Not Old Enough

I have just ‘finished’ writing my new book dubbed, Thrills and Chills. And I’m 20. It has been painstaking, tedious and daunting. It has been hard work but now I’m done with it. One of my regrettable failures is that I took so long to reach the back cover. I should have completed penning this lilting muse a year earlier but regardless, it is something I’m infinitely proud of-as a young person. My next move definitely, ultimately would be looking for a publisher.

And this reminds me of Gideon a medical student who doubles up as my friend and a fellow writer. He related to me an odd experience of a very disheartening rejection he once went through after he had prepared his manuscript, just as I have. He was turned down by a number of publishers, not so much because his work had failed- because it hadn’t-but because of his tender age. They told him he was a first-timer and that he was not old enough. They then ‘encouraged’ him to continue writing.

NOT OLD ENOUGH

Of course being turned down is something that’s relatively commonplace particularly when it comes to beginners and it cuts across all the ages. John Creasy, a criminal novelist, for example was rejected 753 times and it had nothing to do with his age. In the context of Gid’s story, however, age was a predominant factor in determining his plight. He was just not old enough.
This story bespeaks in a succinct manner of the horrible sidelining that young people face for being young here in Kenya and Africa as a whole. It is an insidious adultism-repugnant and unprepossessing. 'Adultism is prejudice and accompanying systematic discrimination against young people'-Wikipedia.It goes together with agism and it is almost as deplorable as sexism, tribalism, ostracism and other isms but people don’t talk very much about it.

Young people in this country face adultism and similar challenges in different guises. They are incessantly being told they are not old enough. Here when you are told you are young, ‘Wewe ni kijana tu!’ it is not meant to be a compliment. And even in the way it is said, it is supposed to be condescending. I think this is terrible. There is a certain prejudice, a certain distaste that is unstinted in measure that you are subjected to when you are young.
To many grown-ups the word youth is a euphemism for pretty ugly traits, for vice, for lost direction, for despair. To them we are young and fledgling, young and spoiled, young and good for nothing. I’m willing to contend that we the youth are a hard demographic, that we are vulnerable to a lot of things so I won’t blame them for their disposition very much. We have our own frailties and too often these ugly traits are part of what we are. We do a lot of shady things-generally speaking. We make wrong decisions. We are attracted to false scents and we don’t listen. But we can’t allow ourselves to be defined by this singular descriptor.
I once listed to a ted talk by an acclaimed author and one of the leading voices of Africa, Adichie Ngozi Chimamanda. She spoke about the danger of a single story: how we end up sizing people up from the very few things we know about them. The single story  is damaging not just because it is incomplete but also because it makes one story to become the only story. The single story that is told about young people in many places is that we are fledgling, unfit and not good enough. And it's almost become a stereotype.
But we know of course young people are incredibly smart. They exude stupendous mental and physical strength. Just this week my country,Kenya has launched a large scale offensive to tackle down al-shabaab in Somalia, in something like a revenge mission after its camp got attacked. It is quite fascinating that the troops in the battle field are largely composed of young people, young people who are fighting for sanity and peace. I could wish, also, to talk about Malala Yousafzai, a Nobel Peace prize laureate at only 17. She is an intrepid young woman who is fighting for rights of women and girls. And also of Mark Elliot Zuckerberg who is the CEO of facebook and he is only 30. I think it will be stunning to say that he launched this widely used social site at 20 from the dormitories of Harvard University.
There are countless other exceptional stories of young people who are rooting for change in their communities, youth who have notched uncommon success and older people can not help but drool with envy.
So I think its of great import we listen to these bright narratives as well because they add up to what it means to be young.
Young people grapple with drug and sex addiction, they are slugabeds, they binge-watch but they are also fly, determined and very talented.
We should help them overcome their frailities and leverage their unique skills and talents. We should encourage young ambition not cast it away or mark time expecting it will grow by it self.
I have taken a personal initiative to mentor and goad young efforts. I have a Facebook page known as YOUNGlegacy-Africa mean't for that. Please you can like it.