Your Brother’s (And Sister’s) Keeper

Growing up in Nigeria, I was constantly reminded that I was my brother’s keeper and that simply meant someone who ‘keeps’ his brother. It referred to being responsible for them and their wellbeing.

This also meant there was an expectation on me to know about his whereabouts, what he was up to and look out for his well being. It also required me to help him resolve issues before it got to our parents.

These days, if one were to ask some people about their sibling’s whereabouts, I wonder how many would respond by saying, ‘how should I know?’

As I thought about the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic and fake or unvalidated news, I was reminded of the importance of being our brother’s keepers.

Too many appear to have lost sight of what was once a basic rule for being neighbourly. As we have focused on our own rights, wishes and desires, we have lost sight of others and the impact of our actions or inactions on them.

In the past few months, weeks and days even, I have attended funerals and consoled friends over the loss of their loved ones, and prayed for others to recover from COVID and other related illnesses.

At the same time, I have seen those who choose to disregard something as basic as wearing masks, ignore social distancing or lockdown rules, and discourage people from taking the vaccines whilst not being experts on the matter.

And the question is, if we were our brother’s keepers, how would we think and what would we do differently?

This global pandemic has been able to spread partly due to avoidable and nonchalant attitudes of people to it, selfish tendencies of some, ignorance and misinformation, and disregard for rules of law and governing bodies.      

To curtail this pandemic and other global issues like human trafficking and climate change, we need to revisit the mindset of being our brother’s keepers.

Many of the evils that surround us thrive on our disregard, complicity, us turning blind eyes to the enablers and simply forgetting to be our brother’s keepers.

The whole world is connected in terms of the origin of creation and climate change in one part of the world eventually reaches another part of the world. Our families could end up with people we have looked down on, or in places we have stripped of wealth, identities and values.

There is a Nigerian proverb which when translated says, “If you hear, ‘carry, carry, carry’ and you don’t join them to carry, the load might end up being dumped in your backyard.”

This simply means there is a collective responsibility in dealing with some issues and if you refuse to join others in the fight, you could end up being personally affected by your inaction.

An example could be protecting your neighbourhood from drug dealers. Someone might think their children have left home so refuse to join any efforts to rid their neighbourhood of this issue.

What if their grandchild came home for a visit and ended up driving past during a shoot out between rival gangs?

What if it’s the one time that their relative gets involved with the wrong crowd or meets up with an old mate who ends up luring them into the dark and seedy world of addiction or human trafficking?

Being our brother’s keepers has enormous and direct benefits for us, our society and the world at large. We need global solutions to global issues.

If parts of the world get vaccinated and other parts don’t, the pandemic remains on a loop, with perhaps more dangerous variants, as people keep moving and transmitting within the ‘global village’.

Each of us is responsible for our own actions and for the well-being of our neighbours. We must revisit the ‘all for one and one for all’ message and make a decision to be our brother’s keepers in our words, choices and actions.

In closing, I am reminded of the first part of one of the most memorable scriptural phrases that I learnt as a child. It says, ‘For God so loved the world THAT HE GAVE ….’

And now I say it’s time for the world to ‘so LOVE the WORLD’ and that WE would also GIVE….. everything to make our world a better place so we can ALL have a better life starting here and now.

Thank you for reading and sharing my post with others. Have an awesome week.