Murdering a Hated Child
- Category: Children
- Date 06-03-2005
- 324 views
“I would kill such a useless child!” shouted a man, evidently disturbed that a child was crying bitterly, as we travelled from Morogoro aboard Abood Bus. “Why on earth should a child wail so bitterly as if he has been terribly hurt or beaten?” he mourned, shifting restlessly on the seat neighbourly to that of the crying mother’s on the bus.
I wish such a nasty child was mine,” interjected another passenger, apparently a mother herself, “I would beat him until he became sensible and stopped crying.” She added, “Beat him so that he cries for the right reason.”
The rest of the passengers listened at once with disgust and interest. One could however notice that the majority were in favour of having the child molested. Clearly, if the matter had been subjected to a vote, almost everyone would have agreed with the lady and gentleman mentioned above.
It should be known that the seemingly two-and-a-half-year-old child had opened a can of worms when he cried out loudly and endlessly during the journey. We were travelling on a Dar es Salaam bound bus, and the young soul managed to state to all and sundry why he was crying. He did not want to travel by bus – simple and clear.
“Let’s get out of the bus!” the boy kept telling his mother, in-between the bouts of crying. By the time he and his mother left the bus at Kibaha, the boy’s voice had turned hoarse, but perhaps to prove that he meant what he said, the crying stopped as soon as he was taken out of the bus.
Many a passenger were infuriated, insisting that the crying child was outrageous. During and after his stay on the bus, the rest of the passengers attempted to gag and strangle him by subjecting him to all manner of insults – they referred to him as “dull”, “silly”, “narrow-minded”, and “stupid”. To them, the crying was a sign that the boy was a spoilt brat and will grow into a worthless person since he is already showing symptoms of a ne’er-do-well, because a chick that will grow into a cock is seen soon after hatching.
Therefore, it was somewhat unanimous that the child should beaten, possibly to death, because a normal, serious parent would not accept to be associated with such an embarrassing child. One man proclaimed himself as a celebrated disciplinarian in his home, Moshi, saying that he could not tolerate “hopeless and nauseating” behaviour of such a child. “I would beat him to death; anyway, what’s the use of having a child like this one?” he queried.
There will always be a voice of reason though, and this was evidently entrenched in the boy’s mother. She was encouraged strongly to slap her son so he could stop disturbing other passengers, but she remained reluctant, if not utterly opposed, to keep law and order on the bus. Seen as the only person with legal and legitimate authority to enforce what others regarded as justice, she merely looked on impotently as her child continued to violate “others’ rights”.
The only thing she did, she kept beseeching him to stop crying, telling him that there was no danger in travelling by bus, but since the boy could not listen, many passengers became increasingly bitter, and accused the woman of spoiling the child. They wondered if the boy would ever go to school and study and withstand the viboko, since he was not being familiarised in time, at home.
There was one truth, oblivious to all of us on that bus. We forgot that there was purely no moral justification in anyone’s hands to subject the crying child to any form of harassment or torture. Crying is not only a right of a child; it is also a normal trait and a medium of communication. If a child were born and failed to utter a cry at birth, it would be suspicious and considered ominous, arousing concern and uneasiness in the parents. Everybody on the bus who had shouted at the boy with disgust had themselves cried as children, and perhaps cried more than this. They committed a crime to hate the crying child and violated his rights with impunity.
By Venansio Ahabwe
Source: Peering Eye, Sunday Citizen