It is not unpopular for young adults like me to sometimes get buried in the nostalgic memories of childhood. I catch myself wishing I could go back in time to when I was still a child. Times when I could bask in the euphoria of really sunny, happy, moments. Times when I was as bold as a lion and times you could see the watery tales of adventure in my eyes. My face told everyone I was not scared of messing up.  Times when sadness was as fleeting as time and I was as free as a bird.

I would like to think that childhood memories for a lot of us were as exciting as it was touching.  I grew up as an African child in an African background in a middle-class family. Being an African child meant that you were taught the customs and traditions of your people no matter how educated your parents were. It was a subconscious thing.

Some time ago, I sat with my friends and we all were reminiscing about our childhood and how much we missed being just sweet, innocent kids. What struck me in that conversation were the similarities in the way we were raised. We could totally identify with our pattern of training even though we were not related.  It seemed our parents read the same handbook on training the African child. Some of the memories were sunny, happy memories while others were not so happy. I could understand that our lives were a mixture of the good and bad and that is what we called balance. These experiences with our parents shaped us in no small way.

MORNING DEVOTION

I grew up in a Christian background. My dad was (Orthodox) Anglican and my mom was Pentecostal. As different as these two denominations were, there were never disagreements about where to worship or how to worship. That was basically because my dad was not a church person. My mom was the one who took us to church and ensured we were active in the church. My dad was indifferent about the whole church thing but he was particularly serious about our moral upbringing. He never tolerated lying or stealing. 

Morning devotion for us was a must. Every morning before we set out and evening before we slept we would pray. My dad was the leader of the devotion when he was around but when he was not my mom stood in for him. 

While talking with my friends, some of them also shared with me how morning and evening devotion was a must for them while they were growing up. It was a culture for us. I have visited some of my friends and stayed days or weeks with them and I discovered that the devotion thing is an unspoken tradition for us. Religion was a powerful part of my upbringing and it stays with me to date. It is also something that I have identified in my society. Parents have a huge influence on the spiritual experiences and journey of their kids. I am grateful for mine

FEEDING

Food was a very important part of my childhood. My parents were serious about our nutrition. My house was filled with cans of beverages, fruits, and food. We rarely ever ate snacks.  My dad would travel for work and when he came back his boot would be full of big tubers of yam, plantain, and fruits of all kinds. if he was in a good mood cartoons of biscuits would follow but the biscuits were soon stopped because we had become so attached to them and would demand for them incessantly. My dad fought our addiction to junk. To date, he is as serious about health and nutrition as he was in my childhood.

My parents also trained us not to be picky with food. At one point in time in this part of the world, it was strange to hear a child say he or she was allergic to certain food and that was because we were trained to eat whatever was provided especially if the parents were average earners. It has however become unpopular because people are getting educated every day about nutrition and their bodies. Back then, my parents trained me to eat everything except fufu. My dad did not like the smell and he was equally concerned because it was heavy food.  We were not trained to eat fufu because of the smell. No matter how the fufu was prepared and it did not smell my dad still never liked it so it was somewhat a forbidden food in my house. However, some of my siblings left home and started to experiment with fufu. One of my brothers, in particular, came home for the holiday and bought fufu which he hid from my dad. He was lucky enough that he was not caught with it. My dad had perceived it and we had denied it. I tried to be adventurous one time and it could not get past my throat. I tried it another time and I purged. That was the last time I tried it. My parents insisted we ate more proteins because we were growing. My dad made sure we ate a lot of beans while growing up. There were a lot of eggs too and milk. At that time, I had a strong hatred for beans but I am proud to tell you that my favourite food now is beans. Please do not ask if I am a tall person.

My parents taught me to be grateful for what I have. They taught me contentment. This principle has defined a lot of choices in my life today. They were not super wealthy but we were always thankful for the little we had.

This brings to mind a friend of mine whose family was going through financial challenges and could not afford to eat some foods. I saw how even though they lacked, a bowl of cassava flakes (garri) was to them a bowl of fried rice and chicken. I was with them a couple of times and I saw the joy with which they ate the cassava flakes. It taught me gratitude in whatever circumstance. That memory is still vivid after so many years.

