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Hi, Malika Boma, and you're listening to a podcast hosted by the Accelerating Achievement for Africa's Adolescents Hub,

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hosted by Oxford University and the University of Cape Town.

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This podcast was recorded as part of a series in Oxford in November 2019 to discuss the theme of understanding adolescence in African contexts.

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Thanks for listening. So we're talking about care.

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So maybe if I could start with you? What do you understand by adolescence and when you're thinking about it?

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What are some of the important issues we need to think about when considering adolescence in context,

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adolescents could be defined or looked at in different ways.

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Some have decided that they would use the age to define the period of adolescence,

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and the common definition by the United Nations is adolescence are a group of people between the ages of 10 to 19 from age 10 to 19,

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and some others have made it a bit broader at, say, adolescents are between 12 or usually it ranges between that age.

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But the the issues that are common about adolescence is that adolescence is the period where there's a rapid change physically,

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socially and when puberty starts. And then, of course, we have all the secondary sexual characteristics.

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So there are different things going on during the period of adolescence that biological changes,

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that's the growth and changes, development and so on that the emotional changes.

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The change from thinking in the concrete way.

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Seeing things concretely and in. So that's when the abstract thinking emerges.

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And then also it's the period that leads from childhood to adulthood.

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So that period that helps you know where the many things happen so that at the end of it, the person is said to be an adult.

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And that's why they are very, very vague boundaries in terms of the definition of adolescence and in terms of looking at it in context.

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It's that in many cultures, people have, particularly on the African continent,

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there have been questions about adolescence because some in many cultures, adolescence ends when people get married.

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So in a culture where marriage takes place very early, some you know which is, of course,

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we know it's against the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.

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But in many cultures, it still happens. Girls are my age, some as young as 10.

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That's when adolescence starts. So where is the period of adolescence for then?

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So we if we're talking about adolescence, we need to look at so many factors.

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The context is so important that that will determine.

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And does the culture recognise that that that there's that period of youth that is there, not children at the same time, they are not adults?

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Does the culture, you know, recognise that?

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I think those are things we need to think about as we look at adolescence, particularly on the African continent.

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So to picking up on that, Cindy, particularly around the issue of contexts.

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So when we're thinking about adolescence, is this period of rapid change.

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What are in your mind some of the salient features about context in the

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interaction with context during adolescence that really shaped that experience?

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Well, I think it is, although it's saying in terms of where people live and what's expected of them,

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but the kind of differences that we've been speaking about this morning as intersectionality.

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But if you are living in a rural area and you have responsibilities in in for care

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within your family or getting married at 15 years old and having your own child,

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there are so many different aspects that affect whether somebody is cared for or caring.

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Unusually, all of us at every stage in the life course of both.

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And so adolescence I. In my experience, and I have to say that this workshop has made me realise, oh,

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I worked with adolescents, I said before I came here, I only worked with children,

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but they were 10, so I worked with adolescents,

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but they were learning and I'm going to speak about that case because I think it speaks to that question of context.

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They were learning the relationships work wise and familial and environmental.

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I was really focussed on agricultural and environmental learning that they needed to learn in order to do the work of the adults in their community.

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However, all of the kind of political ecological relationships were changing at that moment because of an agricultural practise.

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So here's development, which in fact required more work of children and adolescents and therefore less

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possibility of schooling if we think that's a path to a different kind of adulthood.

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And yet they were learning the kind of knowledge that they weren't going to be able to easily use in their adulthood.

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So to me, so much of what adolescence is is about that transitional period.

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And apropos of what Lorraine said this morning about, you know, we're thinking and as adults,

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as the endpoint, it seems like every phase of the life course is a fluid period.

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And so when we're young adults, it's different than middle age adults and different than old age.

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So I think we can imagine ourselves and adolescence in itself as in between childhood and young adulthood.

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But the factors that weigh upon children, depending on their gender birth order,

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the older girls, I don't know if this has been true in your experience, but in in rural Sudan,

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being the oldest girl means you're taking care of your younger siblings and you that when you get the next one is is arrives on the scene,

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you don't graduate to get to do something else. You stay in that position.

