FACE-OFF

One Monday morning a colleague came back to work, having attended the burial of a relative over that weekend. She looked so distraught and for a moment I thought it's because she was still in a state of mourning from her loss. To break off the otherwise awkward silence, I asked: “how was the burial?” “It went well, “she said. “And how are you?” I asked. Without beating around the bush, with a gloomy but straight face she said, “I’m not fine, I discovered over the weekend that I have a sister from another mother, who is just a year younger than me!” Trouble right there! “And this happened when we were publicly being introduced to the mourners”, she continued. “The most disappointing thing is that Dad seemed indifferent”. “So, how is your sister?” I interjected. “I don’t know, I am still trying to reconcile all these and figure out if and how I will begin to bond with her.

This week I met this guy famed as a media personality, a celeb. He came to my workplace to share on mental health. He shared his story about a hidden, broken, dejected, miserable side of him that he had hidden for so long but had since gone public about it in recent years. He has been bold enough to share the same on the Engage talks by toastmasters forum. While he spoke, I thought, “How many men are going through worse?” “How many would be bold enough to share their story?”  

In the 1997 movie “face-off”, FBI agent Sean Archer (John Travolta) Obsessed with bringing terrorist Castor Troy (Nicolas Cage) to justice, tracks down Troy, who has boarded a plane in Los Angeles. After the plane crashes and Troy is severely injured, possibly dead, Archer undergoes surgery to remove his face and replace it with Troy's. As Archer tries to use his disguise to elicit information about a bomb from Troy's brother, Troy awakes from a coma and forces the doctor who performed the surgery to give him Archer's face.

With time, the man has mastered the art of masking, to protect his ego, to preserve a certain image, to maintain a certain status, to hide weaknesses and even to conceal evidence. Show me a man who doesn’t have skeletons hidden in a closet and I will show you an angel living among men!  What differs from a man to a man, is a case of how many skeletons. Unmasking can be a painful, dirty, tricky business and depending on the intensity, can leave scars.  Beyond every mask is a man trying hard to be what he is not to achieve certain goals but behind the mask is a man who is broken, a man who is crushed, a man who is downtrodden, a man who is fearful of what will be if the face comes off! He feels that he will be ridiculed, he will lose the social status he will lose what he has built for so long. This man wants a safe space where he can unmask and so that life can give him a clean slate, a tabula rasa, but the society has been so hard on him coz he is supposed to be the leader. Right? He is not supposed to be broken. Right? If he breaks, he is weak. If he cries he ain't man enough. After all, a man must do what a man must do and make it happen. The bottom line is, the face will be off at some point and the longer the mask stays on, the harder it is to remove it. I have always opined that the self-worth of a man is in his identity. Men need to create a safe space (a place of vulnerability) where they can speak out without being judged, unmask the falsehoods that have defined them for long and become true men to the society, men of integrity.  When a man unmasks, he heals, becomes true to his identity and in a ripple effect the society heals. What face do you need to rip off?

Jamo

The Titanic

In the 1980s when I was growing up daddy got a scholarship opportunity to study his masters in the United States. This was an opportunity that was very rare back then and it's one of those things that you would define as comes once-in-a-lifetime. Contrary to what was expected and after much thought, He declined the opportunity simply because there was no slot for the family to travel and that would mean he would have to leave us for more than 2 years. He was caught between a rock and a hard place to either pursue personal development at the expense of family or stick with the family at the expense of personal development. He chose family and lost the opportunity. This didn’t make sense at all. Or did it? Fast forward, over three decades later, His kids are all grown, and He holds a Ph.D. and resides in the United States.

One Sunday evening in the summer of 2011, I paced up and down the corridors, waiting with bated breath. I was nervous, I was tense, this encounter was a first! A good friend and colleague of mine was present and with the calmness of voice, he assured; “It’s going to be ok, Jamo!” I gathered guts, rushed in, stood by her side, her hand firmly clang to mine. I kept on assuring her that it would be fine. At 4.32 pm a cry was heard and lo & behold the baby boy emerged. I was overwhelmed with joy and with tears welling down my eyes, and with trembling hands, I took my phone and captured some images of this young guest! My mind was blown away and it dawned on me; “I am now a father!” The joy was there for all to see! The journey of fatherhood had just begun.

