#BringBackOurBrains

Daniel Thwaites, Columnist

Whatever happened to the Internet eruption after Boko Haram kidnapped those schoolgirls and carried them off for sale? Was it for marriage, or slavery, and is there much difference between those in that corner of Nigeria?

You may recall the Twitter and Facebook campaign: People whipped out a piece of cardboard and took a selfie with the hashtag '#BringBackOurGirls'. Hashtags are way of labelling and collecting posts on the Internet social networks. #BringBackOurGirls galloped away. Michelle Obama did one. Malala did one. Holness did one. It was all the rage.

Now I wouldn't want to downplay the genuineness of the outrage that the posers and posters had for these girls. I'm enough of a believer to think that the avalanche of attention helped embarrass the Nigerian government enough to try to recover the children.

But I also don't want to entirely overlook the absurd aspect of the enterprise. If hashtags on Twitter recovered kidnapped children, they would be back at their homes, but they're unrecovered to date. Former Nigerian PM Olusegun Obasanjo is now saying "that some of them will never return".

Plus, I find something in the 'our' of the #BringBackOurGirls syrupy and disingenuous. I don't know if #BringBackTHEgirls lacks the appropriate sentiment, but it would have been more truthful. Sympathy for a suffering stranger is mostly a worthy sentiment, but that's all it is. On the other hand, if I really had a girl child for whom I had responsibility there, I would be frantically hunting a visa for her.

For someone or something to be 'ours', we must have invested time, energy, or resources in them. Elementarily, where your treasure is, there your heart will be also, and this was well known before the vogue of moralism by empty gestures and fake sentimentality: #BringBackOurBrains.

I'm not saying that holding up a sign is absolutely nothing. But it isn't exactly the freedom riders or Che Guevara. The investment is vanishingly small, and it's more about having the right thought and emotion than actually taking some concrete action towards achieving what one says one believes. It asked so very little of the Net 'activists' that they've mostly, of course, done a MoveOn.org.

If only that was how it works. Well, just in case: #StopWorldHunger, #SolveTheEnergyCrisis, #RevalueTheDollar. For Suarez: #EatASnickers. For Italy: #UruguayWasHungrier.

IMPRESSIVE RESPONSE

I don't want to be too harsh here, so let me hasten to testify how a little activism has helped my life. You know how they say, "Get involved!" because it's good for you? Hallelujah! At the height of the Boko Haram publicity, I fired off an incensed email message to a Nigerian web page where it was being talked about. I let those African embarrassments have a royal piece of my mind. Then came the surprise! I was impressed by the kind responses.

In the following days, I was contacted by a number of generous Nigerians, some living in London, who kindly let me know that a long lost relative has left me a massive inheritance, and I only need to transfer a few thousand dollars to them as an advance fee to get access to it. Coincidentally, I've also won the lottery in Spain, so once I get all my personal information over to this guy Muhammed in Lagos, I should be all set.

But my fantastic winnings aside, the Boko Haram story has lost its sexy, and hey, now it's time for something else.

So those kidnapped girls and their families were subjected to a moral tourism where everyone could pop in, feed off their grief, hold up a sign for a few seconds, maybe stick around to readjust for a better camera angle, then exit stage left. Didn't you notice #WorldCupFootball is on?

MORAL SIGHTSEEING

Now we have our own child saga going on, and I feel like there's a fair deal of moral sightseeing in it as well, with the children playing the role of hapless natives watching the tourists fly by in air-conditioned buses.

Regarding the sex-ed manual, I agree there's cause to be concerned about some of the content, and about the breach of procedure in how it was introduced. Plus, I'm generally disturbed by the growing realisation that some international donors have an unusual interest in Jamaican genitals but none in Jamaican bellies, inviting the question of weh dem really fah?

But I've heard and seen some wacky views expressed on the other side, including that the young teenagers should be only told about abstinence, and nothing else. That's just another form of dangerous lunacy.

Let's not kid ourselves - Jamaican children are exposed to far more graphic content than what's in the JFJ manual if they just step out on to the street and hear a sound system playing. They're not idiots. When they hear "bybwoy fi dead", any child not suffering mental retardation will no doubt ask the two or three follow-up questions and discover who it is dat fi dead, and why. They will be told "God nevah create Adam and Steve", after which they will be given an explicit introduction to the mechanics of it all.

The alternative isn't to abandon the education of the children or to pretend that they don't need information to care for and defend themselves. Ignorance isn't an option, as it only leaves them exposed to danger. It's not beyond us to deliver comprehensive and appropriate sex education, and I've seen NGOs do it entertainingly and sensitively without leaving anything important out: #BringBackOurBrains.

And further to this matter of moral voyeurism: I wonder at the ease with which this expression 'our children' just keeps rolling around. Are they really 'our' children? How so?

I guarantee you that these children have never had so many parents and owners in their whole life except now that they're convenient to prove a point. And soon enough they will sink again into malign neglect. Had they one genuine sponsor, I doubt they would be in the government-run home with foreign-donor money being thrown at their balls.

Daniel Thwaites is an attorney-at-law. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.