Fathering doesn’t qualify you to be a father

By TONY MALESI

When I cleared campus I pound the tarmac — daily, job hunting. So daunting was this work of job-hunting that when I got one, the first thing I wished for — in honour of my hustling — was a street or two being named after me!

My shoes got terribly worn out and the soles dangerously angled off; on a casual glance one would have confused them for helveless axes! That I never got arrested for walking around town with unconcealed crude weapons in the name of shoes, was by God’s grace.

Today’s youth are lucky, they tarmac online. Better still, parents do it on their behalf. Methinks parenting has been watered down. Parents emphasised hard work by all means necessary; even if it meant lying through their teeth. In academia, for instance, they used to lie that they were the best (even in mathematic where they perpetually banged Ds), up until when their loud mouth former classmate visited and unwittingly spilt the beans!

Nowadays, we either have absentee parents or those present are effectively passive. A Namibian (or is it now Kenyan) girl had to win Big Brother Africa competition for her Kenyan father to recognise her (her victory was sweet enough to kill a diabetic! It made her absentee father crawl out of the woodwork).

Conservative

She won Sh26 million for consistently ‘just being herself’ for 90 solid days, albeit ‘snowdened’ in a house. She beat 28 other participants, incompetent at ‘being themselves’! He donated the sperm 22 years ago, and he now wants to be called father! Dude, fathering doesn’t qualify you to be a father! It entails more than biologically begetting a kid.

It’s a tragedy that today, children know more about sex than their parents, and are also more willing to talk about it than their conservative parents. And when they ask hard questions about sex, parents blush! But they always know the right time to re-ask — during that loud silence, a few seconds just after a visiting conservative mother-in-law has finished praying for food at the dinner table! “Dad what is sex?” A kid would ask. Just after giving a vague answer hoping he’s off the hook, a kid asks another one with feigned innocence. “When a man forces a prostitute to have sexual relations with him, upon being presented before a judge in a court of law, will he be charged for rape or shoplifting?” That’s when a dad twirls his goatee, scratches his head and curse gods —proper!

A scandal

It doesn’t end there; today, they casually interrupt adults in the middle of conversations and get away with it. A scandal. Whatever happened to punishment being meted out pronto! In my time, it never mattered where or who was watching. Being beaten before visitors was common place. And whenever one wailed, they got gaged and whisked away — locked up in the loo. And this reminds me of one day, in church, when I kept making a nuisance out of myself by beckoning my mum and asking silly questions about why the priest had a penchant for ill-fitting liturgical vestments (kanzu). More than five slaps landed across my face in quick succession — kamikaze style! By the time the echo to the strike attracted brethren, she had resumed the praise and worship — as if nothing had happened— without skipping a clap, clapping off-beat or singing in the wrong key! Parents took no prisoners.

Contrast that with today. Children not only argue with parents, but talk back and scoff at them. I mean, whatever you do; always ensure you remain with a modicum of moral authority over products of your loins. Unfortunately, today we have bandits, fake cops and pastors, cunning politicians, cattle rustlers, prostitutes and petty thieves masquerading as parents! How would such a parent attempt imparting a virtue in his child, without the risk of being yelled at to shut up and his job — as a pickpocket— being drugged in scornfully?