By KENNEDY BUHERE
It was from two wild animals and two young girls that I first learned about care.
The wild animals and the two young girls taught me that care means looking after and protecting the weak, those in need, those at risk and those in subordinate situations.
The two animals that taught me about care were a wolf and a hyena.
Lukume Public Primary School in Kakamega County had a library from which we borrowed books. It was from this library, supervised by a prefect, that I borrowed a book on Roman mythology.
According to Roman mythology, the city’s twin founders, Romulus and Remus, had been thrown into the Tiber River by their uncle, the king, who saw them as a threat to his throne. Luckily, they were rescued and suckled by, of all animals, a wolf, which nourished and strengthened them.
The book had a picture of the wolf standing over the two small children, who were squatting underneath it and suckling. I had never seen an animal suckling a baby. The animals I had seen in our village were dogs kept by people, some of which bit people.
The idea of a four-legged animal suckling two helpless babies left a permanent impression on my mind.
My other encounter with a compassionate spirit came from a Luhya folk story told by my mother, Grace Shanyisa Buhere, who died recently.
The story was about a woman who abandoned a baby girl in the bush in obedience to her husband’s decree that if any of his wives became pregnant, she should go and give birth in the bush.
The old man had enough girls and did not want any of his wives “to give him a daughter anymore!”
So he ordered them to deliver their babies in the bush.
“If the child any of you delivers happens to be a boy,” he said, “come back with it and I shall put up a big feast to celebrate.
“But if the child happens to be a girl, leave it there to die. I don’t care,” he said.
It happened that one of the wives became pregnant. She accordingly went to the bush, as instructed. She gave birth to twins—a boy and a girl.
In obedience to her husband’s proclamation, she abandoned the baby girl in the bush and returned home with the boy. She did not tell anyone about it.
A hyena returning home after an unsuccessful hunting mission heard the shrill cries of a baby. It walked towards the source of the cries and found a bubbly infant lying on the bare ground.
Although it was tired and hungry, the hyena took pity on the helpless infant, lovingly carried her home and, instead of eating her, took the utmost care of her—doing for the child what I had seen mothers do for their children.
It even gave her a name: Wayela.
What ultimately happened to the child when she grew up is irrelevant to the argument of this article.
Suffice it to say that the idea of a hyena taking care of an infant instead of eating her touched my heart.
At the end of the story, Wayela’s twin brother and his peers kidnapped her, making her rejoin her human family.
When the hyena returned and found an empty den without Wayela, it broke down, wailing. For some unknown reason, I burst into tears, sympathising with the hyena. I felt the human beings had not been fair to it.
Our grandmother was a very good storyteller. I felt the agony the hyena experienced when she mimicked the heartrending song it sang, pining for its daughter.
It was around the same period that I read an edition of Bible Stories for Children, again from our school library.
I read about a young girl called Miriam, standing not far from the reeds on the banks of the River Nile, where their mother had placed little Moses in “a papyrus basket for him, and coated it with tar and with pitch.”
The Bible continues with the story of Pharaoh’s daughter coming down to bathe in the river and discovering the basket among the reeds. When she opened it, she saw the crying baby and “had compassion on him”.
Then Miriam approached Pharaoh’s daughter and offered to find a Hebrew woman to nurse the child. Pharaoh’s daughter agreed, and Miriam brought back the child’s mother.
The story of an anxious but watchful sister, concerned about the safety of her little brother, greatly moved me.
I learned indelible lessons about care, compassion, protection and trust—not from benign adults, but from wild animals and children: a wolf, a hyena and two girls.
These are not the only incidents in mythology, folklore or the Bible that demonstrate care and compassion, or situations that evoke them.
Fiction and nonfiction works, sacred and secular, abound with stories in which care and compassion are either present or absent.
I have in mind Elijah and the widow who gave the man of God the last morsel of bread that had remained for her and her son. I have in mind the story of the Good Samaritan, to name but a few.
The thesis of this article is that our folklore, sacred books and great fictional and nonfictional works contain models of nearly all the virtues and values that society wants the young generation to learn and practise.
In great sacred and secular books are incidents and illustrations of values such as honesty, loyalty, courage, responsibility, patriotism, respect for authority and age, self-discipline, friendship, hard work, perseverance and fair play.
Indeed, in the 19th century, literature, biography and history were taught with the explicit intention of instilling high moral standards in children and providing good examples to guide their lives.
The founders of the United States, particularly Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, were convinced that the form of government they were adopting was, at heart, a moral compact among people. Hence the emphasis on moral education in the educational ideas they helped imprint on institutions of the time.
I do not know of any other effective way of nurturing values and morals in children than through the study of religious education, history and literature—in a word, the humanities and social sciences.
With appropriate rigour in the curricula of these disciplines, society has a sure foundation for moulding the values and morals of children, perhaps more effectively than any approach that the ingenuity of current education thinkers can devise.
In the best that has been thought, said and done lie stories demonstrating evil and good, right and wrong. If well structured, sequenced and taught, these stories can teach children how to distinguish right from wrong—and the stoicism required to choose what is right over what is wrong.
Kennedy Buhere
Communication Specialist
