Maybe boys should also cry

Two days ago, I listened to maNyoni talking to our last born early in the morning preparing him for school. She asked him, “why are you crying, do you want to be a girl?” Our son was not happy that he had to stop watching cartoons and prepare for school that day. Last night I watched on ENCA news the story of the water polo assistant coach at Parktown Boys High School who pleaded guilty to 144 charges of sexual assault acts on young school boys on the school's premises. 144 is a staggering number maybe if boys were allowed to cry, this would not have occurred. I grew up in the 80s in Zimbabwe hearing the same message, boys don’t cry. Maybe boys should also cry.

I still remember the night around 1983 to 1984 at Amaveni Police Camp in Kwekwe when I was abused. That time I was only 7 or 8 years old, the girl was around 13 or 14. My father had been transferred from Belingwe to Kwekwe at the end of 1982. The girl was staying with his uncle after the death of her father. Her uncle also a police officer was also being transferred from Belingwe to Kwekwe and she was starting high school at Amaveni Secondary school and she had to stay with us for a few weeks before her uncle and family also moved to Amaveni. My mother that night innocently suggested that she sleeps  in the same bed with me and not with my two younger sisters as they were still wetting the bed. I woke up that night and she was molesting me. I just pretended to be asleep throughout the whole ordeal. Of course I knew what was happening, I had older cousins and I been taught about sex during the games called mahumbwe that was played during the school holidays back at the village. The next morning, I did not tell my mother about what had happened. Boys don’t cry and boys don’t talk about their feelings.

In 1999 when I was working in Zimbabwe, I visited a client in Harare and I saw the woman and I remembered her even though I had last seen her in 1989. I remembered that she had married towards the end of the 80s and her marriage had failed. I gathered the courage to ask her why she had done that to me and she never answered me by the time the client came back to the office. A few years, I learnt that she had died. The first person I told about that incident was my wife after we got married.

Growing up mainly in the police camps and at the village, I learnt that boys would only solve problems through fighting. I remember one evening I was playing in Amaveni Police Camp with Welly short for Wellington and he called one of the uncles a derogatory name of Nyatera (scandals made from used tyres normally won by poor men) and the uncle’s name was Taylor. We started fighting and Welly won that fight. A few months later we had another argument and we fought again and I won that fight. There was always a hierarchy based on who was the best fighter. At school, we were not allowed to fight but after school kids would solve problems by fighting on the way home. I was lucky that when I went to the village during the school holidays my father and mother came from the same village. I had a cousin on my mothers side who was 4 years older than me and he was feared and he would protect me when we went to herd cattle as that were the time when most of the fighting was done. On my father’s side, his younger cousin brother the late babamudiki Masimba protected me.

One day I was not in the company of my cousin brother and this bully whom we called Tina short for Tinashe and he is now late, I had been playing with him and out of the blue he pinned me down and wanted to spit into my mouth and luckily he missed. I had not provoked him and I would have done that as he was clearly stronger and older than me. The other day I was in the company of my older cousin sisters going to the fields and they initiated a fight between me and this guy of my age his name was Kumu short for Kumutsungirira. We did not finish the fight but he was clearly giving me a hiding. My older cousin sister Hazel would taunt me for years to come about that incident. Back at my mother’s house, you could not come home crying that so and so had beaten me up as the answer would always be the same, “go back and fight”.

 

The other issue that was complicated was on dating. Girls never told you whether they were interested in you, the first dating advice I got from my older cousins was that you had to pursue a girl as much as you can as girls were always shy and no did not exactly mean no. I remember in early 1999, I started staying in Avondale, Harare and most Sunday mornings, I would catch a taxi to Trinity Methodist church behind the High Court and the President’s Munhumutapa offices to attend the early English service. I liked that service a lot because it was very short and after that I would to do window shopping along the iconic 1^st Street of Harare and that before the economic crisis in Zimbabwe. I would then walk home. There was this girl who always sat next to me and would always look at me. I always thought that her glances where a disapproval for my terrible tunes whenever we sang from the hymn books. Growing up, I was told that I could not dance nor sing. It was only later that I realised that maybe she was just interested in me, I did not find her attractive. Around 2000-2001 she got married in the church.

In February 2002 during my mother’s funeral I barely cried. A Shona funeral is always complicated due to the politics involved. My mother did not want to be buried at the village and elders from both side of the family wanted her body to be taken to the village and I had to stand my ground. My father’s only brother had issues with me and I told him that we would address whatever issues he had with me after the funeral. My wife and sisters were being mistreated by relatives and I had to confront those relatives. I only managed to shed tears after the last body viewing at Lendy Park Cemetery after I saw my friend and best man Tonderai Masvosva.

Our three sons are growing up in a different environment than mine. At home they fight but at school fighting is not allowed and pupils can be expelled from school for fighting. Unlike my generation, they spend more time indoors as they have TVs, play stations, internet etc. Their world is changing and we should encourage them to talk about their feelings and not to bottle everything in. Boys must also be protected as well and they must taught properly so that they don’t contribute to the culture of violence and rape towards other boys and girls.