Teach the youth positive social values

A Kenyan girl leaves her village for Nairobi where she changes her name, finds ways of making her backside voluptuous, appears in racy dance videos that leave little to imagination, continuously posts semi-nude photos on social media platforms, lightens her skin and finally acquires mammary implants.

All this is done with the hope of ensnaring some wealthy West Africans.

Welcome to our world today. It is a world in which one must grow rich or die trying even if it means aping women from the West who became famous.

Young men will sell drugs or be toy boys — just do anything as long as they “make it” in life.

The idea of socialites, toy boys and young women who prey on rich men may seem funny or appear as a form of entertainment, but they are symptomatic of decaying social subtext.

More and more Kenyans are fixated with materialism.

This materialism is the main theme in Muthoni wa Gichuru’s Boys and Girls, a story she read at the Goethe Institute during the launch of the anthology, Fresh Paint that comprises short stories and poems.

This anthology was written by Kenyan women authors and was published by AMKA, a local NGO that raises awareness about the exploitation women,  and the Goethe Institute, the German cultural centre.

Aptly during her keynote address, Nyeri Women Representative Priscilla Nyokabi Kanyua recounted similar experiences she was  familiar with.

Gloria Mwaniga recited two beautiful poems, Kosa Langu and Scarlet Road while Tony Mochama ended the presentation with two well-crafted poems.

Boys and Girls, which sounds like a response to the song No Romance without Finance, is a story set in a matatu.

It revolves around a  young man who tries  to convince a young woman to go home with him. She, however, comes up with all manner of excuses why she cannot pay him a visit.

What really becomes clear, as the passengers in the matatu pay rapt attention to their conversation, is that the young woman does not think the young man is worth her time because he is not well off.

She complains that their dates have always been at “cheap” rendezvous.

She recounts how he took her out to a place where there were drunkards, and one of them “pinched my bottom.” She further accuses him of buying her cheap wine. She whines that he took her out to Arboretum on Valentine’s Day and how she has to wait for a whole year before she receives roses from him.

The young man defends himself but on realising that he is not making progress, cunningly asks her where she would like him to take her. “Maybe Galitos for Pizza,” she says.

The young man, worried about a huge bill, tries to deflect her expectations by saying, “Pizza, huh, I have heard it doesn’t taste as good as it sounds!”

The young woman then asks if she can be taken to the Carnivore. The young man says that that it is too far away considering they are near Banana but the young woman quickly suggests, “We can take a taxi.”

She then recounts how her friend was taken to Naivasha for a holiday by the boyfriend. “He wanted to impress the girl...and wow, wasn’t she impressed? That is the only thing she talked about for weeks,” she says.

The young man is unable to keep up with the young woman’s expensive tastes but he uses his charm and wile to get her to agree to go home with him.

She only accepts when he says that he no longer sleeps on the floor and that he has even bought some seats.

The matatu passengers empathise with the young man and everyone seems to sigh as he disembarks “triumphantly” with the girl.

What comes out clearly though is that the young woman agrees to his suggestions because he owns something of material value.

The title, Boys and Girls, is instructive in itself. It points to how the youth value material things.

The author seems to be suggesting that materialism is central to our youths’ perception of relationships.

That to young people, social values are no longer important as long as a potential suitor exhibits  the ability to accumulate wealth. This young woman, like her friend who loved the Naivasha excursion, is more concerned about her expensive tastes than getting pregnant or heartbroken.

This narrative, coming from a female writer, paints a picture of a society that is worried about the future of its youth.

The question is where are the youth learning to be only materialistic and what are the adults doing about it? Without doubt, a concerned society must educate the youth on positive social values.

I would like to submit that our literary enthusiasts and consumers of the written word should seriously consider President Barack Obama’s speech and views on Africa-America/West relations.

Obama opined that he would like to see more trade than aid coming to Africa because trade is more beneficial to us and it has a greater value.

While we are on the topic of value, Africa offers literary awards with handsome payoffs, so we praise and bow before writers who win foreign awards — the Commonwealth Short Story Prize, the Caine Prize for African Writing, Folio Prize, The Man Booker Prize and so forth.

It is about time we also established awards that writers from the West can desire to win.