On the road that lies before you,
there will be twists and turns.
Sometimes the seas
will become rough to sail on.
You may fall,
love might flee, and
friends may leave too.
Words may be spoken in anger;
words that tear your world apart.
You may sit there feeling sorry for yourself.

No matter how dark and gloomy
the situation may seem,
do not give up hope.
Try to re-discover your strength.
Like the sun, you too
can rise from the darkness
and shine your light again.

Continue Reading "You Will Survive, My Girls"

On a hot, sunny day, a boy is born.
Soon thereafter, just like in the past,
daddy leaves.
Mum has to feed yet another hungry mouth.
Mum has to raise the boy,
alone.

Mum has no means,
no resources as the boy grows up,
she needs a helping hand;
but who will offer it?
The world turns its head,
and looks the other way
from the hungry boy, but he blossoms.

The boy becomes a teenager;
he needs a male mentor
to show him how to maneuver through life,
to show him the ways of responsible men,
But the world turns back
from the hungry boy.

Continue Reading "Let The Boy Child Be, Dear Fathers, Dear Men"

Dear son, dear daughter,
I gave you life,
but I cannot live it for you.
Do not spend it
at the mercy of grief and self loathe,
but sit on the lawn, gazing proudly at the moon
and belch out loudly, saying “I’ll live my life,
in such a way that will make my father proud.”

Dear daughter, dear son,
I can teach you many things,
but I cannot make you learn.
Your fate is intact so far,
it is not cracked yet.
Do not let your dreams
flow into leaking jars;
but just like stars,
learn to speak your truth quietly,
and shine in silence;
learn to dream big,
in a world that is unjust and unfair.

Continue Reading "Lamentations Of A Caring Father"

Yes, I know that I forgot
what I was sent to buy this morning;
I know that I even misplaced the money,
but I won’t let that dim my joy
as I go home this evening.
It won’t dim my joy because
my day was full of undiluted, free-spirited,
and innocent happiness.

Photo Credit: Photographer Unknown to me

Yes, Yes, I know that
the livestock that I was grazing

Continue Reading "The Legend says, “I Know”"

Life flies past as we raise our children.
They become young adults within no time,
before we know it.

Simultaneously as the children
were growing up,
there have been events,
environments and practices
that have molded us along the way;
a concoction borne of experiences
and memories that have made us
into what we have become;
and that vaguely remind us
how we got here, even if the details
have blurred out with time.

The memories remind us that,
even as age continues
to catch up with us,
we are nothing more than

Continue Reading "Where do We the Parents Stop, and Our Children Begin?"

We may think it’s the end of the world because:
we were treated wrong,
we were conned,
we became incapacitated,
we’re tired, sick, hungry,
we’re harassed and molested,
we feel lonely and dejected,
we’re living with a disability,
nothing seems to be working for us,
and so on and so forth.

And so we beat ourselves up,
we put ourselves down,
we belittle ourselves,
we get depressed,
we even want to take our own lives.

Continue Reading "Hold On, Pain Ends (HOPE)"

Dear child, with each
Happy-Father’s-day message I received,
I remembered
the surprise of new fatherhood
every time each one of you
came into my life
whether through birth
or when our paths met.

I remembered
the day when I met you for the first time;
it had never occurred to me before then,
that I could be so overcome
by anyone like that.

That day, as I wrote your name
across my heart;

Continue Reading "A Father’s Gratitude For The Best Wishes"

Dear son, always be contented regardless of how much you earn; you will always have people who earn more than you.

You see; I am now an old man who you call a junior or subordinate staff, and I am proud of it; but in my working life I have had bosses who earned many times more than me, but when they invite me to their houses, I find the same furniture that are in mine. The only difference is how we got them; they bought theirs in elegant shops, while mine were made by a carpenter at a pace, and price, I could afford
from timber obtained from a tree I felled in my rural home. And I can bet that my furniture is stronger than theirs because I know, unlike them, every single piece that went into it.

When they invite me, we eat ugali just like what my family partakes; the only difference is

Continue Reading "The Paradox Of Life – Advice From An Elder"