My father wrote to me

Yester night I received a letter from miles away. The postage stamp on it was one of a man in a leopard-skin skirt and a spear in his hands and war-paint on his face. My father he wrote to me. He was telling me to be a man. In his letter he told me of his life story, one that he had done hundreds of times before but it sounded all new again.

My father told me to run away from the allures of the strong fumes of gin and not to yield my tongue to the strong taste of brandy. He told me to leave smoke to the trains and vehicles with faulty engines. My father told me to keep off the fleshy thighs of prostitutes in the streets, to close my ears out when they breath their seductive, lust-sodden words into them. My father told me to never shed tears when the one I love leaves my nest, but to rise, pick up the pieces and walk without looking back. My father wrote to me.

He told me not to spend all my money inside the dimly-lit nightclubs in the hidden corners of the streets. He told me not to spend my time of the day in a company of fools tabling cheap talk, rather take a book and add value to myself. He told me to never abandon my quest for enlightenment, to fight even when it is tough so that i can save my village from the clutches of ignorance. My father told me to leave ear-piercing to old men and adolescent women and to wear clothes meant for me. My father wrote to me and told me to be a man. To stick to what i have believed since i was a kid, that being a man is not through circumcision of the penis but of the heart and the head. He told me a man wakes up in the morning and comes back in the evening carrying meat for his wife and toys for his children. My father wrote to me and told me that a man is he who stubbornly stands by his opinions, his people and his beliefs. He never wavers with the wind.

When I write back to him, I shall tell him I’ve kept off the bottle and the smoke. That i have escaped the intrigues of the loose women and stuck to what he always taught me. I shall tell my father that though it is hard, very hard to be a man in the world where youth spans to forty years, in a world where men with grey hairs sport snapbacks and skinny jeans. I’ll tell him that i shall be a man, the man he raised me to become. I shall spend wisely and shall keep off the corrupt minds and tongues. When i write back, i shall tell him i have been a man, a little man but will grow with time. I’ll tell him that my voice is breaking and the first beard is still shy on my chin, but when my voice sounds like the lion’s roar, he’ll see me on TV, in a blue suit and black tie, basking in the wisdom of the man i have become. I shall not be intellectually orphaned or morally bankrupt. I shall be the man he wrote to me about, the man with the leopard-skin skirt and a spear in my hand.