Dead Beat Dads Kenya: 4 Things We Learned

No one flees a situation they were totally prepared for.

The dead beat dads saga is a stinging rebuke to our justice system, national economy, the victims themselves and the women leaders who claim to represent them. Below are the four things we learned:

 
1. Justice is elusive to the common man

When women resort to shouting from the rooftops in a bid to embarrass men who have absconded their fatherly duties you realise the sheer pain and suffering individuals can expose others to without ever going to jail.

However, I doubt men as heartless as to turn away from kids they have sired will be bothered by something as innocuous as plain old embarrassment. They’ll just laugh it off and feed off the notoriety.

Coming in a week Chief Justice Willy Mutunga urged Kenyans, jokingly, to explore the possibilities of settling more of their disputes in witchdoctors’ dens as opposed to courts of law, the drama highlighted the prohibitive cost of obtaining justice, reducing otherwise sane women to venting their pent-up anger in undignified fashion.

2. Good men are hard to find

Usually, human beings only degenerate to fights and wars when highly valuable but scarce resources are at stake – oil fields, beautiful women, lucrative tenders, political power and in this case, successful men.

Going through the photos of the accused, it soon becomes obvious that the wanted men are doing well in their careers and businesses and have no reason not to support their lovers and children. The women are incensed that their former lovers are spending money on other women – money they and their kids should be receiving as upkeep.

Dr. Chris Hart, a renowned relationships psychologist and columnist captured this very well on his interview with Nation FM: “60% of men in Kenya are responsible for 100% of births”. He went on to claim that the victims of dead beat dads would not bother to come out so forcefully had they the means to comfortably support themselves and their kids. Further, they wouldn’t bother if they substituted their former lovers for equally well to do men.

So, while the women on Dead Beat Kenya may front innocent kids as the face of their ingenious campaign, it should not be lost on us that they too are equally smarting from the pain of losing their treasured trophies to other women and the kids are constant reminders of their lost battle.

Perhaps more painfully, with children in tow, society now regards them as ‘used goods’ greatly diminishing their chances of attracting better unmarried men by reason of their reduced ‘ market value.’

 

3. Kenyan women cannot to be trusted

A proverb from Sierra Leone goes, “When you see a frog climb a fence, you know that the ground is hot.” Similarly, when you see men taking off for the hills at the mention of pregnancy, something rotten is in the air.

No one flees a situation they were totally prepared for. A country of few eligible men and millions of young unmarried women is bound to compel the latter to get crafty. Yet men are no fools. They know when they’re being swindled. It is when this craft of getting pregnant to stake a claim on a made man fails that the poor women are left stranded like deer caught in the lights. Left with egg on their faces and buns in their ovens, their only recourse is to either abort or give birth and wave the babies like red flags.

Statistics reveal that women are increasingly playing the field as well as men have traditionally done. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that when the ball finally goes out of play, no man is willing to acknowledge he touched it last, seeing there were several rebounds on the ball’s way out.

 
4. Women leaders have failed women

The Dead Beat Kenya page was set up by one Jackson Njeru. A good idea will soon be forgotten when the next big craze on social media comes along. These are causes that should perpetually remain on the lips of Maendeleo Ya Wanawake, FIDA and a host of other bodies that address women affairs.

I would like to think that problems to do with marriage, family and absentee fathers are best addressed by women leaders but in joining the devolution and referendum bandwagons, they have joined male politicians in singing songs that do not resonate with the common man. They failed to put an end to polygamy when the issue was on the floor of Parliament and none of them has cared to chip in to the issue at hand.

I suppose their indifference stems from being benumbed by similar experiences with men seeing that most of our women leaders are either single, divorced or do not get along well with the men in their lives. Women being their own worst enemies, the leaders are more inclined to quip “welcome to the club” than assure victims of dead beat dads, “we’ll get this sorted.”

Meanwhile, after getting spurned by their former lovers, the unfortunate women will soon walk into the traps elaborately laid by a different species of men – pastors, priests and false prophets – to be devoured as verily as they were chewed upon by the men of this world.