family – Page 3 – PurplePretoria

Where did the men go?

Not a Sunday goes by without the pastor of the controversial church I attend assuring the 30 year old age range women in the crowd that there is still hope for them to get married. [The controversial nature of the church is mainly based on the Princely can-do-no-wrong nature of the status bestowed upon the leader. This superhuman nature which is sometimes highlighted but also sometimes turned down by the pastor himself, I choose to obliviate from my observations since the more conservative church I used to solely belong to was too scaled down to help me when I faced matters which were beyond the natural laws of normalcy. If you have ever been caught in the supernatural, the soothing undisturbed rhythm of Sunday church as usual may cease to be enough for you. Just twenty years years back, this now somewhat conservative church was so radical that it was branded a new religion all together and I know for certain that one could be disowned for attempting to be wed in it.]

Anyway, Where Did The Men Go?

Why are women hunting husbands like they are the last Dodo bird?

I have written before about why I think that the nature of Apartheid South Africa and Racist [Slavery and Jim Crow]America have created the same type of men, enraged, violent, invisible, un-husbandable fathers with very low goals as far as employment and education are concerned. Meanwhile, the women, unloved involuntary century old holders of the community’s collective psychological trauma become single mothers, superwomen, can-do-it-all, a PhD is the limit high achievers.

The question should no longer be, why are women not getting married, the question should make an inquest into why marriage is not attractive to men anymore. Is it because of what these young children saw or maybe never got a chance to see when growing up? A stable home. A father and mother present as caregivers and providers living within the same household respectfully. How can they possibly recreate what they do not know?

As usual, women trying to fill in those gaps as hormonally and emotionally gifted nurturers, to recreate the mummy and daddy dynamic by sourcing for husbands everywhere they can find them, even if it is in another woman’s household. For some boys, their mummy-daddy game only replicated abuse, for some women, the mummy daddy game is only transactional- the bizarre ‘dzaddy’ peculiarity- a house and car arrangement in exchange for sexual intimacy to the highest bidder.

I wonder if the working culture is partly to blame. A way of life that allows men and women to spend long periods of time apart [first, no more lunch at home to no more weekends at home] naturally leading to a deficit of love, care and attention that is promptly satisfied by the new [or as old as the time when women entered the workplace as secretaries] phenomenon of work-wives and now, work-husbands. It is now becoming normal for husbands to leave for years, to far away locations, away from their primary wives and children. Our national leader himself stressed that he was away for six years fighting for our liberation from corrupt regimes and his own daughter thought he was some strange black fellow when he arrived at their doorstep having last witnessed her as an 8 month old.

Is this something to be celebrated? A Mandela moment perhaps? What happened to Mandela’s girls? For a country he sacrificed so much for, it seems his family paid the ultimate sacrifice for his absence. A hero to all and a hole where love and support should have been.

Should men not fight? Should they not become martyrs?

It seems as if to many men, you can either be great or you can have a stable family. Maybe the adage is true, you can’t have it all or maybe as Oprah said, you can have it all, but not at the same time. So for many men seeking greatness, Love is stupidity, Multiple trysts a norm and The all bearing, aging woman of virtue at home, bringing up the boys who will never see the need for a marriage, the standard.

I know, the change, I have seen it. Most men with dreams change when that first bundle of joy is placed in their shaky hands. The alarm bells go off. They suddenly remember the dreams the dreams they once had as boys, the ones they never achieved, the ones they had postponed, the ones they will have to fulfill for this their new responsibility.

Before I was pregnant, I knew that like most women, after giving birth I would forever after, always come second after my child. It is an idea that I contemplated, leaving space to remember who I was, before. It turned out to be true, but mostly from the people around me, that somehow my identity and dreams, if any [I can’t remember them] should be hidden under heaps and heaps of environmentally unfriendly diapers. Some women wake up to an empty nest at 60, lamenting about what they could have achieved. Though, the paradox is that, the very lamentation is a blessing some women do not even get to make.

So where is the balance?

I saw in one of the endless Korean vlogs I spend my money [data] watching, that South Korean men can claim up to a year in paid paternity leave at least three years after their child is born. Of course, that may be too much to ask in a country which can happily drown itself in plastic, fumes and muddy water when the rain falls because we despise the very regulations that could keep our population alive and effectively working for many years and also too much to ask since the number of children a Ugandan man pro-creates is a taboo topic.

Among the many things the lockdown taught us was that, people were waking up to spouses they had last seen clearly on the wedding day. Newspapers reported serious dysfunction. Parents couldn’t stand their children, some wanted their daughters [and now sons] back to school because they needed protection from drunk uncles and houseboys. Spouses could not wait for offices to open because that is where their hearts lay.

It is said that the family is the smallest unit of a community and that a group of communities makes a nation.

Is busyness and an unavailability a sign of productivity? We should have the German train system in East Africa by now.

For every Anselm, there is a gap which could have only been filled by the superstar of every child’s life.

When you are operating in a crowd, you see people as a crowd. It is easy to hurl insults at them, demean them. But when you meet the individual of the different tribe or group you disparage, you are face to face to with a person just as human as you are. That is why you can’t go to war without making a monster out of the people you are fighting. Most people, as individuals are complex intriguing characters, unless of course they are so absorbed in their identity as a group and have nothing to offer in personality.

I appreciate how the ATM sound for withdrawals does not change regardless of the amount withdrawn.

It is strange to see everyone grow old around me.

“Mummy, I saw God crying.”

