In April 2017, 22-year-old Karabo Mokoena was reported missing in Johannesburg, South Africa. After weeks of her family and friends trying to find her, news reports emerged about how she was brutally murdered and burnt to ashes by Sandile Mantsoe, her 27-year-old boyfriend.
A collective online outrage in Kenya and beyond ensued. Women poured their hearts out on the bad things that men have done to them under the hashtag #MenAre Trash. Actually, this movement has always been there in the online realm but this current wave was triggered by Karabo's murder.
Sad, heart-wrenching stories of abuse were told by women under this hashtag. Bizarre encounters like one I read of a Nigerian woman who was pinned down and then urinated on by a man, in broad daylight, for rejecting his advances.
Most of these personal stories by women are very hard to read. As hard to read as the tweets and blog posts from the whole #MenAre Trash movement are heartbreaking.
What stays on my mind whenever yet another #MenAre Trash wave is stirred is the question: Aren't we afraid for our little boys? When you lump all men together and label them trash, aren't you afraid that this generation of men or the next one will, in a case of self-fulfilling prophesy or in resignation, actually become trash? Every time I see this hashtag, I worry for you my son.
Sadly, I am aware that there is little I can do to shield you from this negativity. For as long as you live, there are going to
be times when men are lumped together and a blanket label slapped on them: trash. You are going to hear heartbroken, disillusioned women declare that all men are dogs, that no man can be trusted. Kenyans are still obsessed with tribe and ethnicity so you will grow up hearing how men from this or that community are this bad thing or the other. This is fact, our reality. I can't protect you from it.
What I can do is to prepare you for when this time comes. What I can do is hold your hand, model and talk you through it. The very first thing I have to say on this subject is that you should make it a goal to become your own man. By this, I mean that you figure out your own goals, passions and the values that you want to hold dear.
There is going to be the desire to prove yourself as a man or to prove those around you wrong. Don't give in to it. It isn't up to you to try and prove or disprove anything that society around you believes to be true. If someone has a particular opinion of you, that's their problem. All that should matter to you is your truth.
Your responsibility is to create your own reality. To figure out for yourself the kind of man you are. If you decide to be the kind of man that would never lay a hand on a woman, and I hope you do, then it will not matter that there is a movement online declaring that all men are trash. Don't cheat on the woman you marry just because you heard someone say that all men are dogs or that it is in man's genes to be polygamous. Your being born male does not
make you trash or any other such thing. You only become trash if you choose to be.
You will hear many things but I know there are plenty of good men out there. I say this because I have crossed paths with some of them. There was the stranger who pushed and shoved so that he could get onto a bus and hold a seat for me on that dreary Saturday evening. I was stranded, seven months pregnant and there was a matatu strike on my route. He did not know me, he just knew that I was in distress. There was the one who ran after the thug who snatched my phone in town and brought the phone back to me with a smile on his face. There is the one who was once my neighbour who married a woman with two little children but continued being a consistent father when the woman abandoned them. They are now lovely young women. Then there is the man I have known for half my life who loves his woman, is faithful and consistent. He will break up with the woman he is seeing before he can entertain the thought of going on a romantic coffee date with another woman. A good man.
Resist the "boys will be boys" blanket label. There are vile, predatory men out there. There are men who just can't be faithful to one woman. There are men who will objectify women. Men who gain satisfaction from hitting women. All these things that these men embody are not synonymous with manhood. Set your own standards instead.
Let's go back to your younger days. To the good old days
when you were six years old and insisted on wearing that pinstriped suit your babu got you everywhere even though jeans and hooded T-shirts printed with bright cartoon characters were the thing amongst six-year-old boys. Remember those days? You were your own man.
Your father's influence
If you are like most men, like the six men I grew up with. then you will look up to your father a great deal. For a man growing up, a father or a father figure is a god of sorts, the father is the benchmark which boys grow up pitting themselves against.
This relationship with this older man is an important one in your life. It is from him that you will learn to be a man, the right way to deal with, look at and treat women. It is from him that you will also learn that quiet masculine strength and to process your emotions. It is from him that you will learn how to tie a tie, how to buy a suit and to put the toilet seat down.
I see you peering keenly as he ties his tie in the morning. sitting quietly next to him trying to understand the Premier League table on the weekends that Manchester United and Chelsea are playing against each other. I see you learning from him as you should be. Still, you should not become him. Even if your father is a good man. You are his son, not his clone.
Don't let the image you have of him in your head hijack your dreams and your convictions. Your father is his own man, he
has his own dreams. He has made his good life decisions and also his mistakes. Don't spend your whole life trying to live up to your father's expectations, trying to reach those goals that he failed at. Don't live your life trying to fix his mistakes
Have an independent life plan. Have your own goals and live your life trying to reach these. Allow yourself the freedom to make your own mistakes. Resist that quiet expectation of society around you to become your father. When you have listened, read and observed, when you have achieved independence of thought, action and feeling - that is when you will have become your own man.
Don't live your life trying to prove or disprove a point. By being a good man, being your own man, you have proved all the points that you need to.
You can break away from the norm
Embracing your roots, your background and cultures is good. Remember, however, that it should stop where being your own man begins. If you decide that the path that your lineage is leading you to is the wrong one, then do something different.
I spent my early childhood years in Kiamuringa, a red soiled, dusty village in Mbeere. I remember there being a handful of families that children were warned about. Homes where macore, a local, illicit brew, was cooked and sold, Going there meant that a child would interact with the village drunkards or have a runaround with the chief, so parents were wary.
For most of these families, these brews were their way of life. It put food on the table for them, it was all the adults knew to do. The craft had been passed down generations. It became what the community around expected from children born in these homes. In school, teachers gave them little attention, sometimes just ignored them. What's the point wasting valuable time and energy on him if he is just going to drop out and begin brewing macore, right? Well, wrong. I got to see some of them break off this cycle, go to school, pursue careers and move away to raise their own families.
I remember one girl in particular who I sneaked away from home to play with. We would knead lumps of mud and plait our dolls at the back of their house whilst groups of rowdy men and women got drunk and cursed at the front of the house. As soon as she was 18, she left home to study flowers and floral design. She brought me a bouquet the last time I saw her and she was gushing about tens of types of roses. She got to keep her big, beautiful heart too. I believe that all it takes is one person to alter the course of generations. One little brave girl or boy.
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