Over the past couple of days, Grade 10 admissions have dominated the news, something that Kenyan content creators have been gleefully capitalising on.
I came across a satirical video on TikTok poking fun at fathers of a certain generation, the ones, according to the video, whose major interaction with their children was to pay school fees.
This particular video begins with a father in a school parking lot filling in his daughter’s admission form. Looking puzzled, he picks up his phone and calls his wife: “Mama Njeri, remind me, what is Njeri’s first name?”
He looks very surprised when his wife responds, as if he’s hearing the name for the first time. Still scanning the list of questions, he asks his wife whether their daughter has any serious medical condition that the school should know about, and when his wife says she doesn’t, he wonders which child of theirs used to vomit each time she ate beans… His long suffering wife informs him that it is their other daughter, Wambui, who had that problem.
At this point, I am hysterical with laughter. But this father of the year is not done yet. He asks, “There is a question asking which junior school she was attending…where was she going to school?” Again, he is surprised by the answer he gets, telling his wife that he thought Njeri attended a certain school, to which his wife informs him that it is their son, Kariuki, who goes to that school.
I thought it was a gross exaggeration until I read the many comments of tickled Kenyans that reacted to that video. One narrated how his father once paid his school fees for a new term, unaware that he had completed high school the previous year.
Ever optimistic, his fellow Kenyans consoled him, pointing out that at least he had a responsible father who paid his school fees, and for that alone, his father deserved respect. And then another chipped in, saying that her father learned she had sat her KCSE exams the previous year when, in the second week of January, he asked her why she wasn’t going to school.
But what floored me was a young man who said that once, his father took him to hospital, only to write down his younger brother’s name in the claim form. Kenyans, again, decided to view the glass as half full, rather than half empty, pointing out that what mattered is that his father actually knew he was sick and took him to hospital.
Another said that his father only recalls their firstborn’s date of birth, but, consoling himself, said that he doesn’t hold it against him since they are nine children, and life in Nairobi is hard for any parent to remember such details.
Weighing in on the discussion, one woman said that while attending a school meeting, she overheard a man asking a teacher which grade his daughter was in – the only information he had about her was her name.
And then there is a businesswoman who said that almost every time a man goes to her shop to buy shoes for his child, he never knows the shoe size, so she always has to ask how old the child is to estimate the size, and yes, almost every time, the man calls his wife to confirm the age of the child.
I was also tickled by someone who wrote that her dad once wondered where her two elder sisters were, yet at the time, they were in a boarding school, which they had been attending for two years.
One comment towards the end especially got me thinking and stayed with me. It said, “Our fathers might not have remembered many things about us, but they were responsible and stepped up where it mattered.”
I doubt my dad recalls the month and date I was born because he has never wished me happy birthday, but this has never bothered me; in fact, this detail only occurred to me when I came across this video. I still believe he is the best father any child could wish for because he has always stepped up where it matters.
