New Generation, Who Dis? By Esther Nyabuto

We are the daughters of the women that told us we could be anything, and we heard that we must be everything. That sounds like the most cliché, down the river pon de banks statement a twenty year old girl would say. However, leaving out the macho personality engrossed in the saying, there is some little bit of truth in that saying.  Aha…..the world where we beg women to be themselves and tell the confident women to calm down. Being born in the 90s is one of the most confusing things that could happen to a young adult. More so, being born a girl during that period. Don’t get me wrong, being a guy from that bracket is also hard….kinda. Being born during that period means that you were a link, the umbilical cord of two generations. The latter generation being the matured-at-two-years-old generation and the swiftly drifting “never-gon-grow-up-generation”. Translate all that into the mind of a woman…you can be exactly like your mother…or the woman your mother was scared of.  Of course, every woman wants to be like their mother. Or the one their fathers cheated on their mother with, you know the one that didn’t have kids in their twenties and maintained her strong features and lives in some posh estate in Nairobi. I meant to say that with no disrespect to the women that have stayed behind after being battered, had their ego insulted, dropped their life long passions and dreams to take care of their families and woke up every morning and made sure each member of the family got closer to their dreams. Have you ever wondered if that what your mother is today was what she dreamt of as a little girl…or like any traditional woman in this depraved culture, settled for.  I dream of sitting amidst huge conferences and   having my opinion valued. But then again, I feel my mother dreamt of the same too. You can then crush people’s worlds with one gesture or lean back, like our mothers and take the bait. You can jump high, but not too high, since there’s no man that wants a woman that stands that high. You have to be appealing to the eye, but not too much, they’ll say you seek too much attention. Show some skin….to show how progressive you are….but not too much…least they call you a whore. You can aspire to be a great entrepreneur with the latest brand of everything, but keep in mind at the end, you’ll get the same brand of life. The children born after the 1999 age bracket are wild, vicious. Trust me I’ve seen an 11 year old girl grind a 15 year old boy to an utmost seizure, a twelve year old girl that lost her “virginity” to an eleven year old boy as they played house and that’s just those that are bonkers enough to say it in front of my face.  And the whole time I’m looking at them with partial admiration as I wouldn’t bring myself to do such and disgust over where their mommas are when they grew into such *liberal Misfits*. So really, each morning I wake up, dress and walk into class, I look at the male students of my class with aspiration. Not the one I wish to shake their hands though. Hahaha….naah, but with the one that no matter how high they dream, no matter how far they aspire to build empires …..The chances of them doing so are much greater than I. I might have consoled myself through middle school and high school of being an equal, but in truth….I was always just an equal in thoughts. I mean, I could hide behind the notion of the 21st Century woman in the western world that has it all, a successful career, a loyal husband that cheats at least once every five years and children and grow so distant to my relatives they only see me on Christmas every five years.  But then again, I’ve grown watching my mother, the woman that took me to school every day, cooked my meals every day. Was at home every holiday and whacked the hell out of my behind every time she found me peeing at the bold and the beautiful { what the hell was with that show…did they meet at the African convection of strict parents and ruled out the show as a top secret affair… smh}.   And when the time comes, like my mother, will fold my dreams as a blanket and support the dreams of little ones.