Who is the Jogoo?

A recent Sunday Nation’s editorial got my attention with the quote that, “Fifty years ago, the typical image of a father in many traditional Kenyan societies was a sullen tyrant, never spoken to by a child or, heaven forbid, a woman, quietly counting his cows in his smoky hut. The modern Kenyan father is a guy who does his nails on Wednesdays, goes for anger therapy on Thursdays and governs through “family meetings” at which his daughters have as much say as anyone else and whose (lack of) authority is the worst kept secret of our times.”

The quotation reminded me of a friend from college days whose oft-repeated clarion call when dealing with the fair sex was that, “women have no place in our homestead”. I wonder how he fared in his endeavour to keep his homestead away from contamination.

It also brought to mind another friend whose only defense in the face of his “demanding” wife and daughter is the question-“who wears pants in this house?” The ladies usual answer is that even the house help does wear trousers and hence wearing trousers would not be equated to wearing any authority. My friend has retreated to meek whispers directed at he wife, out of his children’s earshot, with the rhetorical question; “who pees while standing in this house?”

Today, the man’s place in the family hierarchy is endangered. No one takes his authority seriously. He has become a doormat, a sofa to be sat on by all and sundry. All that talk about the head being superior to the neck is meant to hoodwink men into thinking that they are in charge. Even the oft-quoted phrase of women being the “weaker sex” is another gimmick engineered by the ladies to keep men imagining that they are the stronger gender. If you want to expose the ladies’ craving for power, watch them glee at the mention that they are the “power behind the throne” or the universal recognition that “behind every successful man there is a woman”.

So who carries real authority? Could it be the “stranger” Wanyoro, (wife to Riverwood comedian Machang’i), whom as the screen husband wonders aloud, can be so willing to drop her father’s name and adopt yours? The one who rushes out to join your siblings when a family photo of your brothers and sisters is called out!

At a recent seminar, an advocate of women’s power told us that women are not ordinary. You have to have some special powers if you can leave all that you are familiar with to cross borders, oceans, tribe, community, religious and language barriers to be with the one you love! You have to be strong. Very strong.

There is consensus over the years, and despite what the men may think, it’s an open secret out there that the “weaker” gender is not as feeble as many men are wont to imagine. I fully concur with the wise guys from days gone by that:-


“The hand that rocks the cradle is the hand that rules the world”-WR Wallace

“Women run to extremes; they are either better or worse than men”-La Bruyere, Les Caracteres

“The female of the species is more deadly than the male”- Rudyard Kipling

“Women never reason, and therefore they are (comparatively) seldom wrong”- William Hazlitt

“Women are very pleased when you call them cruel”- PAC deBeaumerchais, The Barber of Seville

“Disguise our bondage as we will
‘Tis woman, woman, rules us still”
-Thomas Moore, Sovereign Woman

“We cannot all be masters”- Shakespeare, Othello I

Like a moth drawn to the certain death of a light, men continue to beat a path to the doors and hearts of our womenfolk, certain that the flirting lights camouflage a deadly fire that means physical and emotional harm. Aren’t all male caught in a quagmire. You cannot live with women and neither can you live without them! But hey, what would be the substitute?

“I think it can be stated without denial that no man ever saw a man he would be willing to marry if he were a woman”- George Gibbs, How to stay married