Earlier this week, I came across an interesting conversation on social media that was started by Kamau James Waweru. His question was brief and to the point. He wanted to know why chamas made up of cousins rarely succeed, no matter how many times they are revived.
At the time of writing this, that post had 2.6K likes and 3.5K comments, which goes to show that the subject had struck a chord with quite a number of Kenyans. It is a subject I touched on sometime back, though I specifically focused on the gradual death of extended family get-togethers. Though a couple of people in the comments said that they and their cousins were close-knit and often met, with some having even bought property together, a majority confessed that they had drifted apart over the years, and only got to interact during a relative’s funeral.
As they said their goodbyes after the funerals, they would all agree that it was a shame and unacceptable that they only got to meet when someone died, and would urgently revive the dormant cousins’ WhatsApp group or create another and promise to get together “soon”, but this never happened. Until the next funeral. One joked that whenever a cousin called, she would wonder who had died and start “stressing” over where to get money for the fundraising that would surely be called, even before picking the call.
Giving reasons why this was so, many say that this coming apart was due to the fact that they had inherited their parents’ grudges, which were mostly pegged on land, though the term, ‘the curse of inherited land’ would be apt. Their parents didn’t talk to one another because they were busy bickering over land or something else that happened decades ago, in some cases even before their children were born, but had somehow managed to co-opt their children into their fight. A number of people spoke about cousins who had either disrespected their father or mother in some way, and so did not speak to those cousins.
Others spoke of cousins that had more money than the others, and therefore lorded over everyone else and wanted to be the decision-makers whenever there was a family-related matter under discussion. There was also talk of well-off families that looked down on their poorer cousins and wanted little to do with them.
The poorer cousins, sensing this, kept away, further contributing to the rift. Others talked of jealousy among them that had managed to drive them apart, while quite a number joked that they wouldn’t recognise their cousins if they bumped into them, never mind their children, who they had never met. Commenting regarding this, one man said he could relate to this state of affairs and fears that his children could one day introduce their first cousin as their boyfriend or girlfriend.
But a sentiment that kept recurring was the fact that many had, to quote someone in the thread, inherited their grandparents’ and their parents’ generational fights, toxicity, greed, hate, envy and jealousy. She observed that this becomes a vicious cycle, such that in a few years to come, the children of the Kenyans commenting on the post I referred to at the beginning of this article will be sucked into the fights, petty or otherwise, that their parents have with their cousins.
I could tell my own story here, but I don’t think it’s wise to stir up a hornet’s nest, also bearing in mind that some matters are best kept within the family.
I have to ask though, are you one of those parents that have managed to enlist your children into fights that began even before they were born?
