It is yet another Friday and one on which we will all get to be treated to one of those not-so-regular write-ups on Richie Online. To be honest, this will be my third attempt at writing this article in as many months. I hope that this time I will be able to use the language that will allow me to go past the first three paragraphs without giving up and deleting the whole thing. Here is the idea. I do not want people to come at me for undermining their struggles and mental health issues when I convey my opinion. Here we go, then.
I have been
living overseas for a greater part of the past year and few months. While here,
I take an interest in following what goes on in Malawi contrary to what some
people suggest. You may wonder how I keep up. The first way is following the
news. I follow Malawi’s biggest media outlets on Facebook which means that I
get most news updates before the average Malawian gets them. I also happen to
be a member of two or three of those WhatsApp groups in which people are always
itching to be the first to share breaking news despite the groups being for
something else. Then there are those pages you must follow to know what’s
going on beyond the mainstream news; Mikozi, Umatha Daily, JCK
Cameras and their likes mean that I am always kept in the loop. I follow the
government and the President’s pages too, so I hardly miss anything.
In late
November, the President made a speech that attracted a bit of backlash. If it
were not for the numerous scandals that keep our juices running, people would
have been on their necks for some time. Luckily enough, something else came to his
rescue. In the speech that he made at Katawa Assemblies of God; the President
pointed out how Malawians are giving up easily. Ironically, he was speaking to
address the issue of the rising incidence of suicide in the country. Mental
health and consumer rights advocates were furious. The reasons were as obvious
as you could imagine. The mental health camp appealed to the fact that being
suicidal is often because of an underlying untreated mental illness while
the consumer rights wondered who it was hat had put Malawians in the economic
situation that was pushing them into suicide. I will park this for a minute.
Around the
same time the President made his speech, I found myself contemplating on the
effects of some of the role plays I did in my childhood. There was one game
that we used to play in which the one who came last was called “dzira
lobvunda”, Chichewa for a rotten egg. In another extreme case, we would place a
stick of about 30 cm length in a mound of sand and play a game in which we
would take turns to gradually take off the sand bit by bit while trying to keep
the stick upright. The person who would drop the stick while taking out his
share of the sand would get a beating until they completed a task which would
be something like going around a tree some twenty meters away. I could give many
examples, but my point is that there were consequences for losing the games,
playing badly, or coming last. Even away from school, where I knew I obviously
had to compete to maintain my favorite number one position, I understood that I
needed to be on top of my game.
Lost in
this reflection, I posted a question that divided opinion on my WhatsApp
status. The question? Well. I asked people what they thought about the long-term effects of being called things like “dzira lovunda” on one’s mental
health. On one hand, people said that such things helped us to toughen up and
understand that this world is not fair to losers. The other people shared an
opposing view, citing that the buildup of such things and all sorts of insults
that some of family and friends heaped up on us could have negative impacts on
self-esteem and mental health. Some of you may relate to the fact that there
are parents and teachers who used to call their wards stupid or by the names of
all manner of filthy animals whenever they were in the wrong. It would be fair
to suggest that in some cases a buildup of such insulting words would have
effects later in life.
Some of you
may have gone to secondary schools where the hierarchy of students was more
pronounced and where teasing and bullying was the norm. In such places, new
students would always get all sorts of physical and verbal abuse. Some have
argued that such abuse and trauma could also have negative effects on mental
health eventually, and they make a fair point.
As I
mentioned earlier, I found myself pondering on the reactions of the mental
health advocates to the President’s speech and relating them to my own
childhood experiences. While most of the reporting on cases of suicide is wrongly done (mostly by giving too much information on the identity, reasons
for suicide and mode), one could establish a pattern from the cases. As the
Malawi Police Service and literature had it, the average age at attempted or
successful suicide is getting lower which means younger people are attempting
to take their own lives as compared to the past. On the causes of suicide,
people have cited financial problems, relationship issues and academic failure
as the reasons for suicide among young people. Stay with me.
While I do
not have the statistics on the ages of people who have been attempting or
committing suicide, I would like to believe that some of them come from my
generation while others are from Gen Z. Clearly, there are differences in the
way millennials and Generation Z were raised as parents and peers were tougher
on our kind than they are on the younger ones. Some who think like el presidente
would argue that this may be the reason people in their teens or early twenties are
giving up on life over things that the older generations could manage. While
this reasoning may not go well with some quarters of the populace, others would
find it to be the most plausible explanation for what is going on in this
social media age. One could be forgiven for ignoring the complexities of the
matter and entertaining the simplistic thinking that the younger
generations’ easy early life has detrimental effects in later life.
When you
think of our generation that grew up to the sound of the whip, you would
wonder, then what the results of such may be. As I mentioned, some people
suggest that we take the effects of our childhood physical and verbal trauma
into adulthood. One person called ours “a generation of ticking bombs” with
lots of unresolved mental health issues stemming from our childhood
experiences. There are diverse ways in which people try to escape from such
issues. Some would subconsciously try to seek approval from different networks
and virtual friends on social media while others would resort to
trolling others. A good proportion of our generation has anger management
issues and react disproportionately to negative situations and that may arise
from the trauma of our upbringing. You know those people who comment mean
things on people they don’t know or call them idiots? I am talking about those.
There we
are, then. To be fair, I think both the people who argue that a soft upbringing
has potential negative effects have a point to make. On the other hand, those
that highlight childhood traumas as a cause for long-term mental health issues
are also not too far from the truth. At the end of the day, we should be asking
ourselves about what’s best for the growing mind; whether it is the soft life
that steers you clear of the “ticking bomb” status or the tough life that
brings out the resilient future version of you. I am not sure if my own
upbringing has brought in this bias, but I would like to think that the tough
elements of my life shaped me into the person I am. I could say the same about
my friends who have been withdrawn from college but somehow managed to find
their footing through yet another tertiary institution, service provision or
business. Then there are those who have somehow maintained their cool in the
face of adversity; illness, relationship issues, losing jobs and all. While
upbringing cannot explain it all, it surely does explain most of it.
I am not
just trying to walk the fine line when I say that issues of mental health and
how people respond and react to situations are complex. I will keep repeating
this that no one can claim the monopoly of knowledge on how these things go
because human minds are dynamic and how people respond to good and adverse
situations is a product of many varied factors.
Half of the
people who read these articles are raising children and I am in the other half
that plans to raise some in future. I am always scared about the prospect of
picking a parenting style that helps my child grow into a well-rounded human;
not too soft but also not like the ticking bomb I grew up having been called a
rotten egg or gotten a beating for being the one that dropped a useless stick.
One thing is for sure, though. In this world we need to strive to raise a
generation that understands that in this world we cannot always get what we
want. The children that are coming need to know that this world is very
unforgiving to losers and that in real life the medals are reserved for the
winners, no participation medals.
I could go
on and on, but this is enough to get us thinking about what is going on
with our lives and those of the people around us. Are we carrying some
emotional baggage from our childhood? How could we let that go? Do we have a
utopian view of the world? How do we snap out of that into reality? More
importantly, how will we strike the balance with the children we raise?
Not sure
why I have been thinking about these things, but there goes nothing.
Have a
wonderful weekend.