Fatherhood begets fatherhood and Every man needs a father figure, biological or not, to be a father.  The Titanic was a luxury steamship that sank in the early hours of April 15, 1912, off the coast of Newfoundland in the North Atlantic after sideswiping an iceberg during its maiden voyage. Of the 2,240 passengers and crew on board, more than 1,500 lost their lives in the disaster. This Royal Mail Steamer (Titanic) was the product of intense competition among rival shipping lines in the first half of the 20th century. The Titanic was made to utmost precision and was deemed to be perfect or, so it seemed until it hit the iceberg and crashed and thereafter followed by all manner of theories and jibes as to why it sank. 

Everyman is born with a titanic intent; Born to sail the world, conquer the world, change the world and to rule it! The challenge with the Titanic was that from the onset the design was flawed and so when it encountered the obstacle, its crash was inevitable. Our society is faced with iceberg challenges and every eye is gazed at the man, to fix it and provide lasting solutions, yet this titanic man is in a state of emotional turmoil faced with the pressure to solve what he has no capacity to. This is a man who has not experienced the total fruits of fatherhood. He has had to deal with the absentee (never there) father, the presentee (physically there but not there) father, the father in pursuit of materialism, the polygamous father, the wife-battering father, the drunkard father, the broken father, the mis-fathered father. The titanic man also has to face the challenge of the modern woman and a society that is constantly pushing for girl child empowerment and gender equality. The woman is being fixed, yet no one is fixing the man. The voice of the woman is being heard while the voice of the man is being hushed. 

A broken man doesn't know how to cope with a complete woman, but a complete man does. Complete fatherhood is the ingredient that engineers a complete man. We must go back to the basic we must empower our men to be complete men, to father right, and be right fathers. In problem-solving, you don’t deal with the symptoms but address the root cause. The solution to fatherhood problems lies with the man because he is naturally titanic-born to sail and conquer! To achieve the ideal fatherhood, there are sacrifices we must make, there is a journey we must travel. We must go back to the ultimate designer, the Deity and ask Him to course correct us into ultimate fathers, else, we will always remain broken.The man I am today, is as a result of a father who made sacrifices,created time and not only mentored me to sail, but sailed with me,assisting me to steer away from the icebergs to the point he was certain that I could steer on my own. As men we must speak with each other and be true enough to say when we are broken. Let's be intentional to mentor the nextgen, let's be intentional to rewrite the story from failed fatherhood to a successful fatherhood. Let’s be intentional to address our faults before we encounter the iceberg and sink in turmoil, never to recover. 

Jamo

The Butterfly Effect

A Man is still a Man no matter what his purpose on earth and his major duties are to nurture his family, to take care of them, to provide, to guide. This is the weight that every man must carry.

Daddy went into “full-time ministry” as they call it when we were still young. The early stages of the ministry journey were tough as there was no sufficient income for the needs, yet this family of six had to be fed, roofed, schooled, clothed and many other needs met. He soul-searched and identified a tent-making venture that kept us going and met some of the needs. Wants back then were a luxury, they were only satisfied at the “wanting stage.” Having tasted a life of plenty earlier on, this was a culture shock of sorts, from enjoying a gated home to a place where we had shared amenities. We have had days where we asked Mama what we would have for dinner and the response would be, “The Lord will provide.” A sure thing though was that somehow, somewhat, God always provided for the meals. It would have been very easy for Dad to quit on the Call and go back to secular employment, but he didn’t.

