What my great bad dad taught me

By TONY M

My missus, once a month, makes me accompany her to church. In return, once a month, she accompanies me to my poetry readings. Ours is one of those 'opposites attract' unions.

That’s just Men Only shamefacedly explaining what I was doing in a church the other Sunday, listening to some pastor go on about "father wounds."

According to him, all good fathers are the same, like the Father. But bad dads are bad in their own ways.

A strange twist on Leo Tolstoy, I thought as I sat there, slightly bored. It was Tolstoy who in the opening to Anna Karenina, wrote: "Happy families are all alike; but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way!"

Anyway, according to the preacherman, bad dads come in ABCDs. The Absentee ones, the Beating Baddies, the Control Freaks, and Deadbeat Dads.

I will not revert to the preaching, let alone preach to the converted. Let’s just say I found it slightly disconcerting when the pastor, with tears rolling down his face, offered to be the scapegoat for all those big, bad, daddy goats.

outright beatings

As a few folk freely wept around me, I thought with amazement, "Hey, my old man was one of those daddies behaving badly, but surely, there were a few great things I learned from him."

So, since Men Only is renown for going off the beaten track, no pun intended, and since it is seven years to the date since the old man passed on — here are five things I got from the man.

Fight like a maniac and you’ll be feared: For the first five years or so after I joined primary school, I was one of those bookworms that the bigger, badder and dumber boys picked on — mostly because I liked answering questions in class, but was utter rubbish in the playing ground.

One guy in particular, Raymond O, had made it his mission in life to torment me. From snatching my lunches to outright thwackings, Ray was the bane of my existence. Until one day when I came snivelling home for the umpteenth time.

"Tomorrow," the old man said, handing me a spanner, "smack that feller hard on the head with this tool."

Okay, so I got into a spot of trouble, but the bullying stopped, pap! I became an expert at it and by Standard Six, was actually a regular fixture in the bullying circles of school.

Drink like a fish: Now, I know this is not normally the sort of thing a boy should remember, much less praise his old man for. But we were denizens of Nairobi West, the drinking capital of the city, and dad liked his tipple — and taught us to sip beer.

What’s the lesson in there? That some things in life which you consider bitter, actually make you better.

Or at least, you get to realise that they are much sweeter than at first taste. Think if the Almighty had answered the Lord’s plea — "take this bitter cup away from me"? We’d all be on Hell Express.

Don’t be scared of The Man: On Saba Saba day in 1990, my old man was on his way to visit me in school (which was in the vicinity of Kamukunji) but got derailed by the ongoing riots.

I still consider him one of the grassroot heroes of the Ford Democratic struggle! That’s how in my college years, from 1997 to 2002, I was in every riot in the city as a ‘civil activist’.’When Kibaki got sworn in as Narc at Uhuru Park, I hang up the activist boots!

Don’t be afraid to be laughed at: Growing up, the old man made us get into all sorts of public humiliations — like sending us for giant tilapias from the fish factory (then situated on Baricho Road) which I’d ferry backside through the estate — and rearing chicken in the backyard, which would escape, and we’d have to chase those kukus across the playing fields, in full sight of other children.

Nicknames like ‘Kuku Runner’ and ‘Fishbone’ give a kid hard skin!

Love football My old man would go for Shabana matches at the nearby Nyayo Stadium in the 1980s, and had a love affair with Maradona that lasted from 1982 to 1994.

This piece is for Josie Silla, who lost her dad-in-law, and whom my old man died owing money.