Junior must now tighten his belt

Fatherhood is one occupation that is coming under threat each and every day. Gone are the days when we were proudly referred to as breadwinners. Apparently, this term seems to have been expanded in recent times to refer to the fellow who pays all household bills in order to ensure the comfort of the entire family — unless one is sick or worse, dead. Though Myra and her kind have been on the breadwinning track of late, we may as well share this unflattering title with them.

Winning the bread, however, is the least of my problems. You see, since the recent declaration by the taxman to levy certain basic commodities has come to pass, then Junior may as well change his lifestyle. Among the items that are to be taxed includes processed milk, Junior’s staple diet. I just fell short of telling him to tighten his belt. Then I remembered that he does not even have a waist. But he has no choice. Milk does not come out of the kitchen faucet. It is procured using Kenya’s legal tender, a fact that may not make sense to him at his age. His days of gulping an entire packet are slowly coming to an end, thanks to the mandarins at the Treasury.

In many homes in Kenya, milk is a luxury, not a necessity. Most of us were content with “baptising” our cup of tea with a drop of milk that hardly changed the dark brown liquid into real tea. Yet we survived. Interestingly, my father was a ‘dairy farmer’ or so he imputed. His one cow needed all the soothing pieces of music to produce at least two litres of milk per day. A litre would be sold to the neighbour while we made do with the other half. To Junior, I do not have a cow, neither do I intend to rear one. Please stick to mama’s milk while it lasts.

Photo credit: palmbeachpost.com