Written By | Staff Writer
Not everyone appreciates after years of care and parenting given by step parents
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There are few roles in society more complicated than being a stepfather. It is often a position filled with responsibility but without guarantees. You provide, protect, sacrifice, and invest emotionally in children who may never fully see you as family.
Sometimes it feels like one of the most thankless jobs on earth. A few days ago, a viral podcast clip reignited this uncomfortable reality. A young man publicly criticized the man who raised him. Not simply criticized. He ridiculed him. The irony was difficult to ignore. This was the same man who clothed him, fed him, educated him, and raised him as his own child. Yet the young man, who openly admitted having enjoyed an affluent upbringing, sat comfortably before cameras describing his stepfather as “puny” while glorifying a biological father he had barely known until adulthood.
The interviewer eventually asked the obvious question:
“What exactly did your stepfather do to deserve all this anger?”
The response was startling.
“How do you raise another man’s child unless you are weak?”
For a moment, I stared at the screen.
Not because I was shocked.
Because I remembered someone. His name was Peter Njagi.
Back in the early 1980s, during one of the harshest drought periods many Kenyans can remember, my father was driving back from Chuka after dropping my elder brother at school.
Those who know that period understand that drought was not merely a newspaper headline.
It was survival. Entire communities struggled. Livestock died. Families searched desperately for food. Some simply ran out of options.
Somewhere along the road in Tharaka, my father encountered a severely malnourished young boy abandoned by the roadside. Apparently, the boy’s mother had reached a point where watching her child slowly starve had become unbearable. Perhaps she hoped somebody would intervene. My father did. He picked up the child. Took him for treatment. Brought him home. Fed him. Clothed him. Sent him to school. Gave him a family. My mother raised him exactly as she raised the rest of us. He ate with us. Worked with us. Fought with us. Received punishment with us. By every practical definition, he became family.
The problems emerged years later.
After primary school examinations, my younger brother performed well and secured admission to secondary school. Njagi did not.
My father suggested something reasonable: wait while he explored vocational training opportunities.
But teenage disappointment rarely listens to reason.
Suddenly, years of sacrifice disappeared.
Every frustration became evidence of discrimination.
Njagi accused my father of favoring biological children.
Eventually, he declared he wanted to search for his “real family.”
Not long afterward, he left.
Years passed. Then, while serving in the military, I unexpectedly found him working at a butchery in Nanyuki.
Life had not been kind. He had failed to locate his biological relatives. He had drifted through casual jobs. At one point, he became involved in livestock theft and served time in prison. Ironically, prison gave him something else: a skill. He trained as a chef. But another problem emerged.
Without parents, records, or documentation, obtaining identification papers became almost impossible. So he asked for something unexpected. He wanted forgiveness. Not money. Not food. Not shelter.
He simply wanted permission to use our family name so he could finally obtain identification documents and move on with life. I promised to speak to my father. When I delivered the message, my father reacted strongly. Then he said something I have never forgotten.
“If he could disrespect me after everything I did for him, imagine the trouble he might cause you people after I am gone if he is legally recognized as one of my sons.”
At the time, it felt harsh. Today, after witnessing inheritance battles, family disputes, and endless conflicts over property and belonging, I understand what he meant. The truth is uncomfortable. Gratitude is rarer than many people want to admit. Human beings often remember what you failed to do.
They easily forget what you sacrificed to do. A person can rescue a starving child, raise them for years, pay school fees, provide shelter, and create opportunities. Sometimes one disappointment is enough to erase all of it. Perhaps this explains why many people increasingly hesitate to carry other people’s burdens. Not necessarily because kindness has disappeared. But because many have learned how easily kindness can be forgotten.
My father later passed away. Even during his final years, he repeatedly reminded relatives who his legal children were. Perhaps experience had made him cautious. I never found Njagi again. I never gave him my father’s response. To this day, I sometimes wonder what became of him. Did he eventually find his family? Did he finally obtain identification documents? Did life teach him lessons that youth and pride prevented him from learning earlier? I do not know.
What I know is this: Blood may make people relatives. Character is what makes people family. And when someone picks you up after the world has abandoned you, perhaps the least one can do is remember that kindness does not require shared DNA. Because suffering does not care about bloodlines.
Neither does compassion.
As Told To Torch Media Africa
