I became a counselor not willingly but by serendipity. I just discovered that younger girls seemed to gravitate towards me, I have lots of younger cousins who in turn have lots of friends.... At first I resisted it but then I thought why not? If I could do some good with it, why not?
As a senior friend to my younger friends I get to hear lots of stories and get to offer advices. I found that my younger friends would rather tell me about their escapades than their parents. Most of the stories seemed to rotate around "Uncles". Now, in secondary school we were taught in social studies about family nuclear and extended with the nuclear family consisting of parents and children while the extended has the parents and children with their close relatives sometimes living in close proximity. The operative word here is 'close relative'. However, in recent times the words 'uncles' and 'aunties' have been used loosely to include even none relatives not to talk of close ones. These days, anyone can be an 'uncle'; teacher, neighbour, brother's friend, father's friend,driver, gate-man you name it., the concept of a stranger seems to be lost .Barriers that should somewhat be a protection for a young girl is removed with that single word and with it gone, a lot of harm has been perpetrated by these 'uncles' and 'aunties'
No comments:
Post a Comment