Oyena Gwebityala

I was at a friend’s 21st birthday party this weekend, and I am still recovering. The party was a whole lot of fun and the birthday boy insisted on just alcohol as a present. But out of everything that happened that night ( a whole lot happened believe me), his father’s speech stood out for me. And this is what this post is about.

The speech stood out for 2 reasons, firstly it got me thinking, how the hell did my friend end up the way he did. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not bad or anything it’s just different. But secondly and most strikingly for me was how similar the speech he got from his father was to the one I got from my father when I came back from the “African Mountain” albeit more eloquent and with sign posts and a nice summary at the end. You see when people from my clan come back from the mountain they are considered men and it is only in this way that they are ever considered men. So we have 50 year old boys and 16 year men, sometimes. But no matter how old, upon coming back from the mountain they are allowed, in fact encouraged to start their lives away from their parents. They are warned about life and given advice by those older than them. And all this happened at this 21st.

Until then I had not realised that white people ever overtly recognised their boys as men. I just thought that there was an age when everyone just came to accept that a guy was now a man,but I got a totally different impression from this 21st. The guy’s father was saying all the things a father says to his “new man” son.

And at the end of the night I realised, damn I had brought the wrong kind of brandy?