When nature calls...

Tumie Modise | Monday August 25, 2014 17:04

In our traditional setup, particularly in the villages, you consider all elders your elders. Every woman is your mother and all men are your fathers.

But one thing about fathers, or men, in this instance is that they are usually feared and highly respected. Yet on that day, something happened that completely confused me, shocked and possibly scarred me for life.

Now, in order to get home from school, the route that we usually took meant going through a thick bush and down a rocky hill. There was no alternative route, unless you were driving.

As we passed midway through the bush, perhaps realising we were now only a stone’s throw away from home, we decided to stop for a chat. Girls do that all the time; we chat and it doesn’t matter where we are.

 It was at this stop that our lives were to be changed forever, unbeknownst to us at that very moment, our innocence would also be snatched from us forever.

While we sat there, happily chatting away, a man suddenly appeared. There was nothing strange about that since this was a busy road and a shortcut for many people en route to the upper side (Ntsweng) of the village. As he approached, instinctively we stopped talking, perhaps just preparing ourselves for the customary “Dumelang bongwanaka” greeting.

The expected greetings came and almost in a rehearsed chorus, we acknowledged. I knew the man; he didn’t live far from our homestead. However, the greetings did not stop there.

The man suddenly stopped. With one hand he was carrying a bag and with the other, a plastic bag. Then the unthinkable happened.

He proceeded to ‘put his stuff down’, and in our full glare turned to a tree just a meter from where we were sitting. Without even a care in the world, he then pulled down his zipper and proceeded to answer to a call of nature. I was the first to run, soon followed by my dazed cousins.

Some years ago, a law was implemented in a desperate bid to stop citizens from relieving themselves in public.

I believe the law had always been there, only this time around it would be enforced. It is known as public indecency. Unfortunately for some who grew up in the yesteryear’s, this law came a little too late.

To be quite honest, nothing has changed much; our little minds have long been corrupted, even violated! For some of us, we learnt our biology right on the streets, so to speak. I recall the day my JC biology teacher finally summoned the courage to tackle the human reproductive topic in class.

She was a bunch of nerves; she was shaking and even appeared a little embarrassed. After what seemed like eternity, she pinned up the charts on the board. Naturally the class giggled, but I did not. I did not even get the joke. The joke ended long before for me-when I was a child. I did not need to see the pictures, I had already seen the real thing long before I started using pens at school!

I happen to think that this public indecency law is strange.  It would appear that the authorities are only just fed up with the unbearable stench that often accompanies open space urinals, which is such a shame in this day and age, really.

Where is Childline? Where are religious leaders and most importantly, just what will it take to save innocent children from this assault on their small eyes and fragile minds?

I think as a society we have our priorities mixed up where this issue is concerned. Because if we didn’t, then we wouldn’t put a mere stench above the act of adults exposing themselves at every opportunity every time nature calls.  Why so much emphasis on the stench that could just be ignored?

Then there is the issue of commuters with weak bladders who have this habit of just stopping buses on the way to relieve themselves.. 

The less said about them, the better. But back to my childhood experience though, I wish I could say the experience and the early exposure gave me an edge over my peers at school, sadly it didn’t. By all accounts, the images were just totally different. They were not a match at all.