The unending pressure of being an unmarried 'firstborn son' in modern Kenya
When you are the firstborn, everyone expects you to have figured it out.
By all accounts, I should be writing this from my isimba in Lutonyi Village, Lurambi Constituency, Kakamega County. I should, through the gods of time, be able to curse a few young boys in the village for laughing at my balding head by spitting on my chest twice and invoking Jehovah Wanyonyi’s name. I should have already stopped living what the white man calls the la vida loca—the crazy life. I should be having a few sons with protruding stomachs and one with a nose that suspiciously resembles Uncle Wesonga’s but here in Lurambi we still say mtoto ni wa jamii.
In the evening I’d retreat to the village town, hapo centre, to drink busaa, or Machozi ya Simba or one of those potent village brews, lifting the bottle burdened of our lives up and down to our mouths. Yaani. Young ladies would pass and we would heave-ho and shout at them that if we were still young men they would see. Imagine. That is my small Vision Twenty-Something.
Lakini wapi! Due to the Illuminati, this government’s tax policies, and Arsenal’s persistent victory in losing the league I remain an unmarried bachelor. It’s not for the want of trying. I have put myself “out there” whatever that means. I have filed all my taxes. I brush my teeth. I even have a Diva account for someone’s daughter. Just kidding. The account is for me because I am selfish like that. But I am not a unique case.
This story is writ trite, every firstborn son and their grandmother have had this monkey dance before. Recently, my younger brother, at 22, thinks he has grown the temerity, the effrontery to ask me when I shall bring home someone. “Toa jam!” were his words. The audacity! I am happy to announce that I have since cut off his monetary privileges. This is a boy whom I washed, a boy whom I wiped mucus off his bloody face, a boy I taught how to get girls! Nonsense! He forgets that it is one thing to wash your hands and eat with kings, it’s another matter to get the best piece of meat.
And so we have started the “Unatuletea mtu lini” dance of my time. You are not getting any younger is the popular refrain. Imagine how far you would be with someone to call your own. There is the promise of companionship and camaraderie, of conformity and constancy, a place to do as our fathers did. I’ve heard this cock crow so often I don’t even feel guilt for not wringing its neck. They are saying there is too much city in me, and that I am getting skinnier by the day because of eating spaghetti, Indomie, rice and Sarat.
I know you won’t believe this but an auntie of mine—who, like the government, loves being up to grasp with whatever her children are up to—overcome by the spirit, took it upon herself to do the un/enviable job of finding me a fattened woman, one who is ripe like a watermelon with love handles so supple my hand will not miss them when I reach out at night, or so they say.
They say that they have heard stories of me being seen with the yellow-yellow girls, thin and dry like broomsticks, like the androgynous, starving goddesses of the West who speak with their nose and call God, Gaaahhhd and call themselves “baddies.” Why would anyone want to be with a bad girl? My son, did I not teach you how to find a good woman? They say that maybe the problem is because I was not called to a hut by my uncles to be told all the things young men are told when they leave home.
I also know the bigger question, much more important than “Unatuletea mtu lini” is “unatuletea mjukuu lini” I want to tell them a tiger does not announce its tigritude but I need to clear it with the Tiger Association of Africa (TAA) and man, the paperwork… You know how it is. Sometimes Africa is a country. Every time I am in the village, I am reminded of Hamisi, “that boy you grew up with” who did not go as far as a university—like you—but, unlike you, he has already built a mansion in the village and advises the wazee of the village. The wazee has asked him to run for MCA. Kijana Mzee, they call him. If this isn’t a success, then success may not be worth having.
We are told that we city boys think we know everything. Wajuaji. Even if it isn’t intended as criticism, it certainly doesn’t feel like praise. And because in Africa you attract curses if you talk back to your elders, you learn to shut up and nod in obeisance.
That “boundaries” thing is a white-man affair. Every white hair on an elder’s head is a strand of knowledge that would kill a young man if he was imparted with at once. This is the way of our people. So it has been so it will be. Traditions are to be followed, not questioned. Then again going too far is just as bad as not going far enough. But if we tell them this truth we are in trouble. What is it the wise men say? The truth may set you free but it’s also a rope around your neck.
To be a male African child is to live in a dilemma. To be a male firstborn African child is to walk a tightrope between pleasing your parents, and keeping your sanity. They don’t even have to say it for African parents communicate with their eyes, and they can cut you in half with a shake of their head. Because you feel you have to prove them right, instead of wrong. What will people say? It is only a fool who doesn’t know what we mean when we say the day an elephant dies is the day you see all kinds of knives. Maybe if you’re not from where I’m from, you cannot understand this.
The speed of sound between a parent and a child is 40 years. For good or bad, we’re all a product of our parents and we carry them with us wherever we go. So it always helps to get a little guidance, to receive the occasional nudge toward what is right, because first we make decisions, then decisions make us. And there always seems to be someone. Someone who has been on that road, who’d become what I want to be, something to aspire to. There’s always someone who has done it before. Occasionally asking them—mercilessly and openly—to assess things for me. What do you think? What should I do? What's your take?
When you are the firstborn, everyone expects you to have figured it out. You have to learn fast, because, sooner or later, the world expects that the die has been cast, assumes that you have arrived—that you are finally you, for God's sake. Just like that, you are an exemplar—everybody's big brother, whether you're good at it or not.
In Lurambi we have another saying, Mwana Wa Mberi ni Shikhoyalo—the first-born son is an apron, a protector. Whether it’s a burden or a responsibility depends on a coin toss, this government’s tax policies, and the Illuminati.