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And younger children have different opportunities. And it's an interesting kind of set of relationships.

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So class gender, birth order and whether one is in a rural, urban or interim area are all.

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We are all part of the context which makes it impossible for us to speak of adolescence in Africa.

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So picking up on that, Lucy, with your coming at it from a slightly older adolescence, I mean,

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what are some of the main aspects of context to which you you've observed in your own work,

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which are already shaping the experience of those episodes have? I struggle sometimes.

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To know how much we should be universalise and how much we should be saying that everything is context dependent because,

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you know, and in some ways, it's it's a it's a it's an argument to get where different disciplines get pitted against each other.

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And that's quite unhelpful because people just kind of retreat into their into their holes and throw stones at each other.

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And so, so in the kind of the biomedical model, you create something and then you, you expand it, you know,

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and you scale it to everyone because there's an assumption that there's some shared capacity that that will work.

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And in the kind of opposite model is the idea that everything is down to the tiniest contact that every village

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you can't translate from one village to the next to a village or from one household to the next door household.

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And on one level, you recognise that that's true. And on another level, you think that that's utterly unhelpful if you're going to do anything.

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And so that's when, you know, maybe that's the very only the most obvious understanding of context.

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But that's where I always struggle, and I don't know the answer to that.

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So maybe let's pick up on one piece of that. So in some sense, the interventions are safe in the context.

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So we're doing a universal intervention. You're putting some universal aspects to the context.

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And so one arguably important aspect of of the context is care.

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Also to perhaps to to return to your anchor is what role do you see care playing in the lives of adolescents in particular in the African context?

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Sometimes we see this as a period of emerging independence of peer influence.

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Is this still a primary role for care? Is it something that we need to think about?

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Is it in a universal way?

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Oh, I think that the care that adolescents will really benefit from, although I see at the same time we can still salvage as adolescent period,

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but I think the care needs to have started even before adolescence.

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Yes. You know, many times we forget and we feel, OK, let's get the adolescents.

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But adolescents are people that see in between.

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Their critical thinking has developed. They're able to be their judgemental.

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They need to trust you. They need to know that you're going to be loyal to them.

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And it's easier if you have built a relationship with them in their childhood or if someone has is someone yet?

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Not necessarily. If someone else had built it so that they learn to trust,

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that they know that they will get justice because those issues are even more important in adolescence and the period of adolescence.

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The the the, you know, like the way you can tell children things and children will believe you adolescents know because

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they see and it's very important for them to that what you're seeing is what you're actually doing.

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So in terms of care, I would say the best for my own perspective is care and nurturing and care and friendship

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that has started before adolescence by somebody else and that continues through adolescence.

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But in the event that the adolescent has not had that benefit of a childhood of care.

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I think it's still possible,

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but it just that it will take a bit more time and energy and effort because you are building on a foundation that is not there.

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I think it's important to. The first thing is to gain friends, to develop friendship, trust and friendship, whichever comes to contact care.

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I mean, I am a child and adolescent psychiatrist, so I see adolescents in difficult,

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very difficult these severe mental illnesses with depression, with psychotic illnesses.

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This still needs to be a relationship you need.

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They need to trust you. But those adolescents that I under my care, who I had managed when they were children there,

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it's much easier because we've built a friendship over the years.

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So I say whatever. Even within the juvenile justice system.

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And that's some of the problems we have on the African continent.

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The problems of training of the staff who look after the young man, these institutions,

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correctional institutions and many times the abuse of not knowing that that all of a sudden

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the reason why the adolescent is there is because they've suffered and had difficulties.

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And that's why they've broken the law.

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And that's why they're in the juvenile justice system and they need understanding and they need friendship even in that state of care.

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Yeah. So I want to pick up on that. So this is continuity of care.

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So from your own work with younger children going through,

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how do you see this interaction of the care that you receive earlier and the care that you receive later,

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whether it be good care earlier and bad care later or the changing nature of care?