The fulltime ministry journey saw our family traverse the land of Kenya from Kitui to Mombasa, to Nairobi, To Mombasa again, to Eldoret, to Turbo, to Eldoret, to Nakuru then to Nairobi! Wow, what a journey! Fast forward and we are in Nairobi, Mama got a job and in an old-school fashion as you call it, would bring the full quid home to Daddy, for co-planning and utilization. Mama was happy, Daddy was happy, everyone was happy. This was the norm for the period that Mama worked and still is.

“My money is my money, but your money is our money”, “I can’t date a broke man!” These female adages have intimidated, isolated and unsettled the men who fear the day the broke season will knock the door. I was having a chat with some friends at work and we talked about one of our family rides only for one lady to quip…” Is this your family ride or your wife’s ride?” I could tell the sarcasm in her voice. I asked naively “What’s the difference?” A male colleague’s response? “You can only know the difference if you get broke!” That is what the society has become; individualistic and materialistic even within the family unit, where true happiness is defined by what you have, and family headship is determined by who brings what. The broke man has become a broken man.  This defies the divine order for the ultimate success of the family. With these mentalities dominating us, compromise on firmly held virtues sets in, strife, pain, bitterness, disunity, anger, discordance, and immorality become the order of the day and the more we experience them the deeper we sink in them and the harder it is for us to come out of them. All this because of one thing; defiance to the divine order on family governance.

In chaos theory, the butterfly effect is the sensitive dependence on initial conditions in which a small change in one state of a deterministic nonlinear system can result in large differences in a later state. The term, closely associated with the work of Edward Lorenz is derived from the metaphorical example of the details of a tornado (the exact time of formation, the exact path taken) being influenced by minor perturbations such as the flapping of the wings of a distant butterfly several weeks earlier. Lorenz discovered the effect when he observed that runs of his weather model with initial condition data that was rounded in a seemingly inconsequential manner would fail to reproduce the results of runs with the unrounded initial condition data. A very small change in initial conditions had created a significantly different outcome.

The defiance of the divine order to family governance assumes the butterfly effect, and as they say, the buck stops with the man! Men must take their place and not allow themselves to be dominated by fear, intimidated, Isolated and broken. The place of a man in the society should not be defined by what a man has but by what a man is! That’s his space. If a man places his worth in what he has, it becomes difficult for him to be who he is designed to be. Women generally have a desire to be ruled and become frustrated by the broken man who is inclined to material worth as opposed to identity worth. When a woman challenges a man’s authority it’s because they want you to rise the occasion to be the man you are supposed to be, and it must be creatively so, not forcefully so! We must as men restore manhood to the “butterfly effect” it was designed to be, so that in our right positioning, at the right time, with the right mindset, we will flap our wings and cause tornadoes of positive change in our societies and families.

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Three weeks ago, on the 25^th of April 2019, I received a call that bore bad news about the demise of a friend, the spouse to a brother of mine from another mother. My heart raced, I went into an indeterminate state, I froze, couldn’t believe what I was hearing. How and why were the questions that kept ringing in my mind. I composed myself, took my phone and dialed this brother of mine with the hope that he will tell me the contrary to what I had just heard. After three rings he picked up his call and with the calmness of voice greeted me and we talked briefly before I bluntly asked:” Is what am hearing true?” “How did you know?” He queried. “News travel fast bro,” I quipped. Well, he confirmed the worst, my heart sunk, and I retreated into a dojo and that’s where I have been since, reflecting on life, on seasons, the sad side of seasons, the ugly side, the tough side, the painful side. Reflecting on the fact that we are all sojourners and one day, we shall undertake a journey never to return. So today, I pay tributes to a beautiful daughter of the King. She brought joy to our hearts with her warmness, her kindness, her joy, her smile…she showed us love, but she Loved her heavenly Daddy more and her Daddy loved her back and called her home! In her own words before she slept, “Do not mourn for me but celebrate my life.” I celebrate you Caroline Nduta Mutiso. Rest in Peace.

