Just do the right thing all the time

“Congratulations for being a great mum!” I have heard this a few times and it always makes me feel uncomfortable. Being a good parent — whatever we think that entails – is our job, right? Why should we be congratulated for what we are supposed to be doing in the first place?

Unfortunately, the bar has been set pretty low when it comes to parenting. I know someone who tossed out his teenage son and daughter.

He has no idea where they are, what they eat, or where they live. It’s been more than a year. He doesn’t pay their school fees.

His wife is by his side, and just as bad as he is. Concern for her latest manicure  is more important than sending her son Sh500 for food.

But her husband stands on the national stage and gives lectures about good governance. He speaks out about corruption. He wants Kenya to be a better place.

“Congratulations for fighting for the common man,” he is told all the time.

Fighting for the common man but leaving his kids destitute? Right. That’s a hero right there.

There’s a member of Parliament who has been defiling his teenage girls since they were eight years old. Their mother knows about it. She asks them to bear it because she cannot afford to take care of them herself.

The older one wrote to me years ago, confided in me and asked me never to expose her father.

These are some of the burdens journalists bear. When “off the record” makes you a therapist of sorts. When you are given information that you can’t use, even when it eats away at you.

When a man responsible for drafting our laws is the same man who breaks them every night with his own flesh and blood. How I shudder every time I see his face on TV.

So maybe you and I need to hear congratulations after all, because we live in a sick, sick society. We are so used to mediocrity that we say congratulations even to elected officials for doing their job. By all means, let’s give them a pat on the back.

Congratulations to President Uhuru Kenyatta for the Pupils Reward Scheme, an initiative to inspire the youth on leadership and responsibility. Forty-seven deserving students spent a week at State House and got to do cool stuff like attend Cabinet meetings, visit Parliament, the Judiciary and the defence headquarters. Uhuru might, or might not, bring drastic change to this country, but with this inspired initiative, he might very well spark the minds of the those who will.

Congratulations to Blessed Sister Irene Stefani. Not many of us can boast a first-class ticket to the Promised Land, let alone have the biggest church in the world canonise us. She devoted her life to helping the sick, dying and those in need of help. She’s one step away from sainthood. Not too shabby for a nun who passed on at age 39. “Love killed her,” is what they said of her.

She went to care for a patient who had the plague. He was a teacher who had spoken ill of her and her teaching methods in order to take her place at a certain school. But still, in his time of need, she embraced him and cared for him, inadvertently inhaling the breath that would lead to her death.

From today’s column, you can see how some people will descend to the lowest imaginable depth of vileness and cruelty, while others will overshoot the highest point of kindness and goodness.  Amazing, is it not? The paradox of mankind? It blows me away. Every. Single. Time.