By: Big Lips
We were a people once. We used to listen when someone was talking. We used to speak when it was necessary to talk. Our neighbours were not just people living next door. They were close friends who would become family members.
There was a time when we looked after each other. There was a time when we served each other’s interests. We had a time when we shared interests—that time when we moved forward together as one. That was when the country mattered most, and one felt unease about doing anything that would work against the nation.
We were once a people when every child belonged to any adult person. That time when children listened to every adult. We had a time when children never talked back to their elders. It is the time when elders felt protected and secure in the neighbourhoods.
That was the time when girls and women lived in fear-free environments. Our girls blossomed and glowed because they lived in communities that nurtured and allowed them to realise their full potential as women.
We were once a people who respected marriages and family ties. It was a time when each of us had the protection and support of our families. We always had a place to go back to when the world rejected us. We had people to go to when we needed a shoulder to cry on. There were always hands ready to dry our tears.
During that time, parents, siblings, neighbours, communities and clans offered their ears and shared advice. The lives we lived then were not individual lives but shared ones. We never cried alone in the dark without someone shining a light on us.
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