Jamo

Renegade

One chilly night in a new year’s cross over party, for the umpteenth time, I rehearsed the lyrics to myself, gathered guts and approached her...” will you be my girl?” I asked. You see, we had been good friends and used to hang out a lot coz of shared interests. “That’s so sweet and I really appreciate you asking me out but sorry, am already taken.” It was deafening, I was dejected, I was crushed, totally crushed. I thought to myself…. “after all those months of time and emotional investment, it amounts to nothing?” I walked back to my boys who were waiting for the good news and wearily uttered, “she said NO.” Of course, boys being boys, cursed her and lamented at how stupid she was to lose such a “gem”. Well, after a few weeks of sulking, I friend-zoned her and we continued being good friends as if nothing had happened.

He called me and said “Gazza (My high school nickname), we need to talk”, from the seriousness of the tone and because he is my boy, this was a priority. As I sipped my drink he said, “I think my girl is seeing someone else” …… I let him talk it out with few interruptions. When I spoke up, the words were few and decisive. “Bro walk away. There are many girls and you will soon find another!” After some small talk, he was all cheered up and assured me that he would deal with the issue…… years down the line, they are happily married.  I could go on and on about the relationship challenges of the boychild in the late 90’s and early into the new millennium.

I remember one of my favorite programs back then had an intro that years down the line rings like fresh music to my ears “He was a cop, and good at his job. But he committed the ultimate sin—and testified against other cops gone bad. Cops that tried to kill him but got the woman he loved instead. Framed for murder, now he prowls the badlands...an outlaw hunting outlaws...a bounty hunter...a RENEGADE!” The passion that renegade had to hunt the outlaws was driven by the love he had for his fiancée, he was out not only out to clear his name but to revenge for the death of his fiancée. Renegade was macho and the hero that the boychild wanted to be like.  He had this “Popeye the sailor man” attitude of “can’t stance this no more”. Renegade taught us how to go all out for your woman, not all out against her. He taught us how to passionately fight for her but not to fight her. And so, we grew up knowing that women are to be valued, to be respected and to be loved. We also grew up knowing that, if a relationship is meant to be, it will be and if not to be, it won’t be. The attitudes that we bore were “If she is yours, she will be” and that “If you love someone, set her free and if she is yours, she will be back.” These attitudes helped us to manage our emotions when the girlchild decided otherwise.

“Man stabs girlfriend.” “Man kills fiancée”, “Man commits suicide.” “Man shoots self in love gone sour.” These have become common headlines in our media channels, with the social media too eager to share the disturbing images in total disregard of the online kin and friends. My verdict on the man; We have become weak! We have caved into pressures of social and societal demands. We have embraced the attitudes of “entitlement” and “fake it till you make it.” These two attitudes make you weak and cause you to lose your identity. You weaken to the state of not having the shock absorbers to take NO for an answer and where NO is issued you retaliate with self-harm or harming her. We have become threatened more and more by the empowered girlchild and so to “retain our position”, we act in total disregard to what she feels or thinks and try to subdue her into accepting that she is the lesser one”.

This is not what “renegades” do. “Renegades” respect and value the woman and let her be. “Renegades” have the backbone to take “NO” for an answer. “Renegades” know when to hold on in a relationship, when to walk away and when to run. “Renegades” are brave enough to talk about it. They don’t kill her, but they can kill for her. They don’t fight her but can fight for her. They talk about it and seek social support from the “boys.” When she upsets you, go shoot pool, go hiking, go car racing, play your guitar, take your boys for nyama choma, go play soccer…. Just find your dojo and hang in there!

To the fathers and big brothers, let us mentor this generation to be the men that society wants them to be. Find time at your places of work and worship to talk to the youth, visit schools and colleges…plug into that space and transform a man. Let’s restore the man to the default settings, who God intended for them to be!

