Growing up in Nigeria, I felt and knew the way we treated people suffereing from severe mental illness was wrong.
It was wrong the way we left them to fend for themselves, roaming the streets and fields, totally naked and utterly filthy, and more often than not covered in wounds and sores. On occasion, they would attack people, sometimes because those people mocked or otherwise provoked them, and sometimes because of an acute attack of whatever illness they were suffering (I don't know the technical terms; on television I've heard them say "manic episode", but that may not be what it was).
One such mentally ill woman who roamed the towns near my secondary school was raped (that is the word for it) by a youth or youths in the area. I don't know how many there were, or even when he or they did it. There was no police investigation, no social service agency to look into how it was that the women ended up pregnant. By the time her pregnancy was visible (she was naked, so there was no hiding it), any evidence of the incident was likely long gone. The woman herself was in no mental condition to give evidence or help investigators, not that anyone was interested in investigating.
Let me digress for a second ....
There is a certain kind of young man who exploits vulnerable women; teenaged female domestic servants (a.k.a. "househelps") were particularly vulnerable to the depredations of the teenage sons (and fathers if we are to be honest) in the family homes where they worked. It is particularly bad for these househelps because the mothers/wives are liable to react in outrage towards the girl (and not their sons or husbands) if they ever find out. These girls cannot even turn to their own parents, because their parents are usually the ones who sent them out to work 24/7 in vulnerable conditions in someone else's house in exchange for payments from the family in question. The last thing they want is their daughter upsetting their apple cart, or acquiring a reputation as a "disobedient" or "troublesome" girl, which would make it difficult to place her in another home. You know the sons (or fathers) are going to deny it if the girl appeals to the woman of the house, and the woman of the house naively (or perhaps desperately) believes her sons and husband over "that wicked girl" ... and you know she will tell all her friends about it too, and they will all commisserate, fellow sufferers of the machinations of these "wicked husband-snatchers".
But enough digressing ....
As I said, there was a mentally ill woman who wandered around the towns near my secondary school. She was raped, she became pregnant ....
.... and every day as we drove by, to or from school, I wondered what would happen to the child. Indeed, I wondered what would happen when the woman went into labour.
I never did find out. The woman "disappeared" at some point. Only God knows what happened to her. Maybe all went well. On the other hand, if she had died in childbirth, who would know or care?
You might ask, "Well what did you do to help?"
Well, as a small child in Nigeria, it is your job to shut up. Reminding older people that they are not doing what they are supposed to do is an action that brings consequences ... consequences which do not include said older persons doing the thing you thought they were supposed to do.
Years (well, decades) later, as an adult myself I have to say I understand the apathy. At that time, and even today, the super-majority of Nigerians did not have enough for their families, much less a stranger. How can you give someone food when you don't have any? Give them money when you are hiding from your landlord lest your family is evicted?
It did not help that institutions of state and government agencies were designed to PUNISH anyone who tried to help. Far from lessening your load as a private citizens, these entities would add to it. Indeed, if you came upon a person bleeding to death from a gunshot wound or multiple gunshot wounds, the safest thing for you to do was to leave them to their fate, because if you took them to the hospital it was highly likely the police would arrest you and accuse you of being an armed robber! They would keep you locked in jail, without charge or trial, for months or years, insisting all the time that you are a robber and demanding you tell them where the rest of your gang is.
It is not like you could have called an ambulance -- there were none.
Its not like you could have anonymously called the police at 999 and then disappeared before they arrived. In those days there were no phones, and even today after the GSM revolution, the police still respond to emergency calls 24 hours after the call was made (and promptly ask the caller to refund their gas money and give them "a little something" so they can eat that afternoon).
We Nigerians are not the only people guilty of mistreating the mentally ill.
When I first came to the "rich" United States, I did not expect to see mentally ill people roaming the streets as they did in Nigeria. The Americans have a $14 trillion dollar economy. Their population is only two or three times ours (depending on if you believ our population is 150 or 100 million), while their economy is 70 times bigger in nominal terms and 42 times bigger in Purchasing Power Parity measurments. If our teeming masses can live, somehow, with what we have, then surely the Americans had more than enough to avoid the spectre of mentally ill citizens roaming the streets?
Alas, I was wrong.
There they were, fully clothed, but just as mentally disturbed, and just as homeless.
What really got me during the time I lived in Washington DC was the public park just outside the World Bank building. This park was within spitting distance of the White House, the IMF, the World Bank, the US Supreme Court and the US Capitol. On these streets, powerful men and women drove to and from work, to and from meetings with each other and with other global grandees. These men and women move and shake the world, supervise massive budgets, and tell anyone unfortunate enough to have to listen that they are committed to fighting poverty and what-not.
You see, this public park outside the World Bank building was a place that the homeless and the mentally ill would gather every day and presumably sleep every night (I was never there at night, so I am just guessing).
These powerful men and women drove past these homeless, mentally ill people everyday ... and just looked the other way pretending not to see .... the same as we, the global poor, did in Nigeria.
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