Those who know me know that teaching is my life. Teaching occupies a top place in my identity, together with my African, woman and Christian ones. It is through teaching that I express myself as an African who wants Africans worldwide to live as free human beings in a world that questions our humanity.

But every October, I am ashamed to be a teacher. Because of the national exams.

Our Kenya national exams are a high-stakes event that turns parents and teachers from people who should nurture truth, character and knowledge in children, into adults who teach children to cheat through paying for leaked exams. Exams encourage our youth to cheat through looking for leaked exams and carrying notes into the exam room. 

Title inspired by Calvo Mistari's song "Mwanaume ni effort."

I don’t exactly qualify for the award of the most influential user of facebook, but generally, I do write posts designed to give a different perspective to issues we all confront, and that will hopefully inspire my friends  to think as free human beings. So I usually get at least a like or two for most of my posts.

Except the ones I question why men whine about lack of activists for the boy child but won’t fight for the boy child either.

I wrote one such post wondering whether those who complain about the girl child being favored over the boy child would object to a marketing campaign of Pilsner Imara beer that makes a direct link between the beer and manhood. 

It’s amazing how many of us place “women’s empowerment” on the list of things that are making men violent, irresponsible and addicted to substances. The logic is this: women activists are talking about the girl child but never about the boy child, and so society is spending more time caring and raising the girls but not the boys.

There are major problems with this logic.