The Generation of the Shrinking Manhood Thomas Hood once said a shilling is a shilling and a bad shilling is no shilling

at all. When I started to write this piece, the original intention was to pen an article about the youth fund enterprise development and its role in shaping the youth agenda. From where I stand I think hardly. Off the Hoods mouth, the same shilling principle applies today NO SHILLING AT ALL IS A BAD SHILLING. I am writing about a journey that I did take. It took me from a banking hall to a banking hall. Being in shape is a key requirement for an entrepreneur; the long waiting hours followed by the back and forth. A diehard thats what you should be. 2012 has never been harder. Its a bad shilling year. I have never been outside my country unless the sneak cross at Busia is considered. I will explain my journey in form of a theorem; lets call it the Mulatto Theorem. The Shilling wants to do both good and bad. It wants to empower the Youth but its very shy. Daddy knows the Shilling has many suitors. Daddy also cares about the Youth. The shillings Mum has a say on who gets the Shillings hand in marriage. The Youth is in love with the shilling and wants to be empowered. Daddy says he wants to see the Youth marry Shilling. The Mulatto Theorem finds to discover, how to get Shilling and the Youth together and marry them off into sunset. There is a twist; there is no church that can marry them. There is no chance of elopement, Daddy guard his precious shilling well. How do we make this marriage happen? Daddy decides to let Uncle John and his associates to arrange this marriage. Using the Theory of Chaos; it is impossible to toss a coin in the same exact way because on each toss it is subject to different air currents. My chemistry teacher who happened to be also the head teacher used to tell us No pain no gain as he sent his driver to get him a good crop of guava branch whips. It was very good for the mind, and he never spoiled the child. Our school was a harambee school. We were short of lab equipment, so our first real titration experiment was also our district mock chemistry practical. The

whole idea was to test the chemicals in an unknown solution and based on the color change, identify the chemical. We had so many colors in that experiment and since our class served also as the lab, we were huddled in the same room. The whole experiment was predetermined to get a certain result, one uniform color; we had the same chemicals and equipment. We had an array of colors. Our results were correct but some of us failed in our principal objective of determining the identity of the unknown chemical. Some students put too much or too little of the ingredients and some were color blind. These are what we call disruptions. It is impossible to determine the complex interactions of all these individuals and sum them up into one concrete formula, How to marry the Youth and Shilling into sunset. We need flexibility and adaptiveness for the marriage of the two. Let us take this argument further. Daddy loves his Shilling and wants the Youth to prove that he can take care of his daughter. He tells the youth dowry has to be paid beforehand. That leads to three scenarios that can occur: Daddy gives in without the dowry, Daddy stays with his daughter until a suitable suitor comes along, or the Youth pays the dowry beforehand. By virtue of the principle of dominance, that Daddy and the Youth care about Shilling and will act in a proper manner, scenario one and scenario two are the likely outcomes. This is what is called the Exclusion Principle, and this is where the Youth finds himself. When the Youth takes Shillings hand without dowry, this is appropriation (claims a title to) but if he pays the full dowry, this is what is known as ownership. He becomes the legal husband. The Youth can only appropriate. Daddy has to guarantee the liability of the youth in his betrothal to the Shilling. The country runs on systems; political, financial, legal, informational, cultural, security and educational systