SPOILT ROTTEN

There’s that song that Michael Jackson made famous when he was yet not a teenager, “One bad apple can spoil the whole bunch girl….”. In cold Nairobi weather, fruit spoiling was not a problem, especially up in the highlands, you could buy a bunch of fruit and leave it in a bowl on the kitchen counter or in the dinning room and grab a fruit each time you walked past it. Yum.

Not in Dar’s humid weather. I tried, hahahaha! The first apple went bad and at the point of contact where it was rotten, it passed it’s rottenness to the next apple. In 3 days, I had a bowl of rotten apples. I’ve learnt to put all my fruit - including bananas - in the fridge!

But this article is not about fruit being so decayed that they are unpalatable – it’s about you and me and our kids.

Yap.

I read an article recently about an American mom who complained that her twins (12) had slowly stopped doing their chores and she realized that she was very cleverly, left to do them all.  She went on Stike! Not as a Mom, but as a Maid.

But what stopped me criticizing her and her choice was an awful awareness of the reality right here at home. Are we, in cushioning our children with maids and houseboys and mlinzi’s and drivers, selling irresponsibility to our children? Yes, we are!! We are teaching them that their mess is not their problem to deal with but someone else’s responsibility!

In traffic I have often followed school buses on their scheduled school-to-home runs in the afternoons and watched despairingly as kids from those ‘high class’ schools throw litter: bottles and sweet wrappers and plastic bags, out of the window. If I am directly behind I usually end up swerving to avoid a plastic bottle on my vehicle or an already chewed saliva full gum plastering itself to my windscreen (the law of physics… what you throw out from a moving car doesn’t go straight out at 180˚, it usually lands behind you!)

I’ve watched a bottle land on a woman standing at a bus stop. Ok, you say, it can’t hurt, it’s plastic and empty….

Yah.

If that was your child, would you be embarrassed or simply shake your head and say ‘that’s life?’. There are teachers or adults on these buses/vans (I’m assuming), so why on earth does this trashing of our beautiful City by children continue?

Earlier on this year I asked my maid to leave because we’re at that stage in life where tweens and teenagers need to learn how to pick up after themselves. Which basically boils down to the fact that in our house for about 6 months now, it’s been a matter of my kids doing their own chores, or so I thought. Unless you want to die slowly of High Blood Pressure, I discovered that this is not a good idea! I have screamed, I have shouted, threatened, thrown fits, lost my temper, had tantrums, and finally I just KEPT KIMYA. Nil by Mouth. Honestly, What?? Huh, what - I ask you, is so hard about MAKING A BED? I’m not asking the teenager and tween to sweep the entire house plus mop, cook, bake, clean all the windows, mow the front lawn, clean the car,  and ____________ (add on whatever you think chores on the line), no, there are Cleaning Services for that heavy duty stuff.

 No! All I’m asking for right now is the simple stuff:

• Make their own beds – everyday. Before they go to school.

• Tidy up their own rooms.

• Use the trash bin that’s in the room, don’t throw trash the floor.

• Don’t eat in bedrooms. Drinking allowed….(hahahaha, obviously water or juice, or as we pronounce it here (juu-wees)

• Dirty clothes go into a common laundry basket.

Living area

• After meals, take cutlery to the Kitchen sink, don’t leave them where-evah!!

• Clean the dinning table top after all meals including breakfast.

Kitchen

• Regarding washing up dishes, each chose a task. One cleans, the other wipes.

(Nyakio, I can hear you ask….Is it done?)

Hahahahahahahahaaaaaaaaaa hahahahahaaaaaa!

Yah.

Continuing…..

• No plates to be left in sink overnight.

This is a huge responsibility that involves them thinking through to further than themselves – looking at life beyond the ‘just me and my music or TV’  - that many of our teenagers have today, and the beginning of true responsibility.

Not only do dirty dishes and a dirty kitchen bin bring in the cockroaches and sisimizi, but sincerely speaking, we wake up early, and walking into the kitchen half asleep at 4am to make a tasty breakfast and finding a  Kilimanjaro mountain of dishes is NOT exactly a prelude to a good morning let alone a tasty meal!

