This is a presentation for a forum on Boys and Suicide in Lagos, Nigeria for the Boys and Men’s Advocacy Network. I outline how we can support boys and the next generation wherever we are.
I don't know anything about African boys, but I do you know a bit about boys having been one. I want to share a story of two boys raised in different circumstances. One is raised on land that belongs to his family and to his ancestors going way back. He lives there still. He lives with his parents. He remembers his grandparents. He knows the stories of the ancestors who live there generations ago. He knows the other people in the neighborhood. He knows the tribe and is proud of it. He looks out on the world and its changes from there.
So that's one boy.
There’s another boy. He moved to the city when he was a baby and lives with his family in very makeshift circumstances in the town. The people around him are continually in flux, coming and going. He knows only his father and his mother and his sisters. They seldom talk about the village and the people and stories that were there. Or if they do it’s only in the most vague terms because they're trying to get ahead in town. They're trying to survive.
Two different boys. Is it many or most boys who are like the second boy whose family moved to the city, who’ve forgotten the past glories and the past stories?
So I want to suggest that one of reason boys are doing so very badly, struggling and unsure of who they are, and have those elevated suicide rates compared to girls is because they've lost the connection to who their people are. They've lost connection to the greatness of men of the past. They've lost connection to the stories of heroism, of service, of being a gift to the community, of being proud and loved by women because of their standing in the world.
And I suggest that nothing wonderful can happen for the young man without making some real connection to the men of his past, the men who came before.
We can't help him with visions of who he can become without connecting him to who he already is.
One way that we adults can help with that is that we ourselves honor the men of the past. We take charge ourselves of how we view men and talk about men and see and celebrate the goodness of men who are one half of the adults in the world. And we tell that to the boys. We tell them who they resemble from the past in their own families and in history. Somewhere down there they’re very interested.
If we can get together with good men of the community who can be with the boys, we tell some of those stories and welcome the boys into that larger community. It's not only that boys and young men need a one on one connection with the mentor. They do but they need connection to the community of men. And we can have boys talk to each other about the men that they admire. We see this of course in boys and their love for sports players, men who demonstrate their physical prowess. I remember myself as a boy in Canada hearing about hockey players who were great. Even their names - Rocket Richard, Boom Boom Jeffreon, Jacques Plant - live on in a special kind of heaven. We want those those stories and those heroes.
It’s important to remember that those men of old are not gone. They are not gone. The men of old have been around for hundreds of thousands of years. The tribe goes back a long way and the lore and the knowing of the tribe is deep and deep in the boys psyches. It’s there even if we can’t see it at first glance and if we’ve forgotten it ourselves. The forgetting that may have come from the move to the city, to get back to my metaphor, is just a thin patina on the top. But because boys are so tuned to the now, they pick up from the media and what they see around them, that there is no larger deeper story. But it's there. It is absolutely there. And the thin coat of conditioning that's over the top is thin indeed. Point out to the boys that they too are like the heroes of old. They have the intelligence and the skill, including the physical skill to find their way. They can be one of those men who give their amazing gift and are celebrated for it.
This covering on the top, this thought of "I can't do it" is so recent. It's so thin. But unless we see through it, the past controls us. All of us, we adults included. So I would remember the good past to young men and to ourselves. That great past may include their tribal or Christian God. It may be the connection to anything greater than us. If we're uncles and aunts or elders in the community, part of our work is to remember the past and the men of the past, to speak well of them and encourage the boys to take their own place.
The break from the past has caused enormous difficulty for boys - not to mention everyone else. It’s the modern story. Finding a way to a story that builds on the past will be the boy’s challenge and we can help.
Andrew
An excellent post Andrew. Let's cancel cancelling, acknowledge heroism, and make our heritage great again.
This seems right on the money to me. Thanks! This is a message we need here, probably more desperately than people in Nigeria do. It's our boys who have been taught to hate their people, to despise their ancestors and condemn their great deeds.