They will deny it if you ask them this, but Kenyatta National Hospital is a dystopia for boda boda riders. It’s common knowledge that riders in the boda boda world—what my editor likes to call the nduthiverse—would rather lose a limb, or their lives than let you cut in front of them. That mzungu that said there is no hurry in Africa has never been on a boda boda. But that’s not why I am here.
I am here to ask the KNH CEO when they are opening their new trauma wing. Everyone knows you cannot throw a stone in Nairobi without causing permanent head damage to a single father. Ni Kubaya. With USAID gone, you don’t need to be a schooled Sudi to know the statistics are only going to get worse.
On a date last Wednesday night, my woman asked me three times if I was sure I did not have a baby momma. I mean, I am handsome and all, but I could be pretty sure I know when I have a child out there. Or perhaps at that time, my economic standpoint was in free fall.
So, I did what every other man would do in that situation, I told her even if I had a child, at this very moment, she was the only baby I cared about. Say what you will about my parenting skills but that was a remarkable riposte. And to think it came off the top of my head, cornered and with all the blood in the wrong, erm, head.
There are two things rarer to find in Kenya today: one is a kept promise from the government, and two, is a man above 30 without a baby momma. This is the new pandemic, the actual eighth wonder of the world.
When I was going through a breakup with my then girlfriend—vicious eyes, and a forehead that cried out to be kissed—I was counselled by people who have gone through multiple breakups to go “no contact.” Ghosting, Pro Max. This will help you forget about her (I didn’t want to forget her), or get her crawling back to you (I wanted this! For my ego). Either way, you are winning in life.
When I think about the prevalence of single daddom in my circles, I like to think of it as parents choosing to go “no contact with their kids.” Admittedly, it is great on Instagram where, in place of your plasticine personality, you can replace it with “Single Dad to Adorable Baraka”. Single (Available). Dad (His sperm work). Adorable (Can express himself). Baraka (A gender-neutral name that gives the child a platform to decide their gender when they turn 18! Progressive!) Women like that shebang.
You cannot lose. Introduce yourself like that in social settings and mamaz will cling to you harder than the Kenyan shilling sticking to the dollar at 129. Ni me nakushow.
However, there is some second-hand embarrassment in being a single parent, like waving back to someone in Garden City Mall and then realising they were waving at someone else and the way Garden City is full of TikTokers tiktoking so now you have to pack your bags, flee the nation and move to some weird country like Uzbekistan and become a sheephunter.
Have you ever had sex with someone you hate? It is a little like that. I have a friend who recently became a single father of two. Well, three. He just found out he sowed some wild oats on campus, but the lady “saw no future in/with him” so she pinned the pregnancy on someone else.
It takes a real gangster to assign fatherhood—back in campus, I have told you this before, my sociology lecturer, Professor Bigambo would quip, “Maternity is a matter of fact, paternity is a matter of opinion”. Now, whether my friend is the Bonafide father of his other two children, depends on whose opinion you value the most. Me I didn’t support it, but I respected it.
That previous wife, who had made him a single father of two left him so she could go and “explore” the final vestiges of her 20s. Why not? She had nothing else going on. She was bored of being Mama Jayden, of Blue Band margarine and white bread, of married-missionary-sex.
She was looking for adventure, to be young again, to feel the air fill her lungs, to eat prawns and see the world, to discover herself—was she even straight? —to do it all in all styles: sideways, scissoring, even Scorpion Kadunga . You could support it or respect it, she didn’t give a rat’s ass.
If you don’t know what Scorpion Kadunga is, I apologise, because those people who do will snatch your baby from you, but also kwani what do you do in your free time? Brush teeth? Eat veggies? Learn Mandarin? Actually, you should learn Mandarin. China is the next World Power. Everyone knows.
You know what else I know? As I have grown older, I have realised that life is less black and white, and more grey. And the movie lied, there are more than 50 shades of grey. Like, you can be a great boyfriend, but a terrible husband. A good father, a horrible lover. There is something called negative capability.
Certainty of the uncertain, the ability to resist explaining away what we do not understand, that two things can be true at the same time. The two truths are contranyms; they cannot both exist and both be facts. And yet somehow the work supports them both, refusing to let either idea be diminished in favour of the other.
Life is long, but also life is short. A straight man is technically a lesbian because lesbians like women and straight men like women (don’t argue with me). Kenyans love to give bribes but hate corruption. That’s the essence of our culture. The two truths, existing together, are like two hands kept close, barely touching yet fingers intertwined.
We talk often about how some women will have children and dump them in ushago with their grandmothers. We don’t talk merely enough about men and their multiple baby mommas. Someone’s daughter doesn’t like it when I quote from Twitter, but I recently saw a post there that made me chuckle.
It said, “In the past, men used to have three or four children. Now, children have three or four daddies.” Climate change is real, it taunted. Climate activists may get heated up about that, but I would advise them not to, because they’d be contributing to global warming. Get it? No? No?
Weak joke aside, in the past, fathers raised children only when the mother had died or was deemed incapacitated. There are no back-slaps here, because that’s a parent’s job anyway. Without being too preachy, I have experienced the value of a two-parent household, which manifests in how high or low a skirt is, or whether or not your son gets a mohawk and puts on their Twitter bio “Forex. Man U. Paper Chaser: DM for Promo.”
Which reminds me, you people make fun of the president but he is the one with the intelligence briefings, daily. When he talks about one million chapatis, daily, he foresaw the surging numbers of mildly parented children. And with USAID gone, condoms will go back to their original owners—the rich.
And since this generation won’t stop having sex, and is cursed with commitment issues, that means more single parents, more single dads. Do you now see how our economy can only be saved by a chapo-making machine? Hail the Sugoi! The president has a pan. Sorry, plan!
