Snapshots: It is the old who are teaching the youth 'tabia mbaya'

 The old of today are so wrapped up in themselves that they forget to pass wisdom and life lessons to the youth. Photo:NYPost

The tragedy of today’s generation is that they will grow up without interacting with a proper African elder, you know, villagers who have chewed so much salt that the stuff dribbles out of their ears.

I am talking about a grizzled man or woman who walks around with the scents of Africa, feet cracked, hands calloused by years of hard work. Their rheumy eyes projected the cynicism that comes with observing African nonsense and they wore their wisps of white hair and wrinkled faces like a badge of honour. Honour, yes. Because it meant something to be old.

The men (and some women) invariably smelled of stale tobacco, wore threadbare clothes and had a penchant for speaking their minds and lewdly so, especially when the subject at hand was sex. But behind the cynicism and veil of poverty lay brains brimming with a lifetime of knowledge on philosophy, politics, military history and science, religion, veterinary medicine, range management and countless other mundane things, such as how to squeeze a nasty boil on an agemate’s butt!

At that point, they would be virtually retired. Senior wives would have ceded childbearing and sexual duties to younger, nubile women with firm breasts. The old men would have handed over physical labours to their sons. So, the wizened old geezers would spend their days playing bao in the esteemed position of professor emeritus of African and village affairs.

Then, there being no honorific titles like doctor, prof, honourable and such, you simply carried a walking stick and displayed your mane of white hair. The downside of this is that even bumbling idiots passed for intellectuals, but you get the drift. Nonetheless, the white-haired ones provided counsel, sorted disputes and prevented hotheads from invading the neighbouring clan because of a stolen chicken.

But these days, mothers-in-law wear short skirts and G-strings, chew gum and are more sexually active than their daughters-in-law. Wazee go to the gym and dye their hair. Everyone is chewing raw vegetables, drinking barrels of water and fiddling with herbal tea. No one wants to grow old

And you know why? Being an old man and the custodian of ethics and morality on a continent where people were walking around butt-naked, meant you had to lead by example. You didn’t shake your daughter-in-law’s hand, leave alone staring at her bare breasts. You didn’t start wars – you prevented and ended them. You didn’t steal land, you resolved land disputes.

Unfortunately, all these nasty things are what wazee want to do today. They want to steal people’s wives and husbands. They want to fight, steal land and initiate chaos. Whereas it is their role to teach girls to ‘sit properly’, the wazee of today not only ogle, but encourage and facilitate them to sit as badly as they want.

To spot white hair would demand of them a certain level of decorum, wisdom and knowledge. And because this is lacking, they troop to the salon weakly and apply Kiwi, so they can chew gum in a scatterbrained manner without feeling guilty.

Ironically, it is the young who are dying their hair white!