I’ve finally figured out the meaning of my father’s name

"What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet" are words by Juliet in Shakespeare’s classic Romeo and Juliet. Well, Juliet never met my father because his name, James Mogere, tells an indelible tale of a father’s love for his five children.

Here is the story behind the name James:

J

J for the judicious dad who once warned me about taking kickbacks in the line of duty. Judicious means showing good judgement and that is what he has espoused all through. At some point in his career at the Ministry of Health, he was an inspector and his job entailed confiscating expired and hazardous products from shops. Many are the times he would be offered a bribe to turn a blind eye. “Many have fallen into the temptation but they did not end up well,” he said to us. Years later, as a journalist, that voice often rings in my mind whenever somebody wants to “buy tea” so I can let a story pass.

J is for the juggernaut that is my dad. The Oxford dictionary says a juggernaut is “a large and powerful force or institution that can’t be controlled”. So is dad when it comes to discipline. When you heard mum say, "Wait till your father returns in the evening”, you knew that that evening you were to face a force. He hardly caned anyone, hardly hit anyone, but his voice on any matter escalated to him was enough to chastise the errant one. And in high school I would rather have uprooted all the tree stumps or mop all the floors in the institution rather than earn a suspension to go and face the juggernaut because that meant answering questions tougher than the ones in a rocket science PhD exam!

A

A for the astute man I call dad. Astute is being shrewd, being street-smart. And that is what he is. Pay fees in time, plan for planting in time, make financial moves when the time is just right. Those are the policies he has always lived by. “Kula tano, weka tano" (Spend Sh5, save the other Sh5), he always tells me. Since I started earning a salary, I’ve been trying to save Sh2 of the Sh10 but, but … well, I’ve been trying to save the Sh2 of the Sh10.

A is also for his allergies, which I seem to have inherited word-for-word. Biology told us that a parent’s DNA is copied to the offspring’s and I believe when the time came for copying his allergies to me, the replicator was working overtime. None of my brothers took over his allergies as exhaustively as I did. Dad and I react similarly to the same allergens, and on a typical day you will find us sneezing in the living room and be forgiven to think it is a “who is ‘atchoo-er’ now” contest. And as if it was an evolution of sorts, I developed a couple of more allergies that he doesn’t have, like the one that makes my stomach intolerant to beer. For dad, the only reason his tummy became intolerant to beer many years ago is that the five of us were demanding food and school fees.

M

M for his meticulousness. That trait becomes more felt when he is reading the newspaper. He has been buying the Daily Nation every day for as long as I can remember and often he comes home in the evening having read virtually everything printed in the paper. One of my first ever contributions to the Daily Nation, long before I was hired by Nation Media Group, was to the Cutting Edge section. And on the first day my opinion was published, in what is considered a very tiny section of the paper, my dad noticed it even before I could tell him I had sent any material to the paper. It is with such meticulousness that he could study our school report forms, and at one time when my grades were heading south, I remember him telling me categorically that I had “started joking”. And he was right. Had I not stopped “joking”, probably you wouldn’t be reading these words of mine here today. Perhaps you would have stumbled on my face in a dock somewhere in the news sections, with a caption that I was with others not before court when I committed some newsworthy crime.

M can also stand for dad’s meek nature. Being meek means doing what other people want without expressing your own opinion. The Oxford dictionary provides “compliant” as a synonym for that. I’m writing this on a month when the taxman is demanding that we file our tax returns. I usually have lots of reservations about having to remind myself how much of my hard-earned salary the government deducts. Then that same government wants me to tell it about how much it has been deducting from me every year. Sounds like someone caning you then stops to ask how many strokes you have received. But as I learnt from my dad recently, it is better to be meek with such things because a time will come when a grey-haired me will be looking for my pension and a small thing as a tax return I did not do when I was being disobedient will render me broke and reduce several years of my expectancy. And oh, the Bible says something about the meek — they will inherit the earth. Dad, please be sure to share with me a portion of the earth you will inherit, especially on the side that has the Bahamas.

E

E for economical. One of the things dad loathes is seeing food being wasted. “Cook what you can eat and finish,” he says. “Aren’t you wasting power by keeping that bulb on?” he sometimes wonders. “Won’t the gas have lasted longer if you didn’t cook every other type of food with it?” at times he poses. He is also economical with words. The intended effect is hard to miss. When I was in university, his goodbye message to me as I was leaving was always in Ekegusii. “Mwasoma bono,” he would say. In Kiswahili, that would be “Muwe mkisoma basi” and in English it would loosely mean “You people, be studying, then”.  Why the plural? It is just his style.

E also represents his entertaining nature, which was often exhibited through the tough love he had for us. Whenever any of us asked for money for, say, going for a trip, his standard reaction was to turn you down with a message, “Hiyo utaionea kwa TV" (You will watch the trip on TV). Never mind he said that even on the days before a TV set became part of our living room. But somehow he would find the money for the trip later on. And when we were working on the farm, sometimes he would ridicule us when our little foreheads were awash with sweat, calling us ritutu, a type of bird that Kisii folklore associates with sweating. I will not disclose what he used to say of me when my panting became a tad too intense while digging. Lest my detractors get fodder to finish me politically, let it remain classified for 30 more years.

S

S for savvy, which is defined as practical knowledge or understanding of something. For the more than six decades he has been on earth, his experience on various matters is exemplary. As I write this I’m in my fifth month of fatherhood and many have been the moments where my son just scares me. Often it is his cries, or when his stool doesn’t look right. Or when he screams and pummels till two in the morning or an even more ungodly hour of the night. But whenever I call dad for advice, he always sounds calm with a “been there, done that” tone. Like recently when I called to ask whether the boy’s intermittent wails are associated with the growing of teeth and he explained how that happens. Oh, the teething problems I’m facing with these new fatherhood responsibilities!

S can also denote his sanguine personality type. To be sanguine is to be cheerful and confident about the future and that’s what my dad is. Otherwise, he couldn’t have invested so heavily in our education. Often, I think he is a bit too confident but that is expected of a man so deep in his Catholic faith. With all his qualities, I think he should change his middle name to “Bond” so he can be introducing himself in the famous words of his namesake: “My name is Bond. James Bond.”

And there you have it. Happy Father's Day, James Mogere.

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