When your father is the sponsor of your wife to be

When I was young, I sold sugarcane at the entrace of our humble homestead. Being a young man with hot blood runningin my veins, I had my crushes; to impress them I would voluntarily give them free sugarcane. Unfortunately, none of them embraced me.

Worse enough, the one who happened to be so close to me slept with a guy who was twice my age; I felt betrayed and confronted her, but I was shocked with her words; "you are poor, you cannot offer anything better apart from the sugarcane." I walked away shamelessly, hoping for a miracle to turn around my life and make me a better person.

My charity work didn't stop, the more I did, the more I got heartbroken. Most of them were either married to wealthy widowers or those rogue homeboys who came from wealthy families- while others settled with the boys who had completed high school doing manual jobs in the nearby town.
My childhood life had taught me that the good things in life are ready-made; I was incomplete, my efforts were fruitless let alone friendship. I could have had any of the girls if my family had a big name; I even remember two young girls fought for a guy from the wealthy family.

What is happening now, why do young girls prefer older men, what changed?

My grandfather had three wives; the youngest was my mother's age while his brother had none. The difference between them was; while grandpa was hard working and wealthy, his brother had no place of his own; he lived with his relatives. The reason why our girls prefer older men is simple, responsibility.
In the African culture, more precisely mine, it reaches a point when a man leaves the family house, and builds a small hut “singira” far away from home. There you will learn tricks to be a man- nowadays, it’s different.

The moment you did that then, you were upgraded to the main house nyumba kubwa, it was a taboo for a boy of a certain age to be seen in the kitchen, and you were probably taken back for initiation.
Boys were more close to dads; they did community work without pay- at night when elders met, they sat with them. Basically, it was a place to teach the young men how to become responsible.
When I came to the city, where I stayed, people lived in the same rooms; boys are closer to their mothers than fathers- men at the age of 40 still stay at theirparent's house.

Yes, our mothers are the best parents, but to be a man you need another man with much more experience to teach you ways on how to manage forty years and above with a woman.

Boys, our fathers; [the sponsors] are in 'the big house' waiting for us to leave 'the kitchen' so that they can talk to us. As we share our every secret with our moms, sag jeans, spend most of our time in video games, WhatsApp, and waiting to become musicians for eight years; our fathers will continue to sponsor us at their homes while they sponsor our wives to be. Until we decide to take up responsibilities as men, they will continue enjoying what is rightly ours.