When Your Child Wishes He Were Orphan!
- Category: Education
- Date 26-02-2006
- 426 views
Someone turns up in your neighbourhood, registering orphans for some reason. Your own child knows about it, accosts the sojourner and pleads for inclusion on the list of orphans. Tears rolling down his cheeks, your own child declares that you, his father and mother are dead – he is parentless and so vulnerable that he would go with anyone ready to be his guardian.
“My father died when I was three years and my mother followed when I was eight,” declares your son to the stranger, “I used to stay with my younger sister but one time she left home in the afternoon and has never returned; perhaps she got herself a man, perhaps she died. I do not know any of my relatives because my parents had never taken me to their village in Songea,” narrates your hypocrite son.
Responds the alien, moved with sympathy, “It is sad indeed! But do not worry. You have a father in heaven and he cares. God is with you”.
On Wednesday 18th January 2006 (see: The Citizen, page 4) Rev. Gertrude Rwakatare, the minister of the Assemblies of God church in Mikocheni, Dar es Salaam expressed outrage at the treachery played by some of the children and their carers. She pointed out how these beneficiaries are abusing an orphans’ scholarship scheme at her St. Mary’s International Schools. She said that the school had discovered that ninety-six (96) pupils studying at the school free of charge for being orphans, actually had parents!
This incident raises a number of questions, which the priest did not answer. Did the children initiate the fraud on their own, according to her findings? Did they have the backing of their parents, in this scam? Did it come about because of the laxity in the criteria for selecting orphan beneficiaries of her goodwill? Is it moral ineptitude that compelled these charlatans to fluke the helpless orphans’ scheme or are they as wretched as the orphans they claimed to be?
Perhaps to understand why the students exhibited loutish behaviour, one might consider the aspect of positive discrimination, infused within the help for orphans pattern. There is stampede in the corridors of donors and benefactors, arising from their inflated sympathy for children without parents. This provokes envy from the children who may not necessarily be orphans but genuinely deserve aid to survive or prosper.
In their innocence, children of living parents see orphans as belonging to an advantaged class. The parents may not provide for their kids because of irresponsibility, inadequacy, or ignorance – their children lose confidence in them; they are comparable to the dead. What is obvious however is that some people are too poor to fend for their offspring, and at times, their state might be worse than the orphans’! Since the children cannot eradicate their parents to be eligible for help, they will resort to falsification of family background to benefit.
Then comes to the fore the genesis and practice of corruption. We have been conditioned to believe that corruption is a preserve of politicians and high-ranking public servants. Yet, it begins as a simple forgery in childhood, at home and more so at community level. It is indeed a serious moral anomaly for a school-age boy and girl to claim that their parent is dead whereas they are not. What more outrage will such a person cause when s/he is a grown adult in such of the community’s treasure? Be afraid!
Anyhow, the fraudulent students might not even be originating from poverty-stricken families. Their families could be saving a token, which they would otherwise be spending on paying for children’s fees, exploiting a loophole in Rwakatare’s bursary scheme. You and I would not hate saving some money per term as someone foots the school bill for our children. In the pastor’s case, many would not help feeling that they are sharing what the reverend fraudulently obtains from unsuspecting worshipers every Sunday. Either way, it portends a bleak moral stance.
By Venansio Ahabwe
Source: Peering Eye, Sunday Citizen