Jamo

Smooth Operator- Like a a rushing wind,he walks in and out of your life,never to be seen

I grew up in a staunch Christian family and one of the activities that I got involved in to build my faith was participating in Christian youth camps. Of course, as a teenager, I just didn’t look forward to the camps for spiritual nourishment but also for the socialization sake of it. In those days they referred to me as “God’s gift to the ladies” coz I was young, in a singing group and was playing the guitar! I was macho, with some six-pack to show off. Well, not anymore. I have since aged and worked hard at rebranding and shedding off that tag line. In one of those camps, I met this girl, let’s call her “Peggy”, well, let’s just say she was pretty and I spotted her. Being the gift as they would call me, Peggy was more than happy to be spotted and charmed by me and gladly continued communication after the camp. Fast forward 3 months later, Peggy was out of my life and I couldn’t even remember what she looked like or who her real name was. That was me back then, the charmer, the heart breaker through disappearance.

Once, twice, thrice, in a lifetime you find that person who comes into your life and wordsmiths you out of reality and into a seemingly unending fantasy. This is the smooth operator; He is verbally skilled, persuasive, an astute negotiator, a con artist, very manipulative! I know as I shared the story of Peggy, the lady readers are either smiling, fuming or having mixed emotions or starting to process a name or names of some clever scoundrel who either is in their life or has been there before and swept them off their feet and they feel like they are over the moon! This is fantasy ladies, pure fantasy, run away and run away fast. Don’t be caught up in this snare that will leave you empty, heartbroken and bitter.

To the married folk, be on the look-out for this fox that comes to devour relationships in the name of, “He is understanding, he is a good listener, he is caring, he doesn’t judge me, he is a gentleman, he is supportive, he has good advice………what the hell…. This one will steal, kill and destroy and leave you hanging trying to pick up the pieces of what was once a happy family. Run away, don’t let him start the talk, shut him out completely give him no room. He thrives on broken dreams that have been shattered with age and shows up as the dreams fixer! Robert Greene in his book the art of seduction describes him as the ideal lover and assumes the symbol of a portrait painter. “Under his eye, all of your physical imperfections disappear. He brings out noble qualities in you, frames you a myth, makes you godlike, immortalizes you. For his ability to create such fantasies, he is rewarded with great power”

To the unmarried, the smooth operator will not just show up as the Mr. Charmer but will also portray some narcistic ways from a distance, he will often appear as being two-faced, putting friends and family down behind their backs, he has these tendencies of blaming his failures on others and puts on a different face in public from what you know him. He is addicted to fantasies, he will lie and pull that “wasn’t me” Shaggy line on you, he is a flirt and often unreliable but usually, his charm on you is irresistible! The signs are so clear, run away and do so fast!

To the man out there, married and unmarried, true love is in masculinity. Genuinely love her, care for her and when you speak with her and to her, say what you mean and mean what you say! Charm is sweet and makes you feel macho, a conqueror, a mighty warrior but it also breaks hearts, brings hate and bitterness and messes with destinies. The role of the man is to be a role model and leader to your family. Be the man that society expects you to be, be the man that your woman expects you to be, be the man that your boy children want to be like, be the man that your daughter dreams of marrying. Be the light to show them the way and be the salt to season their lives! Don’t be the smooth operator.

Jamo

Tabula Rasa- Clean slate

In the theory of knowledge and psychology, the state of the “blankness” of mind is referred to as tabula rasa. This can also be defined as the mind being in a clean slate state. In the 17th century, the English empiricist John Locke, in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689), argued for the mind’s initial resemblance to “white paper, void of all characters,” with “all the materials of reason and knowledge” derived from experience.

We are a sum of our experiences and cannot run from that. When you see a broken man, a strong man, a weak man, a lazy man, a courageous man, just remember that they are who they are because of what they have gone through in life.

“He is such a weak man” you say, with a sneer and a condescending tone. Have you been in his shoes? Have you walked his journey? Do you know what it feels like to be a weak man in this so judgmental society? Can you carry the weight on his shoulders for just a second? I doubt you would. Even most of the courageous man in the society (or so you think), has some deep lying wounds which have been inflicted through the experiences he has gone through to become the courageous man that he is today.

