During the #Nyaka15 celebrations,  I met a little  boy, his name, Owen. He wants to be a pilot when he grows up. At 6 years of age, I wondered what dreams I carried in my head. Will there be someone to help Owen realize his? This left me thinking, who advocates for the boy child? When you have traveled far away from the city where things look a little glorious, you will be challenged by the many numbers of young boys on the streets.

Owen on his from fetching water
Recently on a trip, we had a flat tyre and we sought help at the nearest garage. Teenage boys swarmed our car as they chanted out loud celebrating another deal. To them this was business. To me, this was injustice. These boys were supposed to be in school doing things that their age-mates were doing but they weren’t. With the speed with which they changed the tyre, it only showed how experienced at work these boys were.
Society has a way of throwing responsibilities to the boy child promising they will manage forgetting that inside those bodies are little souls that deserve to be loved and cared for.

One of the family challenges today is absentee fatherhood where children in a home grow up without the affection of their father for various reasons. This will not stop until the fathers being raised have a feel of being loved. These little boys will grow to become fathers not as much different from those who raised them after all can you give what you don’t have.
As boys grow into puberty, usually there is a falsehood to believe that power solves everything. With the adolescence energy, it is easy for boys to delve into money hunting activities  as a means of (proving) independence, survival and influence. But we all know, money does not solve all problems.
Go tell that boy to keep in school. Tell him you love him. Encourage him to pursue his dreams. Remind him to be a better man. Teach him how to treat other people. Conversations can change a lot of things in our lives. Talk to a boy today.

 
Photo credit: Nyaka School Album