Elders launch forums with youth to address social vices

By WAINAINA NDUNG’U

Nyeri County: A group of Nyeri elders have revived a council of elders with the intention of holding the traditional roundtable advisory sessions with the youth.

The 20 elders from three locations in Dedan Kimathi ward in Tetu district said the Mukima Men Council of Elders wanted to address the disconnect between parents and youth, which they blamed for spiralling social vices and decline in morals in the area.

Group chairman Jessie Gichuki Nderitu cited spiralling social problems including murders, rapes, defilements as well as divorces, separations and spousal abuse.

“The main cause of all these vices is the failure by the community to keep elaborate elder-youth engagement (called booi in Kikuyu) that was carefully cultivated in the community,” said Nderitu.

The elders from Ihwa, Kimathi and Muhoya locations have been trying to revive the interaction in collaboration with the Kimathi and Muhoya Youth in the last three years but the initial interaction has been mainly between the officials of the two groups.

“We offer spot advisory to the youth but we have had to first convince their leaders to accept us because most youth are very distant from their elders,” Nderitu said in Nyeri.

Next week, the groups will be expanding their interaction through the holding of the first public meeting at the Ihururu Stadium.

The agenda

A notice of the meeting shows the discussions will include problems for boda boda motorcyclists, plans to revive local sporting activities including football, volleyball and tug of war as well as local health problems such as HIV/Aids and tuberculosis.

Those invited to the meeting include chiefs of Muhoya and Kimathi locations, the Dedan Kimathi’s ward MCA and the Divisional Social Services officer. Others are the local parish priests of Catholic and Presbyterian churches, the divisional traffic officer, Tetu Constituency Aids Coordinator and a representative of the National Campaign on Alcohol and Drug Abuse.

The elders blamed parenting for rising challenges to the role of men in the family, saying this could be traced to the neglect of the boychild and over indulgence for the girlchild.