(sigh)

The kids also have a pet. Hmmm. Skittles the cat. Sitaki!! Eti who is to feed her and groom her and cut her claws and worst of all, change the litter box? I am NOT a pet person, so hapa because they collectively wanted a pet, they should be responsible for said pet!!

Are we together? You and me? Or do you think I should be feeding that…that animal when they forget? Which is almost daily?

No. I will NOT clean the litter. I will buy that Litter Freshener Powder stuff,  but no-no-no-No! I’m not about to mix it myself, I am too old for that shit! (Pun Intended)

So I persist in reminding them to complete their chores despite all the excuses. To learn how to ‘follow through’ and not stop halfway. I insist because I keep remembering that old adage – ‘as a man thinks, so he does’. For me it’s lazy mind, lazy body. Lazy at chores, lazy in Life.

Recently my daughter went for a sleepover and she came home in a daze, her eyes clouded over and gushing verbally, on and on, on how whenever her and her BFF left the living room or any room for that matter, she’d turn around to find cushions being plumped, magazines, TV and AC remotes returned to their respective spots, plates and glasses cleared from under sofas and fresh glasses with water PLUS ice-cubes replacing the used ones. Used Once. My daughter entered the kitchen and was shooed out. Jamaani!

In another home, bedrooms were cleaned and vacuumed while she and her friend slept, my teenager woke up to a spic and span room where even her clothes were folded and her (ngothas) cleaned and hung to dry in the bathroom. In yet another home, they had a midnight feast and left empty dirty plates on the floor. The next morning she thought she was in a different house, the room was sooooooo clean, even her bed covers had been re-arranged and tucked-in on her as she slept!!

She complained for a week at her chores and told me ‘when she grows up she will have a butler, a housekeeper, 3 maids and a chauffeur’. Sawa! She’d better work hard for her money.

But when my son goes to visit his friends and he insists on returning used plates and cups, mugs or glasses to the kitchen sink, most parents compliment me and hubby  - admiring his ‘manners’ and ‘thoughtfulness’. “My son doesn’t do that though I tell him to! What should I do, what should I do?” they complain….

I ask you, what’s right, what’s wrong? How early do you start?

As for my daughter, hahaha! I told her those girls should not come to my house coz their mothers will either kill me or get me arrested for child-labour because I make my them join my kids as they do their thing- a chore is a chore is a chore.

chore |CHôr|

noun

• a routine task, esp. a household one.

• an unpleasant but necessary task

Haiya, As far as I am concerned, any maid and mlinzi who works for this family works for hubby and I, period. My children are NOT allowed to send, talk down to or disrespect any adult who works within our premises…. It reminds me a bit too much of the colonial era where white kids would shout, abuse and insult adult men who worked for their parents. Is this what we’re teaching our children?

And if we don’t persist in demanding that our hard-core ATT (serious attitude) children complete their tasks, how will they learn how to make their own beds? Pick up after themselves? Clean their own bathtubs, shower stalls and yes….toilets? Learn how to look after their toothbrushes and know when they require a new one? How will they learn that there’s something called a trash bin that exists outside a computer? That the plates and mugs that we use require standing at the sink and being cleaned unless you buy a dishwasher? 

And even then, can we teach them how to load the washing machine and dishwasher? How will they know how to polish their own shoes and iron and fold their clothes, not leave them in a stinking messy pile under their beds growing strange mold and other wicked things mixed with decaying food on forgotten plates? Moms – what does your daughter do with her dirty pads? Kitchen dustbin? Do you know that germs travel by air….no sorry, they don’t walk..

Back to grown up kids. Wanaitwa AD.ULT. But wait one – Have you observed adults sweeping the area outside of their shops with ferocious determination, only to sweep all that filth, dirt, bits and pieces of paper, glass, hair, garbage, onto the street? Not into a dust pan and into a dustbin. No, onto the street, where it will simply get blown away again by the equally ferocious winds, back pap! infront of their shops?

