Parents, be your child’s friend

During School Holidays; Some of the children spend their time watching television while those in villages up country are occupied with domestic chores.
Most parents and guardians leave the housemaids to care for the children. This has exposed some children to continued harassment or mistreatment in many forms but mostly verbal abuse.
Some of the children who are victims choose to hide this truth from the parents or working guardians.
They always fear the consequences in the absence of their parents, who are rare anyway. Some of the children therefore never enjoy their holidays at home. It’s a place of terror.
Some parents in urban areas send children to spend holidays with relatives or friends up country. The reasons for this are numerous, including the promise of food supply in villages. Some of the parents genuinely send the children to their native home so that they can learn about the culture or their mother tongue.
All these are sound reasons but some of the children have fallen prey to abuse because of the absence of attentive guardians.
Instead of ensuring that children sent to them are safe, relatives and distant friends mind their business – some of them do not have children or are elderly grand mothers and fathers with the will to protect the children but physically week to do so.

It is important for parents to be friends with their children. Children have stories and fears to share when befriended. Adults can easily pass advice to children when they are friends and this could easily stop some of the harm that could reach the children

Alcohol consumption increasing poverty among the poor

I read Orumuri every Monday and many stories show there is an increase in domestic violence. Mothers are maiming their husbands because of persistent unresolved conflicts and women have not been spared too.

Fathers have continued to murder their children and even defiling them! Extra-marital affairs are also on the increase. Reports from the Uganda AIDS commission show HIV prevalence is higher in married couples than in other groups.

As a social worker with vulnerable groups of people in rural area, I have found out that too much consumption of alcohol is one of the major causes of those problems.

Redundancy and spending too much time in bars and town centres are also to blame. Whereas the world prices of essential commodities continue to raise, prices for local alcohol remain reasonable. At sh300, one can can get a glass of enguli. With no graduated tax to worry about, and their children in cheap UPE schools, poor people who do casual work can afford this kind of price. When they have spent the little they earn on alcohol, they go home expecting to find food ready even when they have not bought it! The poor women who spend their time and energy digging are put to task to provide food for those who do little. This often results in fighting. Alcoholism has made some men leave their wives to fend for their families single-handed.

These men solely live to work for the bottle, are shabby and malnourished. There is great need to sensitise the rural poor about the effects of excessive drinking. The time bars and other places selling alcohol should be regulated. Alcohol consumption is increasing poverty among the poor.