By SILAS NYACHWANI.
Memo No. 40. From the National Welfare Desk of Men.
Why Kenyan Men are Going Their Own Way.
Sometime in 2010, we visited a rich man in Karen. I must have been in third year in college and I don’t remember why we were visiting him. But it was one of those things that leave lasting impression in your life.
We were like five or six of us. Two guys and three college beauties.
The dude cooked for us. Served us very good whiskey and foreign beers and he really charmed us.
He was 40-something, tall, dark and very handsome (no homo). He was one of these guys who are so collected you can’t help but envy.
We all wondered where his wife and children were. Later on that night he summoned the boys to his gazebo and we left the girls to enjoy the movie as we had a chat. One of us asked him where his family was. He told us, he had gone through a bitter divorce a few years before and he had no intentions of ever marrying again.
“Why? You have everything, you can always get a good woman and start over, after all you have everything…”
“Doesn’t work that way. Now that I have children, I don’t need a wife. I just want to enjoy life… Life is too short.. Miss me with that shit…”
We were fascinated by his swearing.
It didn’t make sense. I remember one of us saying afterwards, “maybe he is gay and that is why he can’t marry or that is why he got divorced.”
Back then, in our mid-20s, about to finish college, we stupidly thought a man is incomplete until he is married and he has children. We judged the man as a stupid hedonist, reckless and irresponsible. Little did we know what awaited us most men our generation.
Youthful idealism is terrible thing. I see young men say foolish things, write foolish comments and I cringe knowing that ten years from now, they will know older men are not stupid.
After I wrote last week’s memo where I encouraged men to value their time and resources, an older female friend accused me of promoting incel culture and sent me those academic papers on incel culture favoured by leftist and she canceled me.
It was one of the rare memos that even my worst female detractors endorsed because nobody really should waste another person’s time and effort like the lady did.
To tell me that I encourage incel behaviour by encouraging men to treat themselves better is the most insulting thing I have ever had to deal with.
I am all for healthy relationships between men and women. I support and encourage marriage for those who want to try. Those who read my memos objectively know that I am only opposed to bad behaviour from both men and women. The advice I give men works both ways only that I chose to focus on men since most women hate anything that does not flatter them.
But men handle the truth much more soberly than women. Nobody spoke for men until a few of us have recently taken up the mantle and we are doing our best, sometimes imperfectly.
Pointing out bad and inconsistent female behaviour is not misogyny. Women often hold men to very high standards: good looks, jobs, well behaved, bla bla bla. When we hold the mirror back, we are called chauvinists.
But here is the good news.
Over the last one year I have been hanging out with single men in their 30s and their 40s. Never seen a happier lot. Increasingly, more and more of them don’t even think much about women. And that is the greatest gift of Feminism. Feminism has freed men and those who get the message no longer want to sign up for a marriage that is doomed to fail…
Relationships in Nairobi hardly last three months. Just a few meetings, two or three sexual encounters followed by mutual boredom and everyone going back to their lives. On to the next. Neither gender has anything tangible to offer the other.
I have seen women who have gone their ways. They don’t try much. And men too who will not commit to any woman at all.
It is honestly a happy place to be. We don’t hate women at all. I have no issue with women and how they choose to live their lives anymore.
I have examined myself and I don’t think I have anything worthwhile I can offer a woman. Absolutely nothing. Not because women hurt me or anything. Just an honest assessment. I don’t think a woman has anything she can offer me either.
As platonic friends, professional colleagues, sharing memes, I am OK and I have a lot of female friends for that. For marriage or romance, I have absolute, zero expectations…
And there are so many men OK with their video games, road trips, booze, and other healthy distractions.
And that is why, more and more men like me are choosing healthy bachelorhood over toxic relationships. We talk to some of our married friends daily and we wish them luck. They are suffering. I talk to divorced guys who have baby mama drama, can’t even see their kids and that shit hurts. It kills them on the inside.
Given the often predictable outcome of marriages and relationships in our generation, the sensible choice is to pick happiness. Want to marry? Good luck son.
We hope the younger men and women who come after us will get it right. As millennials, we fucked up big time and our children will pay the highest price. But if you can avoid ruining another person’s life more so bringing a child to earth, please do.
So, men have been going their own way for some time. There are so many bachelors in Nairobi and around the country. They are not gay. They are not dysfunctional. They are not commitment-phobic. They just realised marriage is not worth the effort at all.
They just figured out that there is nothing a man can gain from marriage. You may say, ‘what about kids?’ And men who are divorced will tell you, it is not even worth it.
Still, we do hope we can meet a girl who we will click well with and sail around the world with, but it is such a forlorn hope. We don’t expect much.
So, MGTOW is not about being incels or inability to get laid. MGTOW is not being anti-women. As men, we have 99 problems and women ain’t one of them to quote Jay-Z.
In the words of one of our better patrons, Paul Proteus( bless his gracious soul), it is not that we can’t man up. We are manning out. And there will be world peace.
If you want to marry and have children, good luck in that endeavour.
Some of us want to move to good neighbourhoods. Buy a good grill for barbeque. Afford good whisky and cigars and read Anton Chekhov in the morning, enjoy Woke Soyinka in the afternoon and finish up on don DeLilo at night. Over the weekend we want to watch Western Classics. Or if I’m good company the 1980s reggae, some Ferre Gola doing some acoustic and Madilu laughing. That is why that rich guy in Karen still inspires me.
So, any woman who thinks we have been defeated and that is why we are withdrawing from marriage and dating, this to assure you, we have no problem whatsoever with women. We still have female friends. We still hang out with women.
But we go back home alone, a beer can in hand, ground nuts on the other and collapse our couches watching boring documentaries and bliss has never tasted this good.
And we will be fine. You just won’t believe how big the club of well-to-do bachelors is growing across the world.
E! News Blog
0 Comments