Blood Is Not Your Right To Be Family

The bond that links your true family is not one of blood, but of respect and joy in each other’s life. Rarely do members of one family grow up under the same roof.

Richard Bach

Blood is always terrifying, unless mentioned in a family context.

“That is your blood!” is a statement I have heard in some of the most painful moments of my life. Moments of betrayal, injustice, exploitation, and the like. That is a statement echoed by people who need others to take in some deep pain being inflicted by those biologically closest to them. A declaration of excusing wrongdoers based on biological kinship and nothing else.

I learned the system a long time ago.

Living for months in the village while waiting to join a public university was a lonely and exhausting time. There were no school gang mates to while the time with. Neither were there enough girls to chase now that school had elevated my definition of beauty and fashion. The only recreation left to indulge in after gruelling farm work had some local booze and cigarettes with former playmates to fit in. And occasionally, some unprocessed weed rolled in a used maize flour brown package.

On Christmas day, my bigger brother and I decided to show off and upgrade our drinks. We raided the village bar and took the position of the best table. The tables were covered in chipped Formica, and the seats were some forms made from unfinished wood. Either way, there was a lot of merrymaking with fellow village mates.

Suddenly, my father, who I had left drinking his homemade brew with mates at home, surprisingly appeared and took an ordering position. My big brother decided to escape. I hesitated to compare the cost of the ‘respectful flight’ and that of an unfinished bottle of beer. My math told me to stay. That was one of the most erroneous decisions of my youth.

My father caused a lot of drama in the village bar that day. 

He was openly proclaiming that he could not drink in the same pub with his young son. On the other hand, I insisted that I was not spending his money. He shouted back that all the money in that household was his, whether given or taken without his knowledge. And the story went on until I finished my drink and left. I went to look for local booze where I could drink at peace, and eventually, chewed a blackout that is vivid in my mind today.

The following morning, he sent one of my eldest brothers with a message. Not an apology for rudely interrupting my fun. But with a threat that he would not pay my university school fees. Typical of me, instead of sucking up and apologizing, I decided to send him back to my father with a rejoinder. That I did not care much about the family support for my education, because even orphans go to school. That story ended there. My school fee was paid without any conditionality, and I continued to enjoy my binging life.

What that incident taught me is that at times being a family member requires so much effort to fit in. Woe unto you if you do not comply. You will face intimidation and isolation to cut you down to size, even if it means withdrawing your fundamental human rights.

I come from a close-knit family, but that does not make it exceptional.

I may not be the one to speak loudest about how blood is still messy in a family context. But truth be told, it has its fair share of injustices, exploitation, malice, selfishness, and even negligence of some of its own. It has outstanding people; it has evil people. It has kind ones, selfish and obnoxious ones too. There are loving ones, and there are outright haters. Some struggle hard to make it stronger, while others put all their weight to demolish it. 

But what do we always do? We protect exploiters, shield criminals, and even castigate victims of one of our own. What partly led me to my journey of self-discovery was pain emanating from thefts by two of my close family members, which left me devastated. 

When the separate but successive incidents took place, my first stop was to call for intervention from my family before taking lawful actions. The response in the two different events was the same. I was assured that my very loving family would deal with it. And I trusted that it would, because it usually does come through in many ways. But this time around, it didn’t. 

I painfully waited for days, weeks, and months. 

Nobody talked, nobody did nothing. And suddenly, my instinct started to figure out abandonment, and slowly, I began to slide into a state of helplessness. It was too late to go to the police, and no compensation was in sight. My spirit was broken, and I started to suffer deeply. A journey of extreme loss and isolation began, and for quite some time, I could not figure out what was wrong with me. I have lost a lot of money before, and it has never felt this way.

I later came to learn that the whole happening had triggered my childhood trauma. I discovered that despite growing in a close-knit and somehow loving family, I was disconnected and somehow emotionally insecure for a better part of my childhood. This experience resulted in a deep subconscious mistrust of family that I was not aware of. 

My family members standing and watching me suffer in the hands of one of our own rekindled my childhood insecurity and triggered a cycle of pain that I had never experienced before. 

This frustration led me to several revelations. 

First, is that your family will never genuinely treat you differently from the way it did during your childhood. You may be all grown, educated, monied, saved, or whatever. Things may have changed ever since, and people treat you in a way you think everything changed. Until a situation arises. That is when the old judgments and labels are fished out. And you will be treated the same way it was when growing up. In my situation, I was always left to deal with my pain as a child, no matter how deeply it made me suffer.

Second, what goes around will always come about in the family. The person who defrauds parents will extend it to siblings. The kindred who mistreats you will do so to the rest and the one who makes enemies out of your other relatives will soon find one in you. Always know that you or your descendants will become a victim of that family member with a well-known and condoned negative trait. The sooner you run, the safer you and your loved ones are. 

