What is your own ‘COCKROACH’?

Disclaimer: the usage of the term ‘cockroach’ and any spelling depicted the term, is in no way even remotely related to the condescending way it has been used by leaders in dictatorial regimes (the likes of George Rutaganda of Rwanda).


When we were young, and it continues to happen today, elders had a way of scaring us… they’ll tell us there is a ‘juju’ in the room if they don’t want us to go into the room, or anywhere else they want to scare us from. I personally think it is a terrible thing and I have stopped people from saying that to my child. It has worked so far because my son, who is 30months old, does not know what is called ‘juju’. However, he has autonomously developed his own attitude about avoiding certain places at certain times by telling you there are cockroaches there.

This is how it came about – sometime last year, I had an invasion of roaches in my house. My son noticed that I hated them and will always spray insecticides around the area where they were. So when he sees them, he runs to me and says ‘Mama, kowé’ pointing in their direction. Eventually he improved his pronunciation to ‘kokroch’ and started using it to refer to any animal he saw, big or small – dog, ant, birds, gecko, etc. As he grew older and could recognize different animals and knew their names, he has now narrowed down that appellation to creeping insects that look like roaches. This is the background, back to the object of my article.

Unlike the ‘juju’ bit which was fear instilled by adults on kids, my son’s use of ‘kokroch’ as a deterrent was solely developed by him. He is very choosy in the use of that deterrent, using it manipulatively only to his advantage. When it’s dark, if you ask him to go to the room and wear his slippers, he says ‘kokroch’; but if you ask him to go and get a gummy candy from that same room, he runs and gets it totally forgetting ‘kokroch’.

What are the ‘jujus’ and the ‘cockroaches’ in our lives? Have circumstances and people instilled some form of fear in us, or have we developed our own fears that deter us from fully achieving the things we could otherwise? I’ll do this exercise, and recommend you do same… think of all the deterrents in your life, be they things, people, situations, places, ideas, beliefs, etc and analyze each of them and what they represent to you. Are they simply excuses you make to keep yourself in a particular situation, or to feel better about yourself, or are they real fears… were they developed by you, or instilled by others in you? How can you move past them and recognize them for what they really are – simply fears?

“Fear not, for I am with you” (Isa 41:10) so says the Lord of Host!