Just a Man: Men, visit these four places before you die

This isn’t a bucket list. It’s a “turnaround list”. It’s a list of places that, after a man visits, they’ll pause and think, really think about their life.

The places in this “turnaround list” are visited in an impromptu fashion. You just find yourself there, through a twist of fate, and you have an epiphany.

Prison

To many folks who’ve never visited a prison, the name inmate conjures images of the scum of the world, who should never be allowed to walk free. But I’ve found out that anyone can find himself behind bars.

Long before I was a writer and visited prisons to do human interest stories, I visited some boys I grew up in my old ‘hood, Jericho Estate. They were guests of the state at Kamiti Maximum Security Prison.

Freedom is priceless. I’ve seen a grown man bawl like a baby, as I bid him farewell, and the corrections officer called him to squat in line with the other inmates, for them to be counted with batons, like heads of cattle.

A prison visit or stay makes a man cherish life’s little mercies, and blessings that we think of as burdens.

Morgue

Kajojo was an old peddler in our ‘hood. One time, he accompanied us when we’d gone to the City Mortuary to collect the body of a boy we’d grown up with.

Kajojo was stoned on his products. He insisted on entering the morgue to watch as the attendants washed and dressed our boy. The attendants told Kajojo to stay out of their business. A voluble Kajojo insisted.

The attendants locked Kajojo inside a room with bodies, in different stages of decomposition. When they “freed” him, which was long after they were done preparing our dead boy, Kajojo entered the hearse and spoke with no one the entire day.

A morgue can sober up even the most stoned man in town.

Mental institution

In the mid-90s, my friend and I were called to forcibly remove a man inside his house, and help to transport him to Mathari Hospital. This man had lost his mind after losing his job and barricaded himself inside his house. I was a bodybuilder, and these are some of the odd tough gigs I often got.

I’ve since been to Mathari numerous times.

Visiting a mental institution and witnessing what men go through - the abject degradation and helplessness - will make you value that unseen thing that we so often take for granted; sanity.

Homeless shelter

It’s only when you lose your home, and you have no place to lay your head for the night that you realise the importance of creature comforts.

We don’t have homeless shelters in Kenya. You don’t need to go far or search wide to know how the other half lives. Homeless folks are right before our eyes, but we act like they’re nonexistent.

Don’t just visit a homeless soul. Spend a night with him. Just one such night out gives a man a wake-up call.

Man sense

Why does my husband stick to old torn boxers, even when I buy him new designer underwear?

The correct term is “broken into”. Not “old torn”. Through much wearing and SAP - structural adjustment poses - your hubby now has underwear that snugly fit. SAP is what you sometimes see men doing; fumbling with their fly while pulling weird poses.

“Breaking into” new boxers takes time. Once a man’s done that, he wears his boxers till they’re threadbare. Strange as it sounds, that’s man sense.

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