They Should Do Better

_{Photo by Annie Spratt}

African parents always get praised for being tough and sometimes I feel like the whole thing gets to their head and they take it too far. Sometimes, they do need to take the chill pill and stop trying to be tough all the time. As a kid growing into adolescent age, there are a lot of changes that happen in our body, some of this changes can be so confusing that if you're not properly prepared for it, you get scared especially as a female child.

When I say "prepared for it" I mean our parents talking to us about the expected changes and how it should be taken care of when it eventually comes. Unfortunately, for some reasons unknown to me, African parents find it "inappropriate" discussing about things like menstrual circles and pubic hair with their kids.

I remember back when I was in high school, we were all seated in class one day when suddenly the girls noticed that another girl in the classroom had stains on her. I remember the girl being confused as to how her skirt got stained but luckily for her, some of the girls there were educated on what to do and they had quickly taken her to the restroom to go clean her up.

We the guys were the most confused in the room because back then, we knew nothing about what was going on and I remember thinking she had been used for some sort of money ritual and that she probably was dying slowly, hence the bleeding. Thank God it wasn't that.

But it was really sad and embarrassing for her and now that I remember it, all of that would have been easily avoided if she had been told on what to do by her mother. But she and many others weren't, and it wasn't until some external bodies came to our school to teach the ladies about menstruation and sanitary pads that they all fully had an idea about what it was.

Something similar to that happened to a male friend of mine who had told me the funny story of how he had noticed some hair growth in his bottocks and had approached his dad at his mom's shop and asked his dad about it, but instead of his dad to sit him down and try to explain the whole thing to him, he had immediately shun his son (probably because they were in public) and asked him to go play. He said that was the last time he talked to anyone about anything like that because his dad made him feel like that was a bad question and he didn't want to get in trouble for asking a bad question.

It was a funny story and we all laughed about it but that didn't change the fact that he was a young confused kid who needed directions from his old man but was turned away and made to feel like he had done a bad thing for asking that question.

Things like this shouldn't be happening, parents should be able to do better and talk to their kids about all of this things (including sex) when they get to a certain age because you're not saying it to corrupt them, you're saying it to keep them informed and protected.