Kenya: Shame to All Fathers Out There, Kudos to the Dads

Clay Muganda

13 June 2011

opinion

Nairobi — It used start like a joke. You walk into a video parlour during the searing hot Indian summer, and some not so young man who hangs around your house, or sometimes sneaks in to smoke a cigarette, follows you or walks in with you in the hope that he will convince you to rent some old Bollywood blockbuster.

Sometimes he would walk in because he wants you to rent a Hollywood movie which he cannot watch at his conservative parents’ house, and which his parents could not even think that he could watch anywhere.

Ordinarily, you would ignore such a person, but even if you did and went on with your business, you were not off the hook yet, for he would walk in to your house and start asking questions in Hinglish.

“You are renting adult movies?” he would ask even before you settle down to start watching.

“Children movies, young people movies, old people movies and even new people movies. All I am renting” was my favourite reply, all the while knowing what he was asking but I just wanted to put him off.

“No yaar, I am asking if you are having blue movies,” he would ask exasperatedly, but still too conservative to utter the big three letter ‘S’ word.

“Red, blue, yellow, green, white, pink, black, all colour movies I am having,” I would say, much to his chagrin.

Directing them

“Are you having a sex movie?” he would eventually ask, and then I would tell him that I do not watch such movies. Surprised, he would ask why.

“Because I am directing them only,” would be my curt answer.

For someone who wanted to watch adult movies, you would think such an answer would put him off, but it would only make him ask more questions.

“In your country, sex is free?” he would ask, to mean if there is sex before marriage.

“Under normal circumstances, we do not pay for it.”

“And if you become father before marriage?

“Then you are a father and you will call your friends and celebrate and have drinks and watch movies like I want to do now. So, can you please go away?”

That would make him go, disappointed that he did not get a chance to watch a blue movie which I never had in the first place.

That is the kind of a conversation I had many years ago, and I remembered it, more so the being a father bit, when some blokes came out of the woodwork to claim that they were Samuel Wanjiru’s fathers.

When the fatherhood rigmarole started and some man came out and said that he was not interested in any money, I figured that he was doing better than the “wives”, some of whom were either pregnant, thinking they were pregnant, or hoping that when the wealth is shared out, they will get some.

But when one of the men, after being absent all those years, went to court so that a paternity test could be done to prove that he is the father, I thought he had taken it too far, and if it were true that he is the father, then he should be forced to pay child support or take care of “his grandchildren”, not because he should, but as a punishment because he did not take care of their father.

Maybe there are people out there who know what he hoped to achieve, but I did not get the point, for I did not see the idea of being only available at a time when Wanjiru did not need him – or anybody else for that matter – and should have been left to rest in eternal peace.

Fathering a child is the easiest and most natural thing any virile man can do, no matter how idiotic he is, for it does not require any intellectual input.

You do not have to be employed, educated or even wealthy in order to make a woman pregnant. You do not even need a house or even a bed to be a father.

But to be a Dad, which is the most important, and which is what you can be proud of and revel in, you need much more than intellect, house or bed.

If the number of street children in our towns and cities is anything to go by, there are far too many fathers out here, and it may not be right to say that those children are fatherless just because we never see any men pushing them to go and beg, and pinching them when they do not harass pedestrians long enough to be given money.

Even though no one can deny you the biological or natural rights because the genetic makeup of the child cannot be altered, you should not expect any sympathy or justice when you come out of the woodwork when the person you so want people to believe is your son does not need you.

Admission of failure

Coming out at such a time is not proof of your manliness, but an admission of failure, and it is even good that you were not in his life, because you could not have added value to it, and he could have turned out to be a failure like you.

Being a father is just a biological function, much more like spitting. It is not an achievement. Only being Dad is.

As a matter of fact, it is like relieving yourself and forgetting about it. Running to the courts years later to prove your paternity is akin to going to a sewage treatment plant to ask for … eeerrr … your bodily waste.

To all the proud Dads out there who have been there all the time, have a swell time on Father’s Day this coming Sunday!

AllAfrica – All the Time