On Thursday, I traveled to Mchinji. It's a town about 40 minutes outside of Lilongwe. Myself and one of the hosts for the radio station traveled there because a 12-year-old boy named Sekelani Banda had been accused of stealing maize by his aunt. The woman proceeded to lock him in a room, douse him with paraffin, and light him on fire. However, to make matters worse the boy didn't get to a hospital until about 5 days later. He was first brought to a reverend to be prayed over. The police were notified at that time and the boy was taken to the hospital. Sekelan is currently in Mchinji District Hospital, hoping to recover. However, he now has a fever which the doctor's believe was brought on by infection.
After the host interviewed Sekelani, she started crying. Believe me I wanted to cry too, but I remembered all those things they taught me in J-school. You know to not get emotionally involved in the story...You're suppose to keep your distance from the subject. Be objective. Remain focused on the story and the quotes. So I didn't cry. I kept my cool and focused on the task at hand.
I was very surprised that I was able to hold in my emotions because I am such an emotional person. Any little thing gets to me. I cried during the Notebook, Million Dollar Baby, during Love and Basketball, Love Jones and the list goes on and on. I even cried when I watched The Great Debaters. When I am watching the news or reading a book I sometimes cry over those stories as well.
But finally when I got to experience the story first hand, not through the filter of a CNN correspondent, I held my emotions in. Maybe it was because I couldn't understand what the boy was saying since he was speaking in Chichewa. But I don't think that was the problem. I could understand human emotion. I could feel his pain. Understand his confusion as he tried to understand how a relative who is suppose to be taking care of him, protecting him, loving him could do something so cruel and senseless. I don't know what it was because even when I went home I still didn't shed a tear. The fact that I never cried for this innocent child who experienced such trauma, really made me ashamed and disappointed in myself. Maybe it's because for year's I have been exposed to these kinds of troubling stories. Pictures splashed across the news pages or on the television screens, being looped over and over again on CNN or the CBC. Maybe I am desensitized to these images. I don't know.
But since I didn't cry for Sekelani, I know that telling his story also means a lot as well. I am happy that I convinced the radio station to go and speak to the boy so that his story could be told. Too many children in Malawi are having their childhood taken from them. Too many children in Malawi are being silenced.
Sekelani is just one example of the thousands of Malawian children that are being physically and sexually abused by adults each day. The HIV/AIDS epidemic means that Malawian children are the greatest victims. More than one million Malawian children are homeless, orphaned, many are HIV positive, and many are either being trafficked in Malawi and across the border to work as domestic labourers, or on tobacco estates or being sold into the sex trade. The fact that these children are being abused is leaving many Malawian children with a huge psychological burden to deal with. And if Malawi has all these children that have experienced trauma, what does that mean for the future of the country? It's a very sad existence to be a child in Malawi.
1 comment:
You shouldn't feel ashamed for not showing as much emotion as you maybe expected you would have. The difference may have been that when you experienced the child's difficult situation in "real life" you reacted with more strength than you would need to when you're just watching a movie or reading a book. When you're enjoying a movie, you have no one and no real reason to be strong and keep your composure. I dunno....but i think the way you handled it was very admirable!
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