Besides reading more, I also decided to get back to writing for newspaper (after 5 years). The following story was published by The Star Newspaper on Father’s Day, June 17 2018. The names have been changed to protect the identities of the actual characters.
Over the years, Father’s Day has carried so much hope for me: to know my father, understand him, learn from him and love him. This hope has since been shattered and this year, I am packing it away.
In March, family and friends gathered to celebrate my father’s 46th birthday and short visit to Kenya from the United States, where he lives. He treated his guests to a frivolous surprise: his 22-year-old concubine.
On that day, mother drove me and my younger sister to my grandmother’s house in Ngong Hills. This was the venue of the party. Following closely was my mother’s cousin, let us call her Aunt Jane, and her husband. Earlier on, I had told my mother how every time I met my grandmother, she complained about us forgetting her. Consequently, we stopped by Karen shopping centre and bought gifts for her and the birthday man.
We arrived in the evening and found all my father’s sisters and their children present. None live in Kenya but them flying in for the party was no surprise since my father is the last born. My mother had not seen some of them ever since her relationship with my father ended 17 years ago, but smiles were managed and hugs extended.
The party was everything father had promised: plenty of food, club bangers from the 90s, variety of beverages and a grand reunion. A stranger would have found it hard to believe that some of us were meeting for the first time.
Towards 11pm, some of the guests had long transmuted into dancers and musicians, flowing off-tune and singing absolutely misplaced lyrics. Sitting on the only couch in the house next to my 22-year-old sister, let’s call her Diana, looking across the room, I spotted this odd young girl.
“Whose daughter could that be?” I asked myself.
Seconds later, she stood up and approached my father and laid her left hand on his arm then whispered into his ear. Now she had my full attention! For the next 30 minutes or so, I watched her like a hawk, noticing her guzzle whiskey, shot after shot.
“It cannot be what I’m thinking. She appears younger than Diana,” I thought to myself in distress.
A few drinks later, their fondness for each other was what I would call ‘a city on a hilltop’: it could not be ignored. Anxiety set in. Everyone else was noticing their theatrics.
I went over to my mother to check temperature.
“Enjoying the party, mum?” I probed, praying she would not ask me a question I would be too embarrassed to answer.
“I’m okay! If I may ask, who is that girl?” she leaned in and whispered.
“I’m asking myself the same question!” I responded, folding my arms across my chest. Mother waved at Aunt Rita, my father’s eldest sister, signalling her to head over. She staggered her way to us and bundled herself next to my mother.
“Whose daughter is that?” mum asked.
“That’s Wendy’s friend, called Judy,” Aunt Rita said. Wendy is my father’s second-born sister.
This version of the story was believable until a few minutes later, when my father and Judy disappeared into the corridor that led to the bedrooms. A few minutes later she appeared wearing his oversize T-shirt.
“Is she that much of a friend to the family?” I asked myself, clutching at my flickering hope for decency.
I looked across the room to check for Aunt Wendy, only to spot her seated at the furthest corner of the room alone, fixated on her phone. This is when I knew that Aunt Rita had fed me and mother a cock and bull story. I recalled a conversation father had brought up the previous weekend over a nyama choma session about what I would think of him dating a campus girl. I dismissed him, thinking he had taken one too many. I remembered asking him why in the world he would want to do that.
“A friend of mine told me it’s the in-thing now in Kenya,” he said.
“You need new friends,” I responded.
He complemented his question by showing me videos of campus girls wiggling their behinds like they were auditioning for a dancehall music video. The clips were taken while at a popular night club in Ngong town.
“Siz, we shouldn’t have come here,” said Diana, interrupting my flashback.
I went over to my mother and told her we were ready to leave. We signaled Aunt Jane and her husband. My father requested us to drop him and Judy in Ngong town. My mother refused to give Judy a lift and asked for her to be directed to Aunt Jane’s car. The next stop was at a lodging in Ngong town, where we dropped my father and left. A few minutes later, Aunt Jane called my mother to gossip that they had dropped the girl there as well. Judy had also told them that she was a university student who had been in a relationship with my father for a while and had met him at a club in Ngong town.
“She must have been one of the dancers in the video!” I growled within myself, feeling disgraced and dishonoured.
Well, having a sugar daddy is a big part of the society now, and even settling comfortably amidst our conversations. I have been one of the master enablers of this unacceptable social behaviour, enjoying it at conversation level on the radio shows on my way to work, until it was my turn. This is the harsh reality of our society today and it has trickled into successive generations.
I carried the shame with me for a good number of days that followed, but I have been freed by the power of forgiveness. I believe that this is not an isolated case, so for me and my ilk, may forgiveness grant you freedom on this Father’s Day.
With that said, I celebrate all the decent fathers in the world. You are the first man your daughter ever loved and by your fervent love, every other man has been chosen in the image of what you taught love to be. The unique lessons that only you could teach her remain the light through which she guides herself and her children away from self-sabotaging paths. Kings, Happy Father’s Day!
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