Kenya: Are You a Deadbeat Kenyan? One Jackson Njeru decided to open a Facebook page earlier in September to expose parents of either gender who are not supportive of their children in any way. In less than a month, the page had attracted close to 200,000 fans. The uproar the page caused in its debut week of operation could be indicative of several things - too many of us find sordid humour in the humiliation of others, too many of us crave attention at the expense of common decency, too many children are growing up with mean parents, the levels of free-falling abuse on social media would alarm the toughest of demons, and, most disturbingly, our moral fibre as a society is in dire and desperate need of redemption. We most often view ourselves in the purest, well-meaning light. It is human nature to find fault in others long before we find it in our own inadequacies. But, perhaps, deadbeat parents are an indicative sign that we all need to look at the seeds we sow in our own society. If you were to take a good long look around, you would be heartbroken, or amused (depending on your level of sanity) to find that deadbeat individuals thrive everywhere you turn. 1. It starts at home ... There are the neighbours children who find pleasure in ringing your doorbell incessantly for fun on that one day of the week when you decide to sleep in. Who are their parents? I grew up with a woman who would correct any form of latent evil intentions festering in my young mind with a simple look. The promise of death and doom in those eyes were enough to keep my fingers far away from any doorbells. Todays children stroll into a room where grown folks are communing and watching some channel for grown-ups, grab the remote and switch over to some irrelevant cartoon programme. Their mother then laughs - the way women laugh when they think their children are being cute - and say: If he doesnt watch his cartoons he throws such cranky tantrums. Cranky tantrums? I often wonder. How about stepping on a sleeping Tiger to discover the true meaning of cranky? Todays parents are chic and modern and want to solve their childrens problems using condescending dialogue and bribery. Todays parents let tantrums go past the two-year-old stage where they should have been uprooted and buried. Todays children talk back loudly and spew out profanity learned from R rated movies. Todays parents are sadly unconsciously raising men and women who will one day appear on the page, DeadBeat Kenya. 2. In the workplace ... There are those of us who do not work with deadbeat colleagues but there is always that one office mouthpiece. The one who always has an opinion (mostly negative) about every single person in the office. She or he is also known as the office drama queen or king. This deadbeat will make everyones business his or her own in the hope of finding some sort of painful leverage to use against them. They will almost always be exceedingly talented at playing victim. Woe unto you if this deadbeat is favoured by your boss because you will spend your days in the office trying to steer clear of their torturous radar. 3. On the road ... A special breed of private vehicle owners who are always in a bigger hurry than you reside on our roads. You have encountered them. The ones who shamelessly accelerate at pedestrian crossings, and block exits at junctions just so they can inch forward one centimetre ahead. You will also meet pedestrians who seem to think simulating a jog means you are running faster than the car coming towards you at 80kph, and footbridges are just fancy infrastructures for aesthetic purposes. Of course, one should not forget the public service vehicles that abide by their own road rules, which have never been crafted by a legislative pen. More often than not, as you board a matatu at night hoping for a quiet ride home after a long day mingling with deadbeats of various kinds, you will have to deal with the deafening noise disguised as music. One has to give mention to the matatu conductors who often take advantage of tired, distracted passengers and disappear with their money. 4. And the others ... Everyone by now is familiar with freelance sperm donors who happily sire children, then head for the hills when cells, which will one day need diapers, start dividing. From those yonder hills, they make idiotic statements such as: Contraception is a womans responsibility and she should have kept her knees together. Career baby daddies exist. Just take a leisurely browse on deadbeat Kenya - the page where they proudly showcase their intellectual powers. However, malicious baby mamas also exist. The women who use babies to wring financial favours from hapless, well-meaning fathers at the expense of their childrens well-being. Others proudly wear the single badge when they have saddled parental responsibility to the babys grandparents. We also have women who dress to kill - literally. Closely related are the women who should be jailed for life for the abuse of makeup, as well as the massacre of eyebrows. Tales can be told concerning house helps, ranging from baby killers, to the ones who cook food that can be used as a weapon of mass destruction. Take for instance bean stew with enough water to generate hydro electricity and onions burnt to a black crisp floating on the surface. How about those who sneak into your room and try on all your clothes, jewellery and cosmetics, or those who make your children become soap operas addicts? We must have heard of, or encountered incompetent medical staff in hospitals with no ounce of empathy, or the landlords who use a magnifying glass while assessing your house in a bid to find one crack to give them enough reason not to return your rent deposit. And abusive pets such as cats that always pee on your favourite chair while no one is looking? We cant forget the special brand of Christians who breathe fire and brimstone on mere mortals. The religious fanatics who seem to read a different Bible from the rest of us. They are quick to persecute others loudly, always pointing accusing fingers and ignoring the giant logs in their own eyes. These are the Christians who only commune with other holy members of the community, forgetting that Christ came to save the lost, not the found. It is human nature to assume we are better than everyone else around us. But think long and hard about this question: Are you in one way or another creating, enabling, or becoming one form or another of a deadbeat person?
Posted on: Mon, 03 Nov 2014 17:59:14 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015