Around the corner from my house right near the gate, some years ago I saw a pile of trash and I was shocked silent. As I passed it I held my nose like MJ did them days and muttered to myself like a mad woman…. A week later the rubbish dump was larger, the week after even larger. Did I notice? Nope! After a month I didn’t even ‘see’ or even ‘smell’ it until a friend who came to visit commented on ‘what’s that stinking rubbish dump doing right outside the Court wall?’ Micheal Jacksons ‘One Bad Apple’ song refers to the company you keep… if you keep company with constant irresponsibility and a trashy environment, you will conform to it.

We get used to seeing our streets and yards trashy. Then when it gets to be too much our minds switch off and it becomes someone else’s problem – the neighbor, the City Council, the Government. Not me. Not you.

Yet when it comes to chores for our children, our failure as parents in EA is spoiling our kids rotten until they are practically good-for-nothing when it comes to the house and home, and later, home, community, office and city.

How will they learn when we as parents get 3 maids for the house, a cook for the kitchen, a mlinzi for the gate and a gardener for all pets, dogs and cats and garden? How will our children learn to cook for themselves or do you think they will be able to afford a ‘cook’ when they leave college or will they eat out every single day rather than hack at a potato and wonder why 3 minutes is not enough to boil same potato (on a gas stove - not microwave..)  through to the middle? Where they may make the mistake in knowing that a tomato is a fruit but not understanding that you shouldn’t put it in a fruit salad?

Fine, so the excuse is that we’re saving our children from the hardships that we went through. If you and I sat down and had a chat, wah, half of what we went through we’d laugh and say thank goodness there were no child-labour laws back in the 70’s, but let me tell you, I learnt how to wash my dad’s car INSIDE OUT in less than 2 hours or else, and how to use a toothbrush to get to those hard corners too! Hmpf, Ask our 12 year olds to clean our cars today and we’ll probably get a water bill that could have run a small rice plantation plus a flooded engine!!

(plus imagine the look teenagers would give you if you told them to ‘go wash the car’)

Another excuse that we make when spoiling our kids is that we’ve worked terribly hard to climb out of poverty into the middle and upper class and we want our children to ‘enjoy those benefits’. But consider this, those same hardships are what formed our characters today, and (2), unless you’re going to give your kids a Trust Fund at 20 years old, they won’t be able to live exactly like you for years and years after leaving university unless they own a diamond mine or sell drugs. In comes the bitterness and complaining. “Why can’t I drive a souped up 4WD 2 years after graduation? Why can’t I live in Masaki or Runda or Muthaiga? Why can’t I live with YOU until I’m 38? I can’t move to Sinza or Kinondoni or Kiambu or EastLeigh flats when you are living here.….Why do you want me to catch a Mat or Daladala to work… Dad, MOM?? are you insane??”

I’ve seen it in Nairobi, grown sons and daughters borrowing their mama’s cars on Friday and return them on a Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday. Can you recite your own horror story?

Is it because we have spoilt our children rotten the reason why we have young men and women who have no clue as to how to keep a home? As in utterly clueless!! There is that old saying, that a man’s home is his Castle, but how will he care for said ‘castle’ if he doesn’t know how to fix a simple drain pipe? Or worse, screw on a bulb? Hahahahaha! Yes, true!! I wonder where that question came from - How many men does it take to screw on a lightbulb??? Anywayz, your 12 year old should know the difference between a screw-on and pin bulb, between the regular bulbs and the power-savers. And how to stand on a chair or step-ladder and replace it. As for the girls, why let her grow into an adult, leave home, go to College and while there rely on her male neighbors who will probably take advantage of her each time he walks into her apartment to help her ‘fix her bulb’ ? Remember, it takes more than one man to screw on a lightbulb………

No, some lessons are not from teachers so don’t expect them to do all the work. Many lessons are from parents themselves. A simple proverb:

Train up a child in the way he should go

And when he is old, he will not depart from it.

It’s a double edged sword - train up your child to be spoilt rotten and slovenly, and when he is old he will be spoilt rotten, slovenly and irresponsible.

Train up your child to be clean, neat, responsible and respectful of his/her environment, and they will grow up into responsible adults who appreciate cleanliness, order and beauty. It’s tough going to enforce, cajole and teach our children to care, but it pays healthy dividends!

© NYAKIO MUNYINYI-OKALLO for The XpenSieve Report. NOV 2012