We have grown up believing that it is an omen for the Gīkūyū man to be in the kitchen. However, this is not the mentality in the diaspora. On our first day in the US, we visited the home of a postgraduate student at Emory University. He is a family man, a Gīkūyū man, and the head of the household. He went to the kitchen, made us tea, and served us. As he made the tea, our five-year-old son could not comprehend how a man could enter the kitchen and cook. He went and asked the man, “Are you the one who cooks in this house?” since he had never seen his father in the kitchen. He asked the man the same question thrice, but he ignored the boy’s question.
Following that incident, the boy’s late father, my husband Jotham Gatungo Wandu, a master’s student at Interdenominational Theological Center (ITC), got a restaurant job. He cleaned dishes, bussed tables, and cooked. He became the restaurant’s best kitchen worker, and he received the employee of the year award – a jacket with the company’s name. He applied these skills to his home kitchen and influenced his children, boys, and girls, to partake in the house chores. He made changes in the home, and the Gīkūyū concept that a man cannot go into the kitchen or cook was removed entirely. Our children took these lessons to heart and passed it on to their children.
When a baby was born into a family, everyone took care of the child. Everyone learned how to take care of the baby, and my husband even knew where to buy baby clothes, how to change diapers, bathing the baby, dressing, washing the baby’s clothes, washing the feeding kit, preparing baby bags, feeding the baby, and playing with the baby. Our adult children, both single and married, had no issues helping out with the house chores and taking care of the baby. Today, our grown grandkids have taken these lessons to heart, and it is evident in the roles they play in their home. My belief is that the world evolves gradually, and the Gīkūyū man has to adapt to the changes. There are opportunities available to help you learn some of the skills needed to promote self-sufficiency. Take the chance to complete the chores in the home, and don’t wait for your wife to wait for hand and foot to serve you. Cooking, cleaning, and taking care of the baby will not make you any less of a Gīkūyū man. Take care of your spouse and family in any way you can, and you will live a blessed life.
The bible puts it this way: “25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her 26 to make her holy, cleansing[b] her by the washing with water through the word, 27 and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. 28 In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29 After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church— 30 for we are members of his body. 31 “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” [c] 32 This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. 33 However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband,” Ephesians 5:25-33, NIV).
I believe any wife in this kind of environment would most of the time search diligently for what else to do for such a Gīkūyū husband to make him happy.