“Where did you see God? People have been looking for him.”

“When we were going to the airport [school trip], I saw God crying.”

“Why was God crying?”

“Because He doesn’t have friends.”

The aftermath of Naaka’s dismissal was like the others, a disgruntled upheaval, a cycle of distaste for everything that revealed any tendency for displaying an authentic glow of happiness.

She was not the first, but it was highly likely that she would not be the last. Many others had been sent packing in the wee hours of the morning and the fourteen year old who constantly burst into trickles of childish unblemished laughter had not gone without a scene. She had been driven out like a demon. The answer was always the same. She didn’t want them in her house. She could do without them.

Naaka’s troubles had began with a few mishaps. She smiled too much, she had too many clothes, she laughed recklessly, she watered the plants when it was raining. Finally, she forgot to cook food without being reminded and for this she was threatened with a saucepan-sponsored head smashing.

The start of Naaka’s demise began the night that the woman who wasn’t supposed to be came around. The woman, daughter of the Head Smasher, had come home that evening to a warm welcome; child and husband in tow. The evening had been like any other, with hard liquor, soft liquor, food and uncommon sounds of her father laughing. Meanwhile, the HS seethed and puffed and heaved until she almost reached smoking point. Finally, because she thought no one had noticed her, she threatened them with the one thing she still had control over, losing control. She grabbed a bottle, tilted it violently at a 90 degree angle and swerved to the kitchen with her glass.

After the trio had left, life resumed as normal, a handful of scrutiny and a fresh carpet of anger and resentment restored, the air was once again heavy with that annoying uncertainty when nothing is right and nothing is wrong.

Unknown to the gang, Naaka was not as stupid and childish as she presented herself. On that night, Naaka had told their secrets to the woman’s maid- the woman who was never supposed to be. Prior to this, the woman, known as Pine, had only seen with her heart what the atmosphere could not say with words. As the gang had sat in her judgement night after night, Naaka lay around playing the literal village fool.

It all began around the time, children begin to reveal who they are going to be. Most adults, well versed in the ways of the world, begin to align themselves with the most brilliant, most social, most beautiful – most likely to be successful child. They map out their life for them; what they will become, where they will work, where they will live, who they will marry and what glory that will bring to the parent plant.

Pine was not that child. It had been years since the conversations that predicted her downfall commenced; her pitied choices, her low standards and the life of sorrow destined for her. But life, as it sometimes does, had tricked them and things had not quite gone as planned. So, a comrade volunteered herself. She would be the friend, possibly the confidant, report back on all matters sad and poor. This she did with the dexterity of an office messenger. She laughed, she visited, she planned, she helped. But, even the best laid lies leave a trail.

The trail began the day, the one who was to be, It-boy arrived. It-boy arrived on one of those hot sunny days which turn into a dark cloudy rainy day when the day turns grey before dusk . On the day, there was a two hour jam from town to the outskirts which Pine insisted that her and Pau disregard in order to meet and greet him. This only confirmed to It-boy just how beneath him they both really were.

Unfortunately for Comrade, he was a much less seasoned, tactless soldier whose actions conveyed exactly what he had been told in secret. He would never have lasted a day as a double agent.

After all, he had started by distancing himself as openly as a child whose father tells her to avoid her cousins during Christmas holidays does. He purposely aligned himself with only those he assumed were the highest in hierarchy- obedient as told. To his dismay and to Comrade’s utter shock, the Chief Source of Power glared past him like a man determined.

In HS’s opinion, research, skills and experience, there was always a hierarchy among siblings. In her clan, there was always the well off one- the one who gave to the poor ones, there was always the one who wanted to be like the wealthy one- the wannabe, there was the one who was unemployed, there was the drunk and there was the one who remained in the village to take care of the house and beat his wife.

HS had trained Comrade very well but Comrade, in one of her weak moments had recited one of their impoverished but treasured beliefs, a scarcity memento; No one can wish better for you than what they have for themselves. Stephanie R Covey had called it a Win Lose attitude.

As Pine’s path became a little less pre-determined, at the dinner when it became clearer that there was one, who though unworthy, never left Pine’s side. I am her best friend, Comrade had laughed. Short and sweet, except that it clarified at least one thing that was true- she expected that she was Pine’s best friend but Comrade had never regarded Pine as her own friend.

It showed. It showed. While Comrade had planned Pine’s wedding, she had kept everything including her wedding venue from Pine. Pine would be an invited guest, an outsider, a witness to her happiness. As she changed her mind over whether Pine would sing or not sing and as Pine debated over what song the bridal party would enter to, the It-boy, a worldwide emblem of all confused-confusers, a psychologist’s tool for explanation as to why brokenness attaches to brokenness- fakeness to fakeness- asked out loud, who Pine was supposed to be anyway. She was supposed to be the matron- maid of honour- that was what Comrade had said to her. It-boy had once again exposed the charade.

The night that Naaka spilled their secret was the second last night she held that job. A potential victim of head-smashing, she went down like Tounde in Houseboy. She had heard what she was not supposed to hear and her presence now remained like a glowing red thumb which had just been shut between a door and its frame. She was like the all knowing eye that sat with them at the table and followed them as they had their conversations.

They created trumped up charges against her. Because she was a twin, they said, she was a ghost, an evil spirit. She had confessed to practicing witchcraft, they said. For this, she was sentenced to freedom; freedom from the peace-thirsty beat down and the suffocating land of head-smashers and double agents.

Tag: family

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