In traditional Africa we are raised by our grandmothers. It is the grandmothers that get that role.
How wise that is. It is the grandmother who has the experience of life and will be the most beneficial to the spiritual, and emotional growth of the child.
As women, our bodies are at the peak time to give birth when we are young – in our twenties. But for most of us born and brought up under the Western model, our mental development, our level of understanding how to nurture a human being is lacking.
In Meritah, from 7 years old, children start to take responsibility. Initiation takes place around this age, and they start to become more certain of themselves and their place in community, society, nature. They are decidedly more mature than a Western child of the same age.
But we are at another disadvantage in the West; where we in the African Diaspora have adopted the cultural model of our oppressors – the nuclear family model – where at best, the grandparents are an occasional visitor to our lives.
Many of us live so far from our parents and because we may not have had a great relationship with them, we decide we don’t want their input in the lives of our children.
Mistake.
We debilitate family life by thinking a neat two adults and two children is all we need. This western model promotes this and then makes it difficult to survive as such a small unit – both parents having to work, sometimes more than one job, and then being absent from their child’s life.
It takes a village doesn’t it?
Leaving the children in the capable hands of Granny makes perfect sense. The African Diaspora used to send their children back home to be with the grandmother and were later returned to the parents only to find there were detachment issues.
In traditional Africa, this problem is rare. Families often live in the same compound or certainly in close proximity of each other. The mother, though not the primary caregiver, is certainly present.
Grandmothers are also closer to the spirit world, as the child is too. The child has recently arrived from that world, is considered purer than their parents, and closer to understanding nature. Grandparents are preparing to go to that world and there is an unspoken recognition of that between generations. Have you ever wondered how there is such a knowing between grandparents and their grandchildren, that somehow you seemed to miss out on with your own parents?
It is the grandmothers in the community that Zimbabweans, suffering mental health issues, are turning to. Community benches are being installed across the country as listening stations where grandmothers volunteer to meet their clients to hear about their lives. The benefits of this programme have been studied by a western university and its favourable findings are resulting in other countries, including England, adopting the initiative.
Let’s give an ovation to the Grandmothers.
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