Generation COVID-19

Hello generation COVID-19?

What will become of you after the pandemic?

It would be a story given bit by bit because it's a long one, touching and a story that inflicts more and more pain when you try telling it to someone.

The plague is in Kenya and a whole reshuffling of things is being done. The economy is closed, churches are closed but what worries me a lot is the closing of the schools. The children are at home, all there because of this troubling pandemic.

Am seated at a junction point close to home all l see is a group of young teenagers probably in their early years of secondary school. They seem to have a lot of influence from their peers. What leaves me dumbfounded while sitting there is the trend that goes on day by day. The first day a group of boys passes from town A to town B then the second day the girls are from B to A and this trend continues. Am not quite sure of what makes them busy especially during late hours but l choose to ignore that, maybe their parent had errands they had to attend to and had forgotten them during the day so they had to send them to attend to them that same evening.

Now the children are tired of being at home tired of the tiresome works but all in all, they have no authority to complain about it. They have to work from morning till evening then rush to the junction to catch up with time which is not on their side to complete their errands. The parents don't seem to have time for their children. So they choose to go to the junction centre and have a small chit chat with their teens who tend to mislead them. Then one day while standing at the junction l see a commotion am tempted to go nearer but l choose not to but the commotion gets into a fight and two men start to hit each other. This makes me curious and I decide to get closer.

I get a small girl close to 7 years crying. She explains the incidence full of tears of what happened to her, she was molested by a man old enough to be her father. Little girls are passing through a lot during this stay at home but they receive no justice. As she weeps I felt the pain the little angel was going through. As innocent as she is how could this man even think of doing this to her, this happened the previous day when she was sent to go and pick something at the shopping centre during the curfew hours but to come to think about this why would a mother expose her daughter to such danger?

Young teenagers who engage in unhealthy relationships meeting up every evening at the village junctions to exchange their feeling for each other is what puzzles me. More and more girls are getting pregnant because of the family and forget the morals they have to teach their children. The number of abortions been reported in the stations is so disturbing, the doctors doing this to them have no thought of humanity but only greedy for money. The curve for rape cases are is increasing as the innocence of young girls is taken away from them.

Then why not keep your child safe at home as the government suggests. Avoid sending them to late evening errands, guide those in their adolescence stage tell them not to be swayed away by peer pressure around them. As they continue to long for knowledge let them learn this from you parents, learning does not really mean education but there is to be learnt socially amongst themselves For if this is done it would prevent the painful story they will not have to tell.

By: Nekesa Sandra.

University of Nairobi

Edited by;

Almasi M. Ndangili