of boys grow into men long before they become men because the various activities they engage in expose them to more than the above. They feel that taking drugs such as marijuana, drinking alcohol, stealing for wealth or even showing off, gambling off property, leaving home at a tender age to start his own home, being rude for some or using vulgar language and many others put them in a high place. They feel that through these they are the real men, yet these could lead them to early death or suicide, getting mental breakdowns, and being imprisoned while those that get families cannot adequately take care of themSeveral young men, therefore, target the younger school-going girls aged 13-19 or younger for sex and even marriage. The driving factor is they have accumulated enough for bride price and the one who takes this path is a great one. Many also take shortcuts; they hunt for any young females and will not hesitate to rape or entice them with whatever it takes to win them into courtship. That is very unfortunate for our country because most communities have well-planned formal education programmes with a focus on the girl-child.

Sadly, some of these programmes fail to meet their objectives because the girl-child is exposed to pre-marital sex, teenage pregnancies, peer pressure, school drop-outs, death of young mothers, malnourished children, and early marriages. These fail because the boy child is excluded.

Boys have been left out for a very long time. For more than ten years of my advocacy for boys and men, for the 1000th time, I call upon governments, community leaders, school heads, religious leaders and journalists all over the world to look out for the boy-child before it is too late.

We need the boy-child!

Mirian K Ndyanabo