By Farayi Mungoshi

IT’s not every day you wake up to find out that you are soon going to be a father, especially when you are only but a teenager.
And so it was with me that a few months after turning 19, I got visitors knocking at our family home in Chitungwiza.
Among them were two ladies, a man and a teenage girl whom I knew intimately.
After introductions and being informed the girl was pregnant and that she had singled me out as the one responsible, I was dumbfounded and confused.
Nothing had prepared me for such an encounter.
I thought I knew much about sex then, but obviously not enough as the results showed.
My father had never sat me down to talk about sex in the manner we see today on television, especially on most of these American programmes like The Wayans Brothers sitcom and My Wife and Kids.
For years I went about thinking had he spoken to me then, maybe things would have turned out different, not that I regret it.
My first born son is now like a brother to me and with each passing day, we are learning to talk about things some would, and still, consider taboo.
It is one thing to make a child and another to father a child.
One can understand then that in my confusion and trying to understand the role of the father towards his son, I had to turn to my peers from high school, those I attended Upper Six with in 1995, just months before I became a father.
Apparently, it seems most of us were not counselled by our fathers about sex.
“Not just sex, but other things such as smoking or drinking alcohol,” said one ex-schoolmate now based in the US
“I intend to talk to my children when the time comes.
“My folks never taught me these things, neither was the biology class at school any helpful.
“It’s been shown that parents who have open discussions with their children minimise pregnancies and criminal records.
“It is a fact children are going to do these things eventually.
“Growing up, we were not exposed to as much television and internet.”
Indeed with the kind of sex, drugs and alcohol praise uploaded on social platforms, internet, movies and music videos nowadays, it is just a matter of time before any child wants to experience these things and prematurely too.
In 2008, I watched a girl-child of not more than eight years gyrate and shake her body in such a sexual manner on stage during praise and worship at church such that the Pastor had to ask a woman counsellor within the church to talk to the mother who also happened to be single.
In her own understanding, I am certain the little girl saw nothing wrong with what she was doing.
She was merely imitating dances she had seen either on television or at home.
Had she known her dancing was suggestive of bedroom antics, I am positive she would never have danced in such a manner in front of the whole church.
But this is the monster we are faced with – the battle against television in raising our own children.
Thus I continued in my quest to find out if parents engage their children in open discussions as far as sex is involved.
Is it taboo for parents to do this?
Memory Chirere, a lecturer at the University of Zimbabwe, said black people have always talked about these things:
“That was sekuru and ambuya’s territory (when it came to real sexual intercourse), but also tete, mukoma and sahwira could inform on these things.
“The only problem is whenever we met, the topic was never discussed.
“However, some communities still go to chinamwari.”
But is this enough, considering most families are now scattered across the globe and no longer living together in the same village or community?
The coming of European settlers and the internet destroyed the family system we once relied on to feed us the kind of information we need to prepare for adulthood.
We are now convinced it is the fathers’ duty to talk about ‘the birds and the bees’ with their sons when in actual fact it is a Western adaptation taught us through television and caused by our new way of living, which in itself is more European than African.
The fact that sekurus and tetes are not talking to their nephews and nieces is evidence of a disintegrating family structure that was once vibrant, but because of changing times and adoption of alien cultures, we find ourselves flying blind.
It is not just about teenage sex like my schoolmate pointed out earlier, but rather a communication network that we once used as a people, that has now become dysfunctional. Unless we recognise the problem, the gap between father and son shall continue to widen.
And judging by the alarming rate and number of young girls in their teens and early 20s frequenting bars to make a dollar, one can only conclude that unless families dig into their children’s affairs, then the future is indeed dim for us as a nation.
And by families I mean the extended family too.
Family is what defines us and the answers we are looking for are embedded in our genes.
Thus it is important to find ways to preserve our identity despite having to adapt to new cultures.