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What is the one thing that I was thinking about is the way that the extended family works as like a caring,

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an arena of care in India, at least in my experience in this village and in other places,

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in my own family where you have a sense of there are many adults and older kids and younger kids, you know,

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but there are many people who are looking out for you and who love you or care for you or feed you, you know, or discipline you.

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But there is a way that you are part of a bigger framework.

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I mean, when I one of the things that was really striking to me in my fieldwork was a young mother of seven children just died.

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I think she had a stroke, you know, I think she probably had high blood pressure, you know, but she just literally dropped dead.

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And I thought if that happened in, you know, in a western and, you know,

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industrial context for the entire family would fall apart, the father would not have been able to handle this.

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But the grandmother stepped in and the aunts and uncles, and they all lived in a big courtyard house, you know, house yard.

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So that kind of continuity of. The care and sense that somebody is there for you, not it's not necessary that they are intensely working on you.

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But there was a sense of community.

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But but another thing that's striking and this is it goes to what I was saying about older daughters in particular.

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People were caring for their younger siblings, and you did not have a sense of like, you know, get out of here, I'm going to go play with my friends.

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Like, even when you're playing with your friends, you might be holding your baby brother or sister,

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or that a three year old is kind of trailing behind you.

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And it's part of and I don't want to be romanticise it too much.

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But it is a stable formation that we had in the 20th century in the U.S., which is broken down completely.

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You know, people don't live in multi-family dwellings anymore.

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People don't have a sense of we live in a neighbourhood where we are all looking out for one another's children,

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where you might discipline a teenager who's, you know, doing something troubling on the street.

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And that teenager would listen to you instead of cursing you out and saying, you have no, I'm, you know, not my mother.

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And even if you were in my mother, I might say the same thing. So there's a kind of new family and social formations and and also,

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if I could just say about context is the broader global political economic context of what we're glossing as neoliberalism.

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But the ways that rural Sudan, for example, adolescence is protracted by virtue of the debt economy people,

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these young people growing up cannot make enough money in their jobs of,

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you know, like a teacher is not making enough money to get married, to buy the things you need to buy in order to set up your own household.

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So there's a lot fewer children later married that we may think that a good quote.

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Good thing. But there is a way that their lives are stalled by circumstances that are not

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generated from within the community and not easily addressed within the community.

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And you know, I did a sort of longitudinal study of going back and finding these kids,

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you know, who were in various ways, thriving in another ways stalled.

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So shifting gears a little bit. Reflecting on this workshop,

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but it was on your own research and not to generalise about interventions that are done for adolescents across different African countries.

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But if there was one thing which you think is commonly missed from these interviews,

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one thing you would really like to see changed for interventions in evidence or at least made more common.

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What would what would that thing be as a site based on your own research based on reflections through this workshop?

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I can start with you. I don't think it's one thing. I think it's a combination of a few things, and I don't think that they cost a lot of money.

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I think that it is being very clear and very evidence-based about the combinations of interventions that you choose.

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I think it is being clear about the need for interventions to be feasible and cost effective.

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We often come up with these big, long lists that are not helpful or implementable on a scale.

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And I think that it is having young people, ideally adolescents and not the kind of super duper professional advocate adolescents,

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but adolescents who will be the people using those interventions to at the very least since check and tell people not to do something stupid.

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Their income, something you would like to see change the more common, at least.

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Well, for me on the African continent, like Lucy has said, these are not expensive.

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These are things that I look at myself and the opportunities I had that I think have largely helped me to be what I am.

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I had opportunities I had love, had security, I had friendships.

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I had the opportunity to get a good education. And so that that has empowered me and I can make decisions and I'm a nobody can push me around.

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I think it makes a lot of difference.

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Adolescents and other sick children, adults, they need mentally healthy environments that will promote their emotional,

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their well-being in all of this, like a it's a mental that would promote well-being.

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What are those environments that are secure? You know, you can wake up in the morning and go to school.

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You can move around secure environments.

