There is laughter and faux gunshots going in my living room, “Pow! Pow!” I am in the kitchen trying to get a decent meal to the table for my family. A child, a boy of about six years old, is chasing an adult male around my living room with a bright-coloured yellow toy gun. The adult male is guffawing as he dodges the boy and runs under a chair while pretending to be wounded. Other times he lies flat on the ground as the boy, giggling, shoots him some more, pointing the gun at him and flipping a small button on the gun.
After much laughter, the gun is pointed at me as I bring in a tray of steamed rice to the dining area. “Pow! Pow!” the gun goes, a hollow popping sound emanating from the plastic gun. I walk past the pair unamused. I am busy and I really am not the best when it comes to toy gun games.
“Die! Die!” I hear the six-year-old shout. I ignore him and walk into the kitchen, his voice trailing behind me.
“She has refused to die,” he says to the adult male, disappointed and tearful at my refusal to play ball.
The six-year-old is my son who is now an adult; the adult male is my husband. Twenty years ago it might have been okay to play toy gun games and maybe even encourage it. Not so advisable now. Today the real thing is easily available. We have moved from toy guns to the real McCoy and it is so sad.
Guns have always been a thing of interest for boys and men all over the world, thanks to the American western movie culture and what is considered action movies today. All the die-hard series, Sylvester Stallone’s movies and all such tough-men main characters created an appetite for young men to believe in the power of the gun. At some point gunshots became the bedfellows and accepted norm in some parts of the country, including Lagos where armed robbers took over the city Rambo-style. It was drugs, adventure playing at American movies and just sheer brigandage.
Today, what we have is a psychological and physical warfare, a deadly game of bombs and guns. Modernization and social media have heightened access to where to buy guns, how to use bombs, how to commit suicide. It is scary.
Kano has again taken the bullet in a choreographed attempt to drive us all into fear. Such a beautiful nation of such hardworking people deserves better. At what point, I wonder, did we lose our way? Bodies, blood, blasts have come to define parts of our country and it scares me silly to now see women involved. I have recently been reading about how female suicide bombers are made in an incredible book that traces the psychology of female bombers and gives examples. The insurgents have desecrated the land. Women are meant to be home when their husbands are at war tending to the sick and wounded and giving succour. Now they are ready to kill and be killed. Merde! A slow slide of our moral fabric. We need help, we need prayers, we need citizen awareness and personal citizen security.
As a community we need to close ranks to be able to deal with such a serious social malaise, which is threatening our daily existence.
On the international scene, there is Oscar Pistorius back on the front burner. A man whose ego is so fragile, who loves to play with guns now face to face with another murder trial for killing his girlfriend, shooting her several times from behind a toilet door and claiming he thought it was an intruder. I have often wondered her state of mind knowing it’s her boyfriend behind the door; crouching, eyes shut tightly, her entire being a ball of fear.
Then there is the 12-year-old in America who was shot dead by a policeman because he refused to drop a toy gun.
I recall a time many years ago when the Kenyan government banned the importation of toy guns because armed robbers using toy guns was becoming rampant in Nairobi.
The gun culture is all pervading worldwide because it is believed by any young man that anyone with a gun is superior, more powerful, more authoritative. It’s a macho culture that does no one any good.
Wars are fought and won as a result of someone’s gun-toting ideas. People die daily because of some select people’s selfish agenda.
The world can be peaceful again if the gun culture is rejected across board. Toy guns? I don’t think they help perceptions for little boys and girls, especially not in the age of insurgency. “Pow! Pow! Die, mum!” I can still hear my son 20 years ago as he ran round the living room, his father dodging the bullets. No, I have no intentions of dying, not even for a fake bullet!
“Get away,” I used to say to him, “I am cooking.”
Parents, watch out. Even toy guns can become obsessive for a child. Enough said!
Eugenia Abu
