The stinging pang of hunger drained the few joules of energy from Beke’s exhausted body. With his feet swollen and succumbing to the great desert heat, he dragged himself towards home. After having traveled for a while in the dry land with no water, his mouth was exfoliating like a granite rock. His sweat-stained shirt was further contaminated by drops of blood that dripped from his cracking lips.
Beke had been told that he was so womanly that he needed to go and search for the restoration of his manliness from a renowned traditional healer. As all men in his village, he desired to be like others. Every man who went there was healed. Upon his return, the whole village recognized a change in his walk and a bright outlook on his face that betokened restored manliness. It was not so for Beke because nothing had changed. Sinking into anguish the last bits of energy left his tired body which was covered by dry and scaly skin. He thought of the jeers, the taunts, and the insults that awaited him.
His self-talk was, “I have been stripped off all my manliness, I’m worthless, I’m not like other men.” With a dark cloud of grief hanging above his head, he buried himself into self-doubt. He could not burst into crying for the fear of considered as being sissy. However, an inner well of bleeding was broken and springing to the drowning of his inner core. He could not come to terms with the thought of losing the envied status of being a real man.
The desert of his life presented him with a mirage of hope that kept moving forward as he drew close to it. This illusory effect caused an ambiguity of an ideal that is mentally visible but physically intangible. It induced Beke with a sense of lostness that made him feel worthless. The failure to realize the highest level of manhood was a serious drawback.
Wherever Beke passed, he saw tokens that reminded him that he was far from being a real man. To add insult to injury, others described him as cursed, while others claimed that he was bewitched, and forsaken by the God he claimed to believe in. According to the village standards, he could not be accepted into the commonwealth of real men. He was stigmatized and discriminated by most villagers. He tried to talk about his situation publicly but others told him to stop sharing about such a humiliating issue. For him, sharing was not only therapeutic but also beneficial to other men in his situation.
Reminiscing about being a childless man, I drew up the above allegory to bring to light what African men walking in my shoe experience. Below are issues that have affected me in this journey:
The Harrowing Halt: I was excited that I am married. I and my wife made a possible list of names for our children. However, seeing myself in front of a doctor who broke the news of the impracticality of having a child broke my heart. It was as if someone just stopped the progress of my life. I describe that eventuality as a harrowing halt. I am pleased that while it was meant to break me, it built me into a lone male voice in the African desert that says, “marriage is complete even without children.”
The Worthless Walk: The mirage effect that hits the thirsty desert traveler is an undeniable experience in my journey. The inconclusiveness of the infertility restoration exercise makes it a worthless walk. What others have tried with minimal energy seems to demand more energy on my part. Looking at the whole thing, the pursuit of being a father becomes a worthless walk that not only drains financially but socially, psychologically, and emotionally.
The Pain that Pastors: In my work as a pastor, I encounter a series of loss reminders. The most disturbing is the child dedication ceremony. This is a service when newly born children are brought to the church and I am supposed to pronounce a blessing. Conducting it is not only a serious trigger that eats into my inner core ringing a bell that I am not a father but makes me to pastor in pain. While lost in its liturgy, hidden soreness would be the one stinging me. Having discovered that I will have to live with such tokens of lost manliness in my work, I have chosen Henri Nouwen’s classical image of pastoral care called the wounded healer. I must bandage my wounds by dressing the lacerations of others.
The Shame of Sharing: Going public about my situation as a childless man has not gone without scorn and ridicule. So sensitive is the issue of infertility that men are not expected to be talking about it. The taboo, humiliation, the stigma and shame associated with it makes it “holy ground.” To further compound the problem, as a pastor, it is excepted that I should not have problems. Among the questions I have received, these are common, “How can you lead the sheep to God when you are wounded?”; “If you as a pastor are crying, what do we do as your members?”; “You are a man of God, why do you reduce yourself like that?”.
In dedication to men like me, I wrote this poem:
Nonetheless, I am a Real Man
Graduating from boyhood to manhood
A common line in the neighborhood
To those bidding farewell to childhood
By changing their wives to motherhood
A status that elevated them to citizenhood
Forever erasing their bachelorhood
I may not even taste grandparenthood
Nonetheless, I am a real man
Sidetracked in parenthood’s highway
Walking the stigma-littered pathway
Stumbling along the harrowing byway
Entering in through pain’s gateway
With emotions failing to find a spillway
Because none can take my shame away
I feel it should not have been that way
Nonetheless, I am a real man
Slouching into nothingness, I could resign
For a hatch-less life, I didn’t design
A non-parent situation, I didn’t sign
With words telling me, “I am doing fine”
From a heart that wants me to thrive and shine
My broken jar of hope to redesign
Yes, truly I am a real man!
By Sikhumbuzo Dube
Born to Win, Inspired to Excel Shunem Care