The Wannabes: I can’t stand ‘Nerea’, it praises deadbeat dads

Sauti Sol on stage at the Nairobian Take over party in Nakuru. Photo: Kipsang Joseph

Last Friday at some function, I met the members of the all-male, all Kenyan, all the time group Sauti Sol.

I like them. I like that they are uber-talented, and that last year (or was it 2013?), they took off their shirts and sent femme pulses racing through the rib-cage and some TV stations banned their song but, thanks to YouTube, their popularity shot through the roof.

Sauti Sol are definitely not wannabe artistes!

They are the real deal, the original musical mbuta, with a nose-ring on its snout (do samakis have snouts)? But their song 'Nerea' is very wannabe.

In it, they yodel and caterwaul cheesy lines like Nerea, usitoe mimba yangu. Mungu akileta mtoto, analeta saa ni yake.

Until I Googled the lyrics, I thought that line in the Nerea song was analeta sahani yake; as in, ‘when God brings a child, He also provides a plate for him’, and I thought of the time Abraham set out to sacrifice Isaac, and someone brought a plate ... a plague on all your houses, but not on Sister Nyaatha’s, although it is the bubonic that got this sister saint in 1930).

Back to Sol, why is Nerea, the song, so wannabe?

Because it encourages wannabe baby daddies to cheat naive women into carrying their pregnancy to term, in the belief that these spermatozoon bearing cartoons will be on standby to deliver on the joy, and burden, of shared parenthood.

As a dude with daddy credentials, my daughter just turned four this last weekend, I can stand with all involved fathers, those who don’t think devolution included the constitutional right to devolve daddy duties to the woman, and say fatherhood is a journey.

But a pregnancy belongs, first and foremost, to the lady.

Some brave women have even chosen to carry children conceived of acts like rape to term, but it is not a man’s business to shout, or sing, at the top of his voice about mimba yake.

Wannabes of this kind come in all shapes, sizes and stages, like a zygote, foetus and trimester in late May (May babies like us are not as many as September’s children, conceived in the merry-making mood of Yuletide and HNY).

There are the classic hit-and-run wannabes who hit the soft road without rubber ... and then the rubber hits the road, if you see what I mean.

If by chance you catch up with one of these, they want nothing to do with your pregnancy, and my instructor, Robert at Rocky, should design a warning road sign for women to spot these types of hazards and play safe.

The second ‘daddy’ wannabes start off well enough, even going for the first two clinics with you. Then it hits them - this shit is for life! There will be diapers and school fees and a mouth to feed - and here they go into panic mode, develop cold feet ... and drop out.

I recall once literally getting the shivers in college going for a Tax Law exam I had not read for ... and literally ‘freezing’ at the door.

Then we have the absentee fathers who are seldom there for their tois, believing in the twisted adage ‘children should hardly be seen, and never heard’ and of course, some men are such wannabe dads, not, that their kids even say, ‘I never had a dad. Mommy just brought me from the hospital by herself.’

Deadbeat dads, those wannabes who believe their offspring survive on oxygen which is then broken down by the body into proteins, vitamins and carbohydrates, were the rage, in every way, for a Kenyan season.

Sauti Sol inadvertently captured it when they said these father fantasisers think their children will be Obama, Lupita, Wanyama, Jomo Kenyatta, Maathai,Makeba, Nyerere, Mandela, Kagamwe, Jaramogi Odinga, Rudisha and ‘malaikas, (like sister) Nyaatha, Mungu alitupatia.’

But I have a re-mix for these kind of wannabes.

‘Aenda akawa Osama, ana-bomb America, akawa drug-lord anaitwa Jupiter, anauzia watu madawa za kulevya. Akawa Mnyama, anatendea wanawake Kakamega, akawa dictator, ametoka uko Yatta. Akawa Maasai ambaye ata hana manyatta, aenda akawa mwizi wa ngombe, uko Nadome.

Akawa makanga, kelele anapiga, aenda akawa Nyororo, uko Shimo La Tewa. Akawa terrorist uko juu Mandera, akawa Ochuka anataka kupinduwa bendera. Aenda akawa Kabuga, dunia yote inamsaka ... akawa Sidika, matako anaipiga picha ...’

In short, wannabe baby daddy, there’s a reason why they call it satan’s spawn from the devil’s own.

Not everything one shoots out is angelic.

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