Dreaming big must begin from infancy and the parents drive this package for their little girls. Now, there is no place too high for a little girl to get to – even the orbit
We’ve never talked about dreams on this column, right? I think one day we should because I have found that our leaders don’t dream. If they did, this country should have been in a better place instead of the baaaaad place we’re in right now. When I mentioned this to someone, she said, ‘how can they dream when they’re busy holding their evil political meetings at night? Jo o, let’s talk about something else jare.’ So today, we shall be talking about little girls’ dreams, which begin with the packages they are handed from their infanthood.
In all the very many decades of my youthful existence, I know very few people who do not like receiving gifts. I think such people have some kind of vitamin deficiency. Please don’t ask me which one, because I don’t know. All I know is that everyone should have a little bit of self-love for self-preservation. I think I have it in a large quantity because me, I just love receiving gifts. I’m still trying to recover from my data gift. So, when you hand me that well-wrapped package, that moment that I take to guess the content is the best moment of all; and the bigger the wrap, the bigger the moment. So, when it comes to receiving gifts, I assure you, every day is my birthday.
I also love giving gifts. Hey, why do you think I write this for you each week, dear reader? If I did not love giving gifts, I tell you, someone else would be poring over this column. It is that love that has compelled me to bring this week’s gift offering to … the girl child, that segment of the society we love to overlook. Don’t go anywhere though, daddy and mummy; since we are all equally guilty of overlooking this topic, we must all look through it together.
The life of the girl child is obviously a mysterious one. For most girls between the ages of three to eighteen, life is a mystery wrapped in an enigma. As one wrap is unfolded to reveal the great secret within, another well wrapped package is handed her. Those years constitute the years of unwrapping of packages that muddle up dreams.
Usually, the first package little girls unwrap may contain the fact that contrary to their specifications upon being born, the heavens forgot to add ‘princess’ to their biostatistics. So, most girls find that they have to learn to earn their keep. Their handlers (that’s usually the mother and father) throw the little tykes at the dirty dishes, sometimes even hissing at them, ‘who do you think you are, a princess’? Nothing hurts like one’s dream being shattered, right? Well, our girls have only one thing to moan about, ‘Why am I not a …?’
The next package our little girls receive gives them a shock that reverberates through their entire little bodies and sometimes even their lives. It is the least palatable of all the packages they will ever receive. Some little girls might recover from it, some never and some work their way through it. This shock, ladies and gentlemen, is the discovery that their father or mother is not made of the same silk as Dangote. Most times, daddy is not even related to Dangote. This realisation comes slowly to most girls as they watch their mothers pinch pennies and salt with the same thumb and forefinger and admonish all in the house to make do with no meat, no sugar, no school fees. All the dreams about living well going up in smoke, no? Again, our little girls have only one retort, ‘Why is daddy not …?’
The time soon comes to unwrap another package. This time, it’s so big that our girl needs to grow up to be handed this one. As she unwraps it, she finds to her consternation that all her fantasies are taking flight. The content of the package simply states that life has to be lived, not dreamed upon. While dreams and dreaming may be allowed, it is work that makes them come true. So, our girl finds she has to work her way through life beginning with dream-shattering school. Now, the retort is ‘Why do I have to go…?’
Talking of dream shatterers. There is one package that life hands to our little girl. When she unwraps it, she finds that it contains all kinds of relatives – father, mother, siblings, uncles, aunts, cousins, etc. She soon learns that these relatives exist mostly for her good and to help her carry the burden of life, if she is lucky. She might be unlucky though to find that these relatives may constitute her burdens. Biological father is not father to her but her rapist who in turn begets children by her. Mother is not mother to her but her social embarrassment and tyrant. Uncle is not uncle but her rapist. Aunt is not aunt but one who takes advantage of her and sells her into prostitution-slavery. The retort now becomes, ‘Why am I so …?’ It’s kind of like that song that goes, ‘… your daddy ain’t your daddy but your daddy don’t know.’
Just one more package reader and we’re done. Our girl gets this package that shows her the way forward in life. When she unwraps it, she finds that it contains all kinds of people who know one way or another and point them all out to her. In that package, she would find many teachers, nurses, doctors, civil servants, mechanics, engineers, businessmen and women, priests, and so on. Each one she meets in the course of life will impact her own life one way or the other. What she makes of the ways they show her will depend on her.
Don’t blame me too much, reader, for going all philosophical on you today. You know what they say about philosophy, don’t you? It raises more questions and never gives you the answers. More importantly, it has you going in all kinds of directions. Likewise, there is no answer that I can give our little girl child today; but I can give many admonitions, considering I was once, err… a little girl child myself.
The theme for this year’s international girl-child day is ‘With her: a skilled girl force’. The emphasis is to train the girl child properly so that she can grow up and into her responsibilities as a well-oriented member of the society. This means that from her youth, a girl child can be encouraged by those around her to lift her head out of the package of dreams and begin to dream. She must go to school.
I seem to contradict myself, right? Listen, there are dreams and there is dreaming. Dreams are the fantasies I weave around life when I wish I would not have to lift my grubby fingers again to fetch a bucket of water but that nature would provide me with a foot shower to wash the grime off my feet at the close of day. Dreaming is when I actually go to my work table and begin to put tools together in order to invent that foot shower that can wash the grime off my feet. When girls are given dreams of a possible future, then dreaming big can begin.
Dreaming big must begin from infancy and the parents drive this package for their little girls by ensuring she begins to be equipped for work in adulthood. Now, there is no place too high for a little girl to get to – even the orbit. Every woman who has got somewhere is an example of this truism. Every little girl in your care therefore is a work force waiting to happen.
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