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They need friendships, they need schools that are supportive schools where they can learn in under different circumstances,

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where they can be assured that they can have food, good meal.

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The teachers understand adolescents and the way they think, and they encourage critical learning and empower them so that they can.

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As adults go out and join the workforce and be productive members of society.

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They need, you know, environments where they, you know, this water easy to get water, good drinking water.

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There's health care. And even when they make mistakes, an adolescent who gets pregnant, there is not the end of the world and she knows that.

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And he too, because I say they are both pregnant, even though one person carries the baby.

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I think that's something that we need to emphasise. It's both an adolescent girls and a boy or whoever is the father.

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They need that hope that I'll have. Even when I'm pregnant, I can go to school and continue my education.

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I mean, we look around and these are things that these people need.

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They need to be. They need, they're going to school. They don't want. I mean, they need decent clothes.

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They can go to school with a girl has a menstrual period.

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She needs sanitary pad. She just you don't have to use leaves or grab rags around the neighbourhood.

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Basic things for for for a life of dignity and respect.

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I think all of the above and I think that that that kind of I love one of the things in this conference and in modelling and could said,

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just said is like the importance of love and not thinking that that's something extraneous to development projects to work to social reproduction.

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That question of love, of feeling loved, of feeling cared for, a feeling creates a sense of security and capacity to weather difficult things to,

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you know, and that is key to growing up in a healthy social capacitated way.

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I would say as as a critic of so-called development projects, that one thing that is not so hard to do but seems impossible,

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it's never done, is to have an intergenerational perspective on the project, to not have the timeline.

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And you have this with research projects who but do not have the timeline.

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This is a five year project, and if it displaces everyone from the possibility of staying in their community and finding work, that's not our problem.

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That is your problem. You know, if what development does and this was to me,

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the most crazy thing was make fewer children per capita go to school because the work

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requirements of the cotton and groundnut cultivation and the diminishment of other resources,

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you know, so it took longer to get firewood, took longer to graze animals, meant that children were going to school less frequently.

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And you call that development, you know, as a certainly as an educator, I think education is a good part of, you know,

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making a future that that when I spoke to these kind of NGOs and state development,

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you know, they were like, Yeah, well, that's outside of our purview.

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Well, why? Why can't you imagine a next generation within a project?

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You don't have to be the funder of that, but you need to be thinking, what is the we can't just have the measurement, be cotton yields.

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The measurement is where are our children going?

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What happened was that the village itself took on, you know, did this self-help thing built a girls school,

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hired women teach, you know, it was formidable transformation, but it shouldn't require such specialised.

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It should be something that's thought of as part of an an intervention in any place.

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So any last thoughts,

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particularly for the African or African continent where we have a board in a huge adolescent population coming up in another few years,

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we're actually going to be in terms of adolescent population almost as as, you know, the same population or, you know, as Asia.

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So we are we have this huge young population untapped resource.

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That population is Africa's wealth, and we need to harness that wealth for growth, for development, for peace.

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All the things that the SDGs, you know, you know, growth, development, peace.

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And one of the ways is we need to focus both on girls and boys.

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And I would say equity. You look at a boy or look at boys and say, What resources do they need to be the very best they can?

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And we look at girls, adolescent girls and do the same thing.

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Give the boys and the girls because they are slight differences,

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the resources they need to be the very best so that they can contribute and be part of the wealth of the African continent.

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Thank you. And I want to completely compliment and add to that because what I think the most moving, painfully moving,

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but extraordinary talks I ever heard in the university context was by Vali Soyinka, and he talked about the loss of a generation's creativity.

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And he said this is the biggest loss, this destruction of the possibility of this whole strata of young people's futures.

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And what they might have given to their communities, to Africa as a whole, to their nations, to the world is the biggest loss of all.

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And I, you know, sometimes you cry and talks because you can't wait to get out of them.

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But this one, I was just crying. It was so moving. And I and I think that's what's at stake in precisely what you said.

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Yeah. Thanks very much for listening to this podcast.

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Do you have a listen to the others in this series on understanding adolescents in African contexts?