Guardian of the West

While we’re on the matter, children are NOT in school to serve housemasters and housemistresses. Stop making children cook for you, clean your homes, wash your clothes, fetch water and perform other personal chores that have absolutely nothing to do with their education. They are students, not your domestic workers! And please, spare me the “we did it in our time” argument. Just because you endured something doesn’t mean another generation should have to. Some traditions deserve to end with us. Children go to school to learn, not to serve the very adults who have been entrusted with their care.

For many, it starts when you are a child. The uncle insisting you sit on his lap, the family “friend” touching you inappropriately in the name of playing with you; and sometimes, before you even have the words to explain what is happening, you learn the hard way that people will protect an adults reputation over your discomfort. You leave home for school, where you are supposed to be safe, and encounter the same danger from someone entrusted with protecting you. Can you speak? No! And even if you do, who protects you? Unless you’re walking around with a camera, it’s your word against theirs. And most are more willing to give the accused a benefit of doubt they’d never give the accuser. And it does not end at school. For too many women, university, work and everyday life bring another round of unwanted advances, harassment and the exhausting calculation of whether speaking up will cost them more than staying silent. Your mothers, sisters,wives, aunties etc all have a story, they’re just silent because they embarrassed to share, and know they don’t have the evidence you require to believe them.