EDUCATION isn't INHERITANCE, Parents.

I have an uncle whom in frustration went to his receipt pile and searched all related payment evidences to show his son whom had just concluded a diploma course and ‘stubborn’ at home. The incidence is a fable in my father’s mouth as if to prepare me against any stupid move as I aim to receive the first accolade in a dry extended family. The way he speaks of it is from a defense point that his brother is correct. Once a child is educated, he is expected to be of value, repay efforts and explore new arenas. How wrong dad! What is the space of a diploma in the current world? Do you know how many of us will graduate at Kenyatta University come the end of this year?

Considering education as inheritance is related to a poor man’s survival tactics just as religion is his thing before a meal. It is their place of hiding pains and looking forward to a New Jerusalem when their clever bookworm son will visit America and send dollars back for Chapati and Sukari. Sad enough, this parents do not know even the courses that their children do. If your parents never went past primary and you are in college, you know what I mean. I was forced to afford survival tactics for it was thought that my direct university entry entitled to a monthly pay. Instead of withdrawing the Ksh 200 high school pocket money and keeping quiet, it was followed by a request to help. Siblings are crying…

I am in my last year of study with six units to go and unsure of the future. I was of the view that I will not go for masters for education will never end. I am craning for any opportunity that will take me there. It may have been precipitated by the many heads in class today and the rural secondary schools school-based learners who immediately fill the compound before undergraduates do their final papers. All is in the name of higher education for higher opportunities.

To reach the climax of education, professionally competent and able to impact the world if so is the purpose, one need not the one paper thing I am eager for. Neither two degrees nor simple Masters from a simple university are qualifications. Bill Gates shared a profile of educational accomplishments that will increase a person’s fortune in life and I was humbled by how long the journey is comparing to the impatience of a youth. The idea here is, at the end of the day, these parents of ours who are saying that they are offering education as inheritance are not even part and parcel of the real education.

Unlike fathers, mothers are more concerned with a child's early education development. 

Primary and Secondary education entry points are the basic kinds of education that cannot even assist one write a complete four-paged paper because compositions are used to be two pages maximum. In my class, no one got an A in KCSE. That means that we were all incompetent to English language and writing mastery. Those who proceeded to colleges are namely a few. Some are serving as gate guards and others waiting patiently to join the forces so as to fight Al-Shabaab. Though the Millennium development goals suggest that there should be accessibility to all on the subject of Primary education, in my view to accommodate Africa for Europe is past that, there are Kenyan orphans and of poor parents both in the cities and rural areas who are unable to access the expensive-free education. It is not free anyway though the government may write a perfect report to donors as organizations do- opposite of their deeds.

The Inheritance I am suggesting here is material belonging. Education is a virtual thing and he who chooses knowledge should prepare to be poor. Knowledge can be compromised by the search of materials. But if the resources are on display, what should hinder me from pursuing the most difficult field? Last week I thought of playing it safe come marital time. If I really want to stay in books, I need a lady of cash. The one who will value what I am seeking over that the survival bread she will be providing. Then I will be committed to researching, preparing notes and offering free lessons to young children on matters of diary keeping, life skills and the reasons to be industrious. Do not tell them about this for they are poor readers. This will be followed by a life-time goal of ensuring at least the birth rates positively decrease.

Of the greatest things a father can give a son is inheritance. Education has ever been around to be learn and experienced. Inheritance is a father's show of hard-work and motivation to the son. Education keeps us apart in a way. Inheritance keeps us together absolutely.

Is it not the purpose of the society, in this sense the state to ensure that its young ones are all educated and given the best? When this responsibility is left to a democratic world where communism is shunned, the results are that those who can afford a certain facility be the utilizers. The poor daughters and sons of Turkana people will wake up to this when it is too late. Banditry is what they know best currently. They do not know that man has advanced and their dry land can be spared from the encroaching Sahara desert. I will say that though they know not education, parents have something for their sons- cattle, land and wives. Education is people of another world, a shield of war and a propagator of vanity alike as the Turkana bandits.

All things are in their perfect states at all times- that is my adopted philosophy. If I was not born, a big reason to celebrate a happy birthday, there would be nothing astounding by my absence as there seeming is none at my presence. To be or not to be? Ask Shakespeare. Now that I am, some things can be made and others unmade. What is the need of you, my dear friend, giving rise to a person whom you cannot provide for? I am not ignorant here for when I hinted such a question at home after being annoyed like every time that if we were few, like three siblings, supper would be always enough, Dad said that it is God who cares for people. I wonder where this God is when Kakuma refugees adjust the knots of stomach-round loop, when heat swept in India and if He sees the orphans in Kibera. He is a God of credit. Not False. A funny one.

Acted in 1973 and casting Chuck Norris is the Movie Soylent Green. By 2022, it was predicted that people will have turn the earth naked and violated it by destroying oceans, water sources, causing deforestation and increasing detoxicants in the air that there will be too small room, too less food, too many deaths as births that the survivors will be fed on human flesh processed and called Soylent Green. I do not think so for we are barely seven years and there are no signs. But it may only be postponed to around 2030 when Kenya will no longer have land for its sons and the politics gone virally tribal. We are experiencing it in a way for refrigerators give us meals far much lesser what they were.  Then one tomato will cease from a present 20 bob to a thousand something. If we do not control population, it will control us!

Your absence in this world equals your presence to some extent. How do we say to the lazy? They are unproductive. How do we say to the handworkers? They are productive. When we cancel both sides we remain with a figure that the world will operate with. Not a bunch of lazy men and a school of busy bodies. After all we are not to live to work all time! Too many heads are a blessing as they are too many curses. If we were few, there would be no need of identification cards, no need of money and no need of land titles and Gen 1:28 just ignored as the Torah itself. Countries that tried it at least did not just give its citizens education but they also made avenues for jobs and other providences for the unemployed. In Africa, it is a pipe dream, something for the 22^nd century.

My words are many dear dads, aren’t they? I do not regret why I came to be neither do I blame you for I could not have blamed you for not being. The wrong is that we are in a fix. I no longer see to coming home after graduation for there is no land to till, no resources to explore and no technology to make life easier as I am used to here. I see it best to wake up early, save on a few things, be dishonest in various ways, fight for services and convince myself that life is not vanity but somebody up there still cares. Id luck will dawn and I manage a good economic capability, you will praise heavens. But do you mind about those who lack?

The inheritance I want now is space and capital. Do not say resources are limited for you have none, aspired to none and I may just have none for my son.

You know what, we should stop being selfish and let only one person, the less sophisticated and who will disagree to this to continue the larger extended family of Mugenge. The new child will be welcomed by the ancient ululations and sacredness of life entitled.  But if all of us are in a hurry to continue it, we are damned. We will have no inheritance or education to offer. For the future education is something like a vaccine. Children will curse us bitterly as we are doing and we may eat them to death if prophecies are ever true.

As for now, keep off unprotected push-ups!