Women are unforgetting while men are unforgiving. I am reminded of an interesting story in the good book about a King named David, who was embarrassed by a subordinate in his time of great turmoil and he kept the matter to heart for a long time, but while on his death bed and about to meet his maker, called his son and reminded him of this very hurting matter of the heart and asked him to not let it pass. Well, his son executed the subordinate. This is how men are wired. We may not keep on reminding you one too many times that you have wronged us but most of the time, we keep the matter to heart, and the more we do the heavier the load of what we carry.

Forgiveness and letting go is what a man needs to do, but can he? Can a man’s mind be in a state of tabula rasa to the past hurts and pains that now define the very essence of him? The biggest challenge that a man has is self-forgiveness. If a man can forgive himself for the failures and wrongs he has committed on himself, then he can forgive others, he can have a clean slate and redefine his life. He can move from a state of dis-empowered to empowered, from being weak to strong, being fearful to being courageous.

“But it’s too painful”, “I must get back at her”, “She will know that I am the man in the relationship”, “Huyo hata na dawa sitamsamehea” (Not even medication will make me forgive this one), you affirm with pain and rage! The principle of the log and the spec applies here…...before dealing with the spec that is of the wrong that has been committed you, remove the log that has been enlarging in your eye because you cannot forgive yourself! Pain and rage are contagious but so is love and happiness within any relationship, and what you spread is purely a matter of choice. Self-forgive so that you can forgive! Get your mind to the state of tabula rasa to the negative….and give the significant other an opportunity for a clean slate! This is not a one off but something you must do as often as you can!

Have a “tabularasarized” time!

Echoes of Pain

"Stop crying! Real men don't cry!" This we have at some point been told one too many times by those ahead of us! As a matter of fact, this statement forms the core of initiation into manhood. "Why can’t I? What’s so wrong with the tears? How do they affect the man? How then do I deal with the pains that keep on piling and piling because I can’t and shouldn't cry as a man? "Mwanume ni kuvumilia" Is the popular adage on these sides of the globe.

Recently, on my travel back to Nairobi after a short trip, I sat pensively constantly thinking "Why shouldn't men cry?" "Why is the society so harsh on men who cry?" If you have had a cave experience, you know very well the fun of being in the cave is shout so that you can "hear" yourself!  What causes the echo is the emptiness of the cave, confined within hard rocks. This is the story of a man's life! The man is characterized by echoes that scream from within him. The societal expectations on how a man should deal with his emotions are that he shouldn't show the emotional side, and if he does, he just ain't man enough. Men have been ridiculed for being emotional, they have been laughed at for being too feminine with statements such us "Uko na umama sana"(You are to feminine) or "Wacha umama"(Stop being feminine) being the norm of Men's conversations.  Well, a man being a man, would rather conceal it all than to be associated with "Umama"(Feminism), as they call it. But at what expense? At the expense of a man's emotional intelligence! The burden on a man's shoulders and the unexpressed emotions have led to most men being emotional wrecks!

The results of bottling up emotions overtime have led to echoes of pain which have found multiple negative outlets. Why for instance do we always encounter disturbing headlines in the dailies?...." Man, slaughters wife", "Man kills family and commits suicide" These and more are the articles we encounter daily. Why are men dying early? why are men having affairs? Why are men stealing, why is corruption synonymous to masculinity? These are the sicknesses of men in the society; the results of echoes of pain that get louder and louder as men age.

In a previous article which I wrote "Inviolate vows", I suggested that men must talk with each other and today I add, men must be deliberately vulnerable with each other and with their significant other. Talking about it is one of the proven ways to reduce the sounds that echo from within. Talk it out, cry if you must, cry on her shoulder, cry in the closet, let it out, let it go! The more expressive you are the lower the sounds of the echoes of pain from within.

True masculinity is in being vulnerable, true to your emotions and responding appropriately to your emotions. If you understand your emotions, you understand yourself and you understand others. When you express your emotions, you become healthier, become a better husband, better father, better friend, better son and in a cascading effect, we will have a better society. 

While at it, let me go to my closet and let it out! As for those who think "niko na umama"(I am feminine), I will let you be for now!