Let's Talk About Suicide.
A few days ago, on a bright windy morning, I was interrupted by screams while having my breakfast. So I decided to check what was wrong. We live in a close knit neighborhood where everyone knows everyone and before I put my hand to the gate lock, I heard two kids talking, one telling the other “Ni yule mzee wa pale juu amejinyonga” (Swahili for the man from the lane above us hang himself). This kids couldn’t have been more than 10 years old and they spoke of suicide so calmly. This wasn’t the first case in this area. There have been a handful in the last year both young and old but most of them male.
I was around 12 or 13 years old when I first heard about someone killing themselves. As a kid, these cases were rare and those that were broadcast on the news didn’t really stick to us because at a young age, we didn’t really care about the news. We would see such a story at a passing glance and nobody talked about it. It felt like a taboo to do so. Fast forward 12 years later and the cases of suicide in the country have risen dramatically.
I never understood why someone would “do such a thing”, take their own lives? “It looked painful”. That was always my initial thought. At around 17, I realized that people view it as a way out. A way out of the problems, the suffocation, the struggle that comes with life. For some it would be too hard and tiring a burden to bear. As I grew a bit older, things became clearer. I started to realize about depression. A word I didn’t put much importance to until I lost a few people I know to it.
In my grandmother's’ backyard, more than 300 people have committed suicide in the last 4 years. 300!!! That’s an average of 75 people per year in such a small area. But still people don’t talk about it. There is so much exposure to suicide out here but parents still don’t talk to their children about it. Recently, I’ve seen cases of children who’ve had an argument with their parents and just decided to end it. Leaving their loved ones in pain and torment.
You listen to these parents being interviewed and a common statement you hear is “I don’t even know where he/she got the idea”. Let’s start with the cases happening around them. You will find that kids will commit suicide if they know of someone else who has done the same. This could be a relative, a neighbor or from stories they hear from their friends. This provides them with the idea on a way out of their problems usually in anger and fear. Another is the movies and television series as parents you let them watch. The global film and television industry has done a lot in trying to sensitize the youth, by creating awareness and providing helping tips to overcome these urges and also, as a friend, helping someone with suicidal thoughts. At the end of these shows they will provide a toll free hotline for people with suicidal thoughts to call and get help. But this only helps those in the country which these pictures are made. A kid’s interpretation of what they see on tv is anyone’s guess. As a kid I was a big professional wrestling fan and my friends and I always tried to recreate the stunts we saw on tv despite pleas from its producers not to try it at home. Adults should be able to provide an open channel of communication to talk and enlighten their children on matters suicide, depression and issues these kids feel they need to talk about.
My conclusion, we need to talk about it. This, like the conversations on sex education and orientation, religion, colorism and tribalism are all conversations we as Kenyans and Africans avoid. Times have changed and we can’t always cling to our old ways. We need classes on these, debates, lectures at school parades to educate our young minds and create a better more stable generation equipped at handling these problems.
