By Ted Malanda
Just when you fear the boy child is done for, a small story pops up in a newspaper that brings a glint in your eye.
For me, it wasn’t the highly entertaining slugfest between Kibisu Kabatesi and Barack Muluka on behalf of Deputy Premier Musalia Mudavadi and Premier Raila Odinga respectively, but eight-year-old Master Baraka Rimba Kahindi of Malindi.
When boys his age were chasing grasshoppers and men ten times his age were talking and behaving like toddlers, young Baraka fashioned a raft and paddled his marooned family across River Galana. And not just that. The little tyke has gone into business and is making a tidy sum running his ‘ferry’ after school.
When he was asked why he was not afraid of the water, he is reported to have thumped his puny chest and roared, “Because I’m a man!”
A man! Did you hear that, girls? A man!
I smiled for the rest of the day each time I remembered that quote. Often times, men only remember they are men when they are fighting over a woman in a bar. But this lad knows what it means to be a man — a real man.
Warrior
These are the facts. A man’s spirit is supposed to shine in times of adversity. They say a real warrior fights hardest when he is down. He will do everything to rescue his woman and his children. He is that ingenious creature that fashioned tools out of stone and slaughtered a crocodile to feed his family.
At only eight years old, when the chips were down, Baraka, that little warrior, made a raft, a major engineering fit at his age, and captained it across a swollen river. And not just once. Now he is in business. He has already earned his first salary, employed himself (when MBAs are tarmacking), and no less an authority than the Red Cross has borrowed his contraption in their rescue efforts!
I put to you that young Baraka has what a senior journalist called ‘more testicular equipment’ than all men who want to be president of this country put together.
His problem solving skills and his entrepreneurial spirit are way above the abilities of an average college graduate. His community spirit is better developed than that of a handful of NGOs put together.
Most important, that eight-year-old chap is more man than the rest of us with hairy chests and a string of mistresses.
Too bad he is not in charge of disaster management.