EDUCATION

“My dad would always encourage me to read books. There was a time my dad and I read a book and we were discussing what we thought. We had back and forth ideas and discussions. I also had discussions with my mom. My mom was fond of teaching me Chemistry. She taught me badass chemistry methods and she also taught me how to speak well.”
The above statement was made by a friend to me about his parents. What he said brought to mind the countless times my dad bought novels for me to read. He was the first person that made me take an interest in reading.  He believed in education and would often say “Educating your children is the best legacy”. My dad was concerned about the female child taking her rightful place in a male-dominated society. My dad was the first feminist I knew and he propelled me and still propels me to greatness. My mom was also my support system and whenever I came back for the holidays she would be on my neck to read. She believed that reading could take you anywhere and she was right.

I remember when I was in primary school and I had just been given a position as the head girl with an honorable badge to match. I was quite elated because it was something I had anticipated. I had been a class captain for most of my years in Secondary school. After I was declared head girl and given the golden badge I went straight home with so much joy and announced it to my parents; of course, they were happy for me.  By the next week, I had started to flex my muscles for some real head girl duties. I got back home one of the days with my head still drunk with power. My dad asked me to bring my notes and he started to check them one by one. He was practically reading the pages of every note marked. I stood there staring at him. It was not strange to me because it was what he did occasionally. I watched his face change and he drew me close to his side. He had spotted an error in my note that the teacher had marked correctly.

Guess what? That was the end of my head girl duties in that school because I had to be withdrawn from the school. My dad was convinced that my teacher was incompetent and did not want to hear anything. It was quite painful because I had to abandon my head girl status and move to a new school. He said my future was too important to be trifled with. This was just one of many experiences for me. Looking back now, I am grateful for the decisions my parents had to make about our education. It made all the difference.

HOME TRAINING

“One thing that I remember is that my dad treated us equally. He would always say he does not give preferential treatment no matter your position but my mom was the opposite. When it came to house chores, she would share duties according to position, which means I had to do most of the work because I was the first child”.

“Growing up with my parents, it felt like they were raising me for the society. They were so particular about our not messing up because it would reflect poorly on them. It was somehow burdensome because it meant I had to act right all the time. There was pressure on me to be a perfect kid, especially as a girl. My mom would always attack me for not sitting right or behaving as feminine as I ought to because there was this ideology that the female child was being trained for her husband’s house. It was tiring”.

“I had male siblings but it always felt like I was the only child because I did all the work in the house while my brothers played. My mother always said it was not in the place of a man to be domesticated and I always thought there was something wrong with that idea”.

These are some of the comments made by friends in relation to the concept of Home training. It leaves the question: Is training in the home limited to just the female gender?”

It was the same experience I had while growing up. My dad was the ‘impartial, everybody must be domesticated’ kind of man. My dad had really good domestic skills and it was something I was proud to see given the society we lived in. My mom always kicked against the involvement of my brothers in the day-to-day running of the house. She would make statements that indicated that she was preparing the girls for marriage while she left the boys to their devices around the house. As we grew, it got more and more unbearable because my brothers were rough and all they seemed to ever do was scatter. My dad stepped in to create a balance. A roster of duties was created and everybody had an equal share of work to do in the house. Nobody was exempted from kitchen duties and there was no preferential treatment. As I type this, there is a huge smile tugging the sides of my lips when I remember the faces of my brothers. They were so angry that they too had to stand over a boiling pot of stew or soup and stir till it was done.
It gave me a sense of fairness and justice and it also made them more responsible. Today, my youngest brother makes the tastiest of stews coupled with the fact that he is a handsome young man. Yeah! I just had to boast. I am glad he does not need me to babysit him.

I can also relate with my friend that talked about the pressure of expectation from parents to behave a certain way because they did not want to lose face in society. I constantly had to act right or be severely dealt with while growing up. Mistakes were treated with harsh rebuke and sometimes punishment. This is one flaw I noticed in my upbringing while growing up. My dad was a perfectionist and he expected a certain standard of behavior from you but we were kids and we always fell short.

In this regard, I think my parents should have been kinder towards me and my siblings but they were and are still good parents but just not perfect. I am quite optimistic that my generation would do better.

