Wily, wild and wayward

| Friday June 25, 2010 00:00

FRANCISTOWN: Since years of yore, children have been known to stun their parents with their novel ideas, despite the harsh punishment this often earned.

Traditionalists are fast in their belief that today's children are spoilt and wayward, rushing to Childline at the slightest 'provocation.'

The deputy president of the Customary Court in Block 5 here, Pogisego Mosarwe, agrees and says today's children are so lawless and spoilt that they do not want to be punished by their parents and guardians.

'The good thing is that unlike us in the olden days, children nowadays are well looked after,' Mosarwe says. 'They go to good schools where they even have exposure to computers and their parents take out insurance policies that cover them. But the fact remains that they are stubborn and uninhibited.'

Born in the 1970s in Serowe, Kehumile Kenalemang, a court clerk at Donga Customary Court, also believes youngsters are not made of the sterner stuff of people of her age.

'When I was young, we could be left alone at the cattle-post, while our parents went to the village,' says Kenalemang. 'They would find us having done nothing amiss. Not these days. If you leave children home by themselves, you have given them a chance to drink, sleep around and generally cause havoc.'

Another elder, Moffat Khumanego, who is a street vendor on Blue Jacket Street, says he is concerned about the children of today because they don't even greet their elders.

Khumanego is particularly piqued by what he says is today's children's tendency of displaying intimacy in public without any regard to the presence of elders.

'When we were their age, it was unthinkable for a boy to kiss a girl in the street,' says Khumanego. 'Not nowadays. When they do greet, they do it casually; as though they were talking to their peers.'

It is a fact that in the olden days, parents ruled the roost by the rod and even boasted about it: 'Ya mosimane ke e e nkgwe (Boys are fit for the speckled one).' Or better still: 'Cha' cha' ga e bolae, e bola'a peba' (Only rodents die from a few strokes).

It was firmly held that lashing boys and girls regularly kept them on the straight and narrow and any elder had the authority to 'administer the medicine' on any errant child.

And such a child would not dare report being 'abused' by a stranger, lest it incur the wrath of the parents or guardians. In those days, children belonged to the community in which they lived, and they knew that. At the cattle-post and masimo, woe unto the boy or girl who let the livestock go astray, especially into ploughed fields! A passer-by would just wade into them with a stick, without preamble.

Boys mainly herded cattle while girls went to masimo with their mothers. But the boys would often get so engrossed in a game of nxai or morabaraba they would have no idea what had happened to the bovine beasts when they 'came around.'

In those days, it was not only the beating that children were subjected to for misdemeanours, perceived or otherwise; they were also denied certain foods. For instance, eggs were taboo to children because they prevented those who ate them from vomiting when they had the flu.

The children were supposed to vomit 'gala' (excess bile), which was believed to cause flu. Also withheld from children were liver and kidneys, these being the special preserve for toothless old geezers.

Some choice parts of chicken were also not to be eaten by children, especially thighs and wings. Generally, children were to be contented with offal.

At the cattle-post, children were often offered only milk, which they would gulp down from a kgamelo (bucket) while standing at the entrance of a kraal after the milking was done.

Thereafter, the adults would indulge their taste buds with a creamy porridge called legala, whose main flavour was boiled milk.

But boys being boys, they often exacted 'revenge' on their elders, which could be pre-meditated or spring from ignorance. There is the legend in one village of an old man who had a penchant for grabbing the boys' kill, especially after the old geezer had imbibed khadi, mochema or mokuru at a nearby shebeen.

One day, the boys devised a plan when they saw the old man enter the shebeen: The plot consisted of killing a lizard and roasting it.

The reptile was still sizzling over the charcoals when the old bloke approached, demanding through his toothless mouth: 'What's that?'

Before the boys could reply, the old geezer had grabbed his prize and scooped it into his mouth in one sweep, instantly setting what was left of his dentures to work.

Whereupon the boys broke into a run, chanting: 'Monnamogolo o jele mantseane!'