YOUTH WHERE IS YOUR FUTURE
Being a six years old lad growing up starting to get used to life in sub-saharan Africa one cannot help but start noticing life and all what it means to be living.
Eventhough as a baby we get to notice our moms and dads and recognice them as the ever present beings close to us, it is as we get older that we start we start to understand certain things about life and living, for example ; why we have to come back to the same house after each school day,why we have to eat together with our parents and our other siblings, why we have to walk to school while some of our classmates are dropped in school by their parents in a car :), we start to understand the economic situation we are born into, … etc.
It is about this age that one starts to understand life. We start noticing certain differences between male and female, we cannot help but notice women have breast, but men don’t, we are naturally attracted to certain things and persons, we start developing likes and begin dreaming of how we wish our future will be when we grow older. We start getting attracted to girls, dreaming of the day we will get big enough, have a job, buy a car, own a house and get married to our dream girl.
These are all normal childhood dreams, dreams that in our childish minds are easy to attain. We are surprised to see so many seemingly sad adults , what can they be so sad about ?, we ask in our childish minds , when they can have all the sex they want , eat what they want when they want , go when they want without anyone saying NO . Infact, why are so many adults so sad with so much freedom they have to enjoy?, we ask in our childish minds.
Now as a mature young man living in Sub-saharan Africa I can begin to understand the reason why so many young men are so devastated by the economic and social situation they find themselves, how desperate and sad most of them are , from not being able to live the life they dreamt when they were younger. What happened?.
What does it mean to be a contented Man in Africa these day ? . How do so many young men cope with not being able to provide the most basic needs for themselves not to mention when they have families to take care of. What happened to our dreams? .