The third is that there should never be solidarity without justice, even in a blood family situation. Lack of righteousness is the main reason why nations split, empires collapse, and marriages break. When one feels that their rights are continuously violated, their sense of union wanes. Injustice breeds cessation. Unfortunately, if you are mistreated, and there is no solution found for you, and you isolate yourself, you become the selfish one. The one who never understands other people. Because an African family is always about understanding the bad ones and giving them a place to belong, even if their rightful place is well known to be in jail or hell.

But why is injustice taken differently in a family set-up? 

Why do family members with the responsibility of protecting their own choose to do the opposite in our society? Why would you work so hard to earn the reputation of a good standing member, and be abandoned at the time of your highest need? Why is there so much oppression and exploitation by people who purport to love you? Because there is blood!

Today I know blood for only one thing. Transporting oxygen in my body. The fact is, blood has no telepathic connection. It has no owner because you do not even know where that DNA you pride in came from. 

But this is what we have always been taught. That we have an obligation to painfully tolerate blood relations – no matter how they bleed us. Family makes no sense if some struggle to keep the union going leads one to to suffer the burden and frustration of others who care less. 

Like social activist Letty Cottin Pogrebin says, “If the family were a boat, it would be a canoe that makes no progress unless everyone paddles.” Meaning, if everyone does not oar, the damn thing is standing still and taking you nowhere. 

Family is not about blood relations.

There is a famous saying that blood makes you related, but loyalty makes you family. Blood gives you relatives, not a family. It does not matter how biologically close one is to you. Birth provides no one with a relationship entitlement, unlike what our society projects.

A mother who abandoned her child at a tender age for no good reason is not family. A deadbeat father who enjoyed his life, while his wife struggled to raise kids on her own is not family. A person who destroys the joy and the value of family relationships is not family. A relative who vanished at the highest time of need or the one that you cannot count on in times of trouble is not family. 

Unfortunately, our African society will use blood relations as an excuse to exonerate bad people from their evil deeds. Our people are never allowed to face the consequences of their misdeeds because they are family. This is why the perpetual cycle of poverty and injustices in our families is not going away any time soon. It is getting worse one generation after another.

It is the reason Black Tax is an entitlement in our society.

For several years, I used to work outside Nairobi over the week, with lots of commute back to the city over the weekends. I remember a guy I once worked with, in one of the rural towns who was young and very ambitious. He was quite junior in the organization and unmarried. All the time, he would always complain about being broke, and I decided to ask him why. He told me that he was the firstborn of the family, and now that he had a job, it was his responsibility to educate his siblings and fend for his parents. I found this completely absurd.

I started to observe this more keenly. What I came to notice is that whenever I was travelling back to the city on Fridays for the weekend, my small backpack of dirty laundry would fly back to the front of the bus luggage rack. I would have to scan for it at the end of the trip. The bus would be full of passengers with no goods to bring into the city. On the way back on Sunday nights, I would not find any space to squeeze in my tiny bag. I would have to carry it in my laps and throw it under my seat. People come to the city to collect the tax.

This is a burden that I have seen everywhere, even though moderated in some communities. But there is always a certain unacceptable level of dependence or exploitation that we condone and enable. Whenever you genuinely fail to give to an absolute undeserving relative, you are made to feel bad about yourself. In some cases, parents, especially mothers, extort from those who have and are unwilling to be exploited. And knowingly pass it on to the undeserving.

Faking righteousness is the norm in our families. 

Some people choose to become poor, but families cannot leave them alone to live in poverty. Some are excessively arrogant with a right to mistreat others. Because they have more money, or are simply loved more than others. Some have more than they need, and deliberately hoard it without any form of care. Yet, they are still deemed to belong under all circumstances.

Others have chosen to be criminals, but the shame of a crook in the family makes everyone cover it up. In the end, it causes even more harm to other relatives and the society in general. Most of the heinous crimes in the community have been cleverly bred and sheltered in our own homes until they get out of hand.

I have redefined the meaning of my family.

My new perspective is that my family is the people who will always stand by me, give me joy, and value my true human spirit. My brother or sister is not necessarily my sibling, but that person who will always be there for me. The one who shows me love and cares about me. The one who equally finds me dependable. That is why I have more than the number my mother gave birth to.

Once we come of age, we have the freedom to redefine and reconstruct our family irrespective of our DNA. That we can easily find our tribe through working to improve ourselves first. And leaving God to unite us with the real members of our tribe. 

I am blessed to have this right family around me.

With and without my blood in equal measures. I no longer feel the guilt of not associating with relatives who will continuously inflict pain or exploit me just because there is a blood relation. I have always been very generous and overly understanding, but this had to end. I made a deliberate decision to protect myself and not expect anyone else to. 

I have earned my freedom of choice of relations, and I believe that if all of us woke up to this realization and took the courage to redefine family, this world will surely be a better place. 

Take the courage to recreate a family that brings you joy and meaning in life.