Monday, November 19, was International Men’s Day, the unofficial day that is celebrated across the world, though Kenya never formally participates.
Often, the day goes unnoticed. But it should not be. We need a day, to remind us of who we are, what we have become and what we can be if we work hard to improve our lot.
As men, we have lost it. There used to be a time when men had values. Very few men today posses values and virtues such as decency, devotion to the bro-code and everything that men once stood for. By losing these virtues, long passed down from our ancestors, we have given the game away to women who are running us out of town.
This year, I would wish men to consider the following:
Family
The only better thing as Africans we have had over every culture and civilisation is our sense of family. As a continent, we have the privilege of not being uprooted from our ancestral lands over a long period of time, and we cultivated a strong sense of kinship.
Sadly, we bought into capitalism. And women are suckers for capitalism and everything foreign. Part of the foreign influence is a culture of individualism, where the nuclear family becomes the centre of gravity for an individual. There are many men who married wives who have sadly separated them from their extended families. I think that as men, we should reverse this and insist on keeping ties with extended families. This habit of only looking for each other for medical and funeral expenses is annoying. Have nyama choma, and drinks with relations as frequently as time can allow. We have to make this time, for the immediate and extended family that still counts.
Marriage
As noted here last week, millennial wives are a handful. With a sense of entitlement, information and 50 Shades of Grey, nothing seems to stop women. Most millennial men have no clue how to handle women their age.
I don’t know what will be the fate of marriage in our time. But it looks bleak. I suggest that as men, we go old school. This liberal nonsense we have adopted in marriage is the reason Kenya has more than three million single mothers and so many broken homes.
We need to go about marriage the way our fathers did. Provide, protect and firmly ensure law and order prevail. Millennial women like pushing the envelope too far, trying to see what husbands can do. I have learned from older men that being rational and logical for every misdeed predisposes your marriage to failure.
Be a benevolent dictator, certainly not an abuser, but let the wives know the lines they cannot close.
Investments
I think we drink too much and have many meaningless conversations in bars about women and sport. We have forgotten that we are supposed to be breadwinners.
We cannot afford to be breadwinners if all we do is drink expensive counterfeit whiskey and chase skirts in Roysambu, where we are part of the team that pays rent to some college girl who is essentially a thug.
We must learn to cut on the money we spend on booze and go slow on these Nairobian girls who ask for money as soon as you develop some mild interest in them. Let’s make those bar conversations more meaningful. Let’s pull resources and invest the way women do. Women are misbehaving because they have money. Money is power. Once that power shifts, it will take a coup on the scale the Agikuyu men pulled to topple the matriarchy. Though that still might be a challenge since these young women don’t even get pregnant anymore!
Friendships
As men, sometimes we have very meaningless friendships. Life is too short to spend it on men and women who don’t add any value to your life. I don’t mean to say that we become misanthropes or those transactional friends, but you can start by dropping drinking buddies. We need friends who can give it to us straight, tell us the truth, such as when marriages fail, or when you start developing alcohol problems.
Drop female friends who only call you when they want a favour or drinks when their boyfriends have gone to service other women.
If we take these things seriously, life will start having more meaning. And of course, find a proper compass for your life.
