Hillary
Clinton’s 1996, It takes a Village and Other Lessons
Children Teach Us is an obvious intertext of the African proverb.
Reviewers quickly read into it a liberal and socialist mindset. Chris
B, who voiced the remark, noted how the proverb was twisted out of
the context of the extended family system to mean “rather a
large conglomerate of social and governmental entities that step in
to alleviate parents of the responsibility of raising their own
children”.
In
traditional Africa, life revolves around community. I grew up in one
such society. Then my village was so rudimentary that we had no
police, sheriffs, courts and prisons; nobody wore uniforms or wigs
that set them apart as law enforcement agents. Family, village and
clan councils made laws and regulations binding on the groups within
their jurisdiction and served as courts and congresses.
Though
everyone had oversight over every child, parental responsibility was
distinct and related at the same time to the groups. Parents took
primary responsibility for the character or what was locally known as
‘home training’ of their children. Though anyone in the
larger family who had the means could help, yet it was the basic duty
of parents to pay school fees and hospital bills whenever that was
necessary.
There
was a lot of sharing and collective attention to child upbringing. I
recall being dewormed or treated for endemic malaria by relations
without my parents’ consent. Some aunts would grab and give me
a hot herbal bath made from boiled lemons, lemon grass, roots and
tubers, the barks of mango and orange trees mixed with Epsom salt.
Sometimes they would have me gulp some of the bitter concoction in a
bid to keep me from dying like many of my mates, who succumbed in
great numbers to deaths that proper health care and hygiene would
have prevented.
Often
my parents had no idea of this treatment except when I went home
smelling fresh and minty from aromatic herbs folks had used to scrub
me. At other times, they would know because I was too full to eat
after some aunts had made me drink some broth made from herbs,
chicken feet and chitterling to get rid of worms they suspected were
making me bloated. Because every aunt and uncle was addressed as Mama
or Papa, we were so close knit we did not know until much later who
our biological parents were.
Sometimes
we would pass from school straight to the home of an uncle and live
there for days, weeks and even months without the knowledge of our
parents. These relations would, of course, assume responsibility for
discipline when we stepped out of line. In those days spanking or ear
and cheek pinching were common. No one raised a finger if anyone’s
child was spanked by an adult who deemed it necessary to administer
such punishment.
I
recall teaming up with some village urchins to sing bawdy songs
satirizing the anatomy of women. I had no clear idea what the words
of the song meant, but the song was performed with so much gusto by
my newfound friends I could hardly resist the temptation to join in,
even though my parents had warned me against the company of such
boys. The songs had neither rhyme nor reason, but the boys improvised
pleasing alliterative and call and response patterns into their
cheeky songs to mask the sexually explicit references.
Flinging
caution to the wind, I chimed in. Even in those days I had no melody
in my voice, but the boys didn’t mind and so I crooked on like
a bullfrog with a sore throat. Pretty soon the song picked up tempo
and resonated from afar as we hooted, howled and hollered with
reckless abandon like some carefree sailors on a drinking spree.
It was
in the midst of this vigorous ruckus that a neighbor sauntered in
from a garden where she raised vegetables and fruits. Her upper body
was bare and rivulets of sweat crisscrossed it from crown to toe. In
my village men and women work with their upper bodies naked because
the merciless sun makes any piece of clothing cling uncomfortably
when the sweat starts pouring to cool the taxed muscles. Pretending
to like our performance, she approached us swaying with lively and
regaling dance steps.
She
thrust forward a grimy water bottle and asked me to rush home, fill
it up with water and bring it back to her where she was working on
her garden. I was so thrilled with her brisk dance that I failed to
observe that while she held the bottle towards me with one hand, the
other hand was hidden behind her back. As I made to collect the
bottle from her, she grabbed me and I soon found out the other hand
was hiding a switch.
As soon as her motive became clear to my older and wiser
new friends, they vanished. With one hand holding me and the other
the switch, she asked me to show her the parts of womanhood we were
impugning in our rowdy song. When it appeared I had no clue, she
decided to end the drama by laying the switch heavily and angrily on
my tiny, wiggly legs while I jumped and thrashed like an irate gnat
on a hot plate.
Screaming
and threatening to tell my mother only infuriated her more. When she
was spent, she held me by the ears and, pinching hard, swore with
venom she would cut off those ears if she ever saw me with any of
those wretches, as she called the boys who had scampered away. When
she let me go I ran off bawling but soon dried up afraid that
whatever made her give me such a beating would make my no-nonsense
mother flay me if she got wind of the incident. I do not know if the
neighbor ever mentioned it to my parents, but none of them ever asked
me about it, neither did I tell.
We also
learned lessons through play. Since we had no day care services, our
parent left us in the care of relations who were home while they went
to work or farm. At such times we recited native poems, performed
narratives and danced our traditional lore. If a child had an
infection such as measles or chicken pox that was likely to spread in
the community, other children were taken to that family so that they
could catch it and develop immunity to the disease. Group bonding
meant team spirit, collectivity and communality.
Through
it I learned the taboos, folk values, norms, mores and family history
orally handed for generations. I got to know, for instance, how my
grandfather became a diviner. He had had a deadly infection which
demanded he be quarantined. Left to die in a hut, he was one day was
visited by spirits who healed and initiated him into herbal lore as
the sick man later revealed. Folks were shocked when the old man
returned home healthy. His interview with the spirits, like the
sanctity of the group, was sacred and never to be taken lightly. So
was the charge to be our brothers’ keeper.
Imo Ben Eshiet was born in Port Harcourt, Nigeria. Raised in his village, Uruk Enung, and at
several cities in his country including Nsukka, Enugu, Umuahia, Eket and Calabar, Eshiet is a
detribalized Nigerian. Although he was extensively exposed to Western education right from
childhood in his country where he obtained a PhD in English and Literary Studies from the
University of Calabar, he is well nurtured in African history, politics, culture and traditions.
Imo is currently a teacher in the high priests group in the Summit Ward of the Greensboro North
Carolina Stake.