The Paper Bag Man

By Silas Nyanchwani

{Young Men Please Pay Attention}

Over the weekend, I had a beer with a distant uncle who got divorced over the December holiday.

In his very late 50s, he is retiring later this year. He carried his belongings from the marriage in a polythene bag.

After nearly three decades of marriage, all he has is an unfinished house in the village, a Japanese job of a car that knows every road (and mechanic) in Kenya. He cut a stoic figure, relieved from a marriage he should have left over a decade ago.

In the olden times, when your wife kicked you out, you would pass by a supermarket, say Uchumi, order a huge serving of humble pie, and go back to your first wife that you used to despise. And if you had any manners or grace, you would be humble and eke it out with her, having learned your lesson. Some men lacked grace or manners; even when taken back by their long-suffering wives, they stuck to their old habits.

But nowadays, when 50+ middle-class man men are dropped, he is likely to end up alone, with liabilities and kids who don’t even like that much and a wife who will not even attend his funeral. We see these things every other day but treat them as isolated incidents. Yet every adult male who has lived in a city long enough has buried or will bury one such man.

And on Sunday, I was faced with such a case.

Three ironies played out in my head.

The first one, another good uncle, tagged along. This other uncle has lived in Nairobi since 1984. Every meeting we have, he has an anecdote of a male friend who walked out of his marriage with just his clothes. Some lived to tell. For some, their marriages ending, it was effectively over for them, and they faced a quiet and (un)dignified death, ignored by ex-wives and children who were too young to understand the complexities of urban marriages. But they (the children) will learn them in their time.

The second irony is that we were with a man who was a living example of the many discussions I have had with my other uncle about men and the paper bags they use to carry their belongings out of a marriage.

The third irony is that when I was 22 or 23, on campus, I wrote a feature about “Walk-Away Husbands” in the Saturday Nation. I was young, ignorant, and foolish. But I heard a story or two about men who walk away from their marriages. But back then, either this wasn’t commonplace, or I didn’t have all the facts.

Now, older, I know this is far too common. Most men have packed their few shirts, trousers, boxers, and pairs of shoes and moved from their South B or Lang’ata aboard to a bedsitter in Kitengela or Uthiru.

My distant uncle left a mansion in Syokimau, which he admits the wife built almost entirely with her money. He said that his wife had outearned him throughout their marriage, and he wasn’t bitter in any way. He said he didn’t want to be entangled or entitled in any property wrangles, and the only thing he owned was the unfinished house in the village, his old car, and his clothes. And he walked away in peace, according to him.

Being the young one, I couldn’t ask any further questions, like the possibility of remarrying. But I appreciated his candor and his permission to write his story. He told me he was not alone. A good number of his colleagues and friends are equally senior bachelors, or in marriages, they are unwanted.

He said he couldn’t undo the past. But he believed that younger men could learn something from his experience.

Which I can sum up as follows.

1. A woman can be part of your success plan if you succeed in life. With the exception of a few men whose success can make them foolish and abusive, a man’s success always means well for his family. This excludes frameless men who try polygamy or wreck it with a string of other women they can’t control.

However, as a man, you can’t bank on your wife’s success, especially if you remain stagnant in your career. Few women can put up with men they are more successful than. This is the case in Moscow, Manitoba, Massachusetts, Manilla, Mombasa, Melbourne, and even Tokyo. There will be academic arguments and a lot of all the beautiful English from the girl child empowerment, but the fact remains: a woman’s success is hers and her children’s. A man as a husband can only be part of it, contingent on so many other factors. There is a whole article in Yahoo Finance about how rich single women detest marriage in America. The very reasons they cite for their hatred of marriage are the reasons broke women marry rich men. But shifting goalposts is a game we can’t win against them.

2. This puts men in an awkward situation, and young men here are where I want your attention.
If you choose marriage, you have to put in a double shift. For your family and for yourself. For every coin you invest in your family, invest as much as in yourself. Most career women do this. Some career women financially abuse their men as they cater to themselves, and down the line, when the fortunes change, the man will be labeled as lazy and unambitious. For men, don’t hate the player. Hate the game.

My distant uncle didn’t have the means, seeing as he held a not-so-big civil servant job where he got comfortable.

Like him and so many men, his wife’s fortunes drastically changed for the better, and he hung around long enough to discover how it ended.

Whether you are an angel or an arsehole, the end is the same, except that arseholes can con the woman, or they lack manners and can fight for the property they didn’t contribute a coin to buy. Good guys are always shown the good old madharau until they pack and go.
Don’t wait for this, son.

3. Have options, kid.

Have an extra home, if you will. Have an extra wife(I am anti-polygamy), but increasingly, I am seeing the risk of putting your eggs in one basket. I have attended funerals where it is the kids from the baby mama who eventually buried the old man. Kids of the main family sometimes only stick around if there is property to be divided. Otherwise, if you are a liability, nobody cares.
Some men argue that they have as many children out there as possible and take care of them and ball with those who will play for their team down the line. I don’t necessarily approve of this, but I see its logic.

Between 30 and 60 (and the years run so fast, son), build a life of options. Not out of fear but out of the rational justification that the outcome of most millennial marriages is grim and men can only rescue themselves by some foreknowledge. To be forewarned is to be forearmed.

4. Keep your siblings/cousins/parents/friends closer

Some married men lose themselves in marriage. Marriage can be sweet sometimes. If you love your wife. Her chapatis and adore your kids to death. You will want to be home early. Play with the kids. Do the assignments. Take them to church.

This way, some men lose friends, lose their family, and when in their 50s, now with their wife functionally tired of his s!mping around and the kids all grown into drugs or other vices, the man suddenly realizes he has no friends, can’t rekindle the old ones and he feels trapped.

Catch a beer with friends regularly. Show up for those weddings. Funerals. Hike. Drive around. Always retain a family or lots of friends you can always have fun with, in both good and bad times.

Men, our generation, don’t have to move out with paper bags. Move to your other house by driving your good car. Move on with life.

Don’t ever be caught unprepared with the knowledge we have.

Escape this by being financially prudent, stubbornly refusing to be financially abused, working harder every day, and having a plan. For yourself. And your family. Notice that order.

Otherwise, don’t be the man who wakes up to fins. The wife has proceeded to move to Canada secretly, and you are left behind, not knowing where to start or to go.

NB: Dear men, save me from this job, buy books from me and Jacob Aliet and read these things, man.

The writer is a published author.