Do the good really die young?

WHEN a wife dies, her husband is a widower. When a husband dies, his wife becomes a widow. When parents die, their children become orphans.

There is no word or name for the parent whose child has died.A parent burying a child is seen as unnatural, as it goes against the seeming order of life. The idea that older people are more likely to die, while the young still have many years of life to look forward to is the norm.Unfortunately, life doesn’t seem to operate according to this order, and we have absolutely no say in when we die, or lose loved ones. For parents, there is no pain quite like the pain of burying your child. It is their worst nightmare, come true.The saying, ‘only the good die young’, has probably been uttered after the unexpected death of many a young person. Think of the devastating loss of talent Namibian fans experienced after the death of music producer Eclipse and singer, Roger Itembu.It certainly seems as if more young people die nowadays, or perhaps their deaths seem more of a tragedy, because they never had the opportunity to live until old age.Take The Forever 27 club, a phenomenon in pop culture that has taken onnear cult status and includes the likes of rock legends Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison and more recently grunge icon Curt Cobain and retro pop jazz singer Amy Winehouse.All these talents died at the young age of 27. Perhaps because of their fame and popularity, dying young seems to have been glamourised somewhat. The reality of losing a child, friend or family member before their time is far from glamorous, it’s a painful and irrevocable loss.In Namibia, not a week seems to pass without a young person dying. Be it from an HIV related illness, in horror crashes on our roads, or at the hands of former loved ones, as seen in the spate of passion killings which seem to occur more often.A report from the MVA Fund indicates that young people between the ages of 16 and 30 make up 33 per cent of the Namibians killed in road accidents over the past two years.Corporate Communications Officer at the MVA fund, Ritha Nghiitwikwa, said road crashes are mainly caused by complacency, human error and limited road safety awareness by both drivers and pedestrians.’Offences such as speeding, dangerous overtaking, driving under the influence of alcohol, coupled with driver distractions such as using cell phones while driving all lead to road crashes,’ she said. These are things that young people seem to be more involved in than their more mature and responsible elders. But besides merely being irresponsible, young Namibians, it seems, still haveto learn to handle their emotions better.Recently, an NDF member killed his fiancé after she allegedly cheated on him. About a month ago, a Polytechnic student, Elizabeth Tuwilika Ekandjo, was strangled to death by her ex-lover who refused to accept that their relationship had ended, while a student was fatally stabbed by another student at the University of Namibia after being accused of witchcraft. These incidents have shocked citizens and have started to get people talking about why this is happening and how to stop it.Erikka Embashu, a final year economics student at the Polytechnic of Namibia (PoW), and friend and roommate of the late Ekandjo, thinks young people’s lives are cut short because of modern changes. In the past, she says people died more often, because of natural causes. Nowadays, she thinks youngsters are more careless than ever, which she attributes to development and the influence of modernity on values and lifestyles.’The way we live today, moving away from our traditional lifestyles contributes to our life spans being cut down. We have too much freedom, being away from home to attend schools. We tend to believe that this is the freedom we have been waiting for. Not realising that this same freedom comes at the expense of our own safety and future plans,’ she said.Ndeshi Namupala, a sociology lecturer at Unam believes challenges in society are what drive young people to take unnecessary risks. ‘Unemployment affects young people who see no future for themselves without a job. Those who either failed or are school drop outs, find other ways to entertain themselves, believing they have nothing better to do. Talk to them about their unruly behaviour and their reason is that they are bored,’ she said.According to Namupala, another contributing factor to the increase in young people dying is HIV- AIDS, often contracted while hustling to survive. ‘In my opinion young people gointo relationships they don’t even want to be in, they end up taking sugar daddies and mommies for survival purposes. They need to be reminded about the effects of sexual promiscuity. There are other ways they can survive,’ she said.Namupala said in order to help young people, Namibia needs more state of the art rehabilitation centres, where young people can deal with their problems with confidentiality.’I encourage young people to rather talk to adults who can help them with whatever problems they feel they have, and not just tell their friends about it, who have very few solutions to their problems.’A Pastor at church in Windhoek, Laban Mwashekele, said young people seem to be dying earlier because they are unprepared for the challenges life sets.’If we don’t prepare, we die early. We as parents are not helping our children to live longer, and the reason we cannot help them is because we do not understand them. Our children are in the world of technology, where they get too much information online. Parents will need to be more informed about what is going on in their kid’s lives in order to help them,’ he said.The Pastor says young people are provoking death by engaging in unhealthy lifestyles where the abuse of alcohol and drugs is rampant, casual sex is the order of the day and fights between youngsters is common. Their actions and lifestyles, he says, breaks their parent’s hearts.Mwashekele advised young people to remember and honour the fourth commandment. ‘Honour thy Father and thy Mother’.’We as human beings have biological needs; we have emotional needs and intellectual needs. But the spiritual need is called the inner need and that is what leads young people to run around not knowing what they need and not realising that they are cutting their lives short. Parents must understand their children and children must understand their parents,’ he said.Our generation certainly faces more challenges than ever before and if we don’t want to become another statistic, buried six feet under, with all our talents and potential, perhaps it’s time to think before we throw caution to the wind.