They Took the Old World With Them

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He certainly remembered that his world was much bigger when he was younger. And not only that, in the neighbourhood where he was raised, he had a vivid memory of a semblance of order. The parents were the superstars of the show and the children the ever-willing extras. Their word was law, and regardless of their individual faults, there was always a veneer of respect they commanded. Of course, many adults were flawed. For example, it was near impossible to find a household with a patriarch who did not drink more alcohol than he needed. He remembered one night when he walked down the hill from the market only to identify a man in the darkness he knew as a neighbour, and like any child, prepared to greet him and show his respect. But before he could, he was stunned by the man’s stillness. He seemed dazed, staring straight down at what appeared to be a sewage way maybe not more than a metre in width. He remembered standing back and realising that to the man, it seemed like a gulf many metres wide that could drown him. He remembered the man’s positioning aimed at making a leap big enough to go over the channel but never committing. He had quickly figured that the neighbour was drunk and went his way around him, leaving him contemplating the jump he was frightened to make at a channel a ten-year-old skipped with ease.

Such were the incidences. He could remember them one at a time and not be done for long periods. Then it was funny, but now he looked at it with a sadness because that situation was pitiable even though he did not see it then. But with all those troubles, he remembered the world never fracturing. The fathers still commanded respect regardless of their flaws, the mothers were still dutiful, the children mischievous to a fault. There was a clear hierarchy. It was always this one or that one’s mum and dad. The parents were large enough for them to be referenced upon in matters of life. He remembered that they did not command respect because of what they did but who they were. That whatever challenges or incompetencies they showed, they remained so-and-so’s mother or father, and that was enough to command a level of respect. In the children’s squabbles where the mothers were forced to intervene, it was passionate friction which, when the matters were settled, brought families either closer or to indefinite separation. For the men, never at once were they ever concerned with the children’s troubles, and it was easy to find families where the mothers were foes and fathers drank together with no knowledge of the feud because the women preferred to handle or mishandle these matters among themselves. For children, it was always easy to forget. Friends changed like in the game of musical chairs. Those who were out of favour for a time often returned days later because things were easily forgiven.

But still there was order, there was clarity, and he remembered that as a defining mark of his childhood. When a man went on a far journey and left children, even without asking for help, the women in the neighbourhood would chip in to ensure that the children lacked nothing they could give. One could enter any house and be fed, and when one found trouble at one corner of the neighbourhood, there was always someone who would help them just because they knew their parent.

He does not see that world anymore. Many of the parents of that time are long dead, and he can precisely remember how most died due to their indulgences that were weaknesses of old that crept in later to bring their sunsets sooner. But even as they died and the women moved on to the countryside as the children stayed to forge a life in the city they grew up in, the parents seemed to have taken that old world with them, leaving a colder, less feeling and less orderly one. When he goes back to that place he is stunned by the silence. Maybe the new world found television and children are better suited with eyes glued to the box and not getting injured in the fields. Maybe the current world prefers that. Now he sees neighbourhood children and asks whose child is that, and no one seems to know because they go to boarding school and when they return, they stay indoors, sheltered from an “evil” world. He notices the men still drink, but not as much and their alcohol is better refined, except a few who give him flashes of past-filled binging. But largely, it is hard to find a drunken man staggering on the road when they were a common sight back in the day. One other thing he notices is that children are much more suspicious of adults and they talk back instantly. He sees the good in it but also moans the lack of trust which he believes made his own world more orderly, and they just expected the adults to be kind and good people.

He can never say things were much better then than now because he does not even think they need to be compared. The children became the parents and if they choose an alternative way, then so be it. Maybe the saying is true: to each their own.

Written by

Okurut Wyclef

Okurut Wyclef, the dynamic Ugandan writer born in 1996, crafts captivating stories that blend African heritage with modern dreams.

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