Re-examining school leavers’ parties
Good people, form four examinations are over and homecoming parties are an in-thing.
Predictably, ‘welcome to the world!’ was a buzzword at Mzuzu’s Obrigado Leisure Centre last Saturday when those who had just completed Malawi School Certificate of Education (MSCE) met their forerunners for drinks, dance and associated rituals.
But some boozy sights at the annual welcoming party left pensive onlookers with a sour aftertaste: under-18s gulping sachets and jeroboams of gin; girls being incessantly pursued by adults, including the so-called happily married who have embraced the outing as a one-off chance to tango with young girls in a way that often results in early marriage and teen pregnancy; the unsatisfied remnants winding the evening in neighbouring pubs and sex workers dressed to hoodwink perverted men salivating for young girls who were mixing and mingling willy-nilly.
Welcoming is about giving arrivals a feel of what lies ahead and what a world underage school leavers are joining in!
Think about adolescent girls who will live to regret attending the welcoming party because the booze, peer pressure and lack of necessary controls plunged them into incurable dangers.
Despite earlier assurance that organisers will not allow booze near the venue, some teenagers were seen smuggling the bottles and sachets of gin into the venue. As you would have thought, some were so soaked they had to be dragged out. Even girls were too high to exercise self-control or say no to sex—and you can figure out what happened next.
Oh, my Malawi!
What happened to the constitutional obligation to protect children from hazardous settings and activities?
But the distorted excitement at Obrigado could be suggestive of everything wrong with schools treating MSCE candidates to graduation ceremonies as if life and education ends with MSCE exams.
Arise, my beloved country!
Rather than tolerating public events that subject under-18s to self-destruction, parents, there is need for concerted efforts, featuring parents, organisers, government arms and support organisations to end or reform public activities which endanger children’s life needlessly. It begins with state agencies dutifully policing harsh environments and beer place.