DISCIPLINE

A typical African parent understood what it meant to spare the rod and spoil the child.  You would agree with me that you too have tasted the painfulness of whatever rod they used. This rod varied from canes to belts to slippers, sometimes the palm and others the spatula used for turning garri in the kitchen. The spatula was very popular with my mother. Just one contact with your back would knock sense into your head. It would seem that they all took the command “spare the rod and spoil the child”  seriously. Whipping is not alien to the African child and it puts our heads in check. Once the parents of a child see that the child is going off there is always a whip somewhere to correct the child’s head. There was nothing some whips on the buttocks or palms could not fix. In fact, the one on the bare buttocks traveled faster to the brain and the results were almost instant.

I envied those people who grew up in a free environment. Thinking back now, I shudder at the memories. I practically grew inside my house. I was not allowed to go outside to play with kids in my neighborhood.

“This is your house, play here”, my mom would say using her hands to show that I had enough space to play. In my head, I would be like “play with whom?” My siblings and I were practically bored from playing with each other. We so badly wanted to interact with other kids but my mom would lock us inside the house and leave for work until she would come back late in the evening and by that time we would have slept heavily. I remember one time when we had a house helper who was a little bit nice. She would allow us to go downstairs to play with other kids for some hours before asking us to get back before our mom showed up because if she caught us outside we would be done for.

My mom had different sizes of canes to whip any erring child. My brother was the one who was whipped the most because he had a knack for breaking laws. My mom’s palms were also legendary for giving the hottest slaps in the middle of your back. The kind that traveled directly from your spinal cord to your brain. My dad rarely ever flogged, but when he did it was severe. I remember once when he flogged me so much that I bled. That was the last time he flogged me with a cane. I can remember other times he used his hand to knock sense into my head or to slap foolishness away from my head. We grew thick skin that was resistant to cane so my parents adopted punishments like “pick pin”, and “sit on the air”, which would make your joints so weak minutes into the punishment that you would start to beg for forgiveness. After much research, I found out that it was the same pattern of discipline across families. It was either you were whipped or punished for wrongdoing. Well, adulthood brought with it a lot of freedom and escape from the rod.

BROKEN PROMISES

“They lied to us, especially my dad, he would promise to take us to Mr. Biggs, but something would always come up, no apology. Till we stopped believing him”.

“Well… Now that I think about it my parents really tried. Although my mom promised to keep all my money my uncles and aunties gave me for Christmas but I never got them back”.

“I am still waiting for the bicycle my parents promised me”.

These and many more are the broken promises made to some of my friends by their parents. 

Quick question; Why do parents do this?

I also have records of broken promises made to me by my parents. One of them was that they promised to buy me a bicycle while I was younger if I came first in class. I did but all I got was a baby’s bicycle which was bought not for me but for my baby brother. I had obviously outgrown the bicycle but when I asked again my parent told me to practice with the baby bicycle. Were they being sarcastic? Needless to say, I still haven’t gotten the bicycle.

Many of my friends remember how during the Christmas holiday they would receive cash gifts from uncles and aunties. It was something I was familiar with too but the money was never ours to keep because as soon as our uncles and aunties were out we would be cornered by our mother and the money was seized with the excuse that they were helping us save it. Others would clearly tell you that the money was never to be returned and if you insisted then you will be asked a very important question.

“Have you paid me for the food you have been eating?” That question did not require an answer. We knew what it meant. The money was lost forever. It was painful at that time but when we think about it now, all we do is laugh.

It is important to note that although parents are not perfect they are worth celebrating. The sacrifices my parents made and are still making for me leave me in awe sometimes and I am uncertain when I think about the fact that I would also be a parent in the future. With great tasks comes great responsibility and parenting is one of them.

In conclusion, I would like to quote the words of Ann Brashares “Parents were the only ones obligated to love you; from the rest of the world you had to earn it”. Unconditional love is what my parents gave and what other parents around the world continue to give. Sometimes I feel they are not appreciated enough and we are too quick to judge them. As you read this, I would like you to remember to love your parents and treat them with loving care. For you will only know their value when you see their empty chair. -Anonymous

Reach out to your parents and tell them how much you love them.