I had to go to the hospital recently, because, like every man ever, my wife insisted. We should really thank God for wives. Or maybe hospitals and doctors and all the non-doctors that work there should. Without wives, no man would ever see those corridors. There’s something to be resisted about having to go tell another man, or woman, that you actually can’t fight on your own and you need help. Curls our African lion-killing, bull-fighting blood, it does.

It’s even worse when they send you to see a doctor who’s not really a doctor. A non-doctor. He has a white coat, a stethoscope, that know-it-all look as he flips through your file and the illegible scrawl. But tucked somewhere in the folds of his (now not so white-looking coat) is a name sign that doesn’t say doctor. Instead, it has something else that doesn’t seem like I should trust. Like Clinical Officer. Or Technician. Or Adviser. Or nothing.

The worst though, is when you have to trust them with somebody else’s life, not just your own. Like your few months old daughter. I don’t know how people do it. Like most first time parents, my wife and I have spent our share of time in the hospital for this and that as we try to help our trusting girl navigate through these first interesting months of her life. There, I have discovered something – the baby doctors are also figuring it all out as we go, just like the rest of us. Doesn’t sound very comforting, does it?

One phrase that I have heard bandied around by the paediatricians to explain away anything they don’t understand is gene pool. Until now, I hadn’t come across it since those barely remembered Biology classes and later conversations with the boys about improving our..er..gene pool by marrying up. You know, color separation and all that. Anyway, the doctors (or non-doctors, as the case may be) have made a habit of throwing that in pretty much every time we’ve been in to see them.

“Oh, your daughter is fussy during feeds? Have you asked your mum whether you used to be like that? It’s all in the same gene pool, you know…” or “Hmm..rashes. Did any of you have eczema? She comes from the same gene pool…” followed by that ‘it’s not my fault she’s your child’ shrug. I wonder why they never point out that it could also be my fault that she’s so beautiful.

It’s made me wonder, though, what else I’m handing down to my daughter, even inadvertently. I wonder, because we live in an increasingly individualistic society. The prevailing mindset is that ‘my life is mine to do with as I please’.  It might be the fault of the Nairobi apartments that have us hidden away in our 2-bedrooms,  or the grind that only grants us a myopic view of life that ends with us, or our obsession with the perfect selfie. In any case, it is frowned upon to ask anyone to think about what effect their actions and decisions will have on others.

When the Bible points out that what a man sows, he will surely reap, I suspect we’re wont to ignore that because the results of our sowing are not always immediately apparent. As such, it is easy to think that our choices and deeds have no consequences. Yet, do not be deceived. It is guaranteed that what you put in, you’ll get out. Sooner, or later.

The Book of Tweets (more commonly known as Proverbs) has a good line on this: A good (wise) man leaves an inheritance to his children’s children… It applies to wealth as it does to everything else – faith, character, purity, love, good deeds etc. – what I do now affects not only me and the people around me, but generations beyond me.

So, no, it’s not just my life.