How the African Man Became The METHA.
My great grandfather was an ocean fisherman. He trained his sons to become fishermen. One became a freshwater fishing expert. These men trained their sons, our fathers to be precise, to become very good fishermen.
All over the urbanized world in Africa today, things are changing. And it is not for the better. Men are busy beating a dangerous path for themselves right into the alluring arms of Office Jobs – pushing paper, pens and pencils – as administrative clerks.
The older Colonial Clerks, the very first iteration of the Mis-Educated Than His Ancestors, the Metha, came around when my father was only 15 years old, and already a fisherman, and tricked him to leave his father’s side (my grandfather’s side) and follow them into a colonial missionary classroom where he trained to also become an Office Worker.
My father learned how to read and write the pagan language that was English, and then he trained as a Colonial Clerk himself after 16. Only thing is, he couldn’t pass down that Colonial Missionary Training to his sons – none.
All of my father’s children had to re-enlist in the colonial missionary programs to become their own Colonial Missionary Clerks without Portfolios. Then after graduation, we searched for a portfolio – to find jobs! Very different from the olden days!
Only saving grace for my father was that he became aware enough to teach his boys, fishing, weaving nests and baskets, mats, various trappings of the fisherman’s work.
Only thing is that my father wept when he first realized that a good cohort of my cousins (his own nephews) could not even swim, let alone catch a fish. Many were afraid of catching live chickens that roamed the village grassy fields. Many would wait for their wives from the village to catch the chicken, kill it, de-feather the thing in hot water, roast it, dice it and serve it.
The Metha today is so intoxicated with the belief in his own brilliance that he sees the simple, straightforward, day to day drudgery of natural life as an obstacle to be overcome simply by escaping into a classroom as a boy, and emerging as a man at an office desk. He thinks this transformation is progressive. The Metha is wrong. This is laziness!
That is just one way into the nature of manhood with the Metha. I write about these things not because I hate or detest the Metha. No, I hate that the African man has become the Metha! The sooner we became aware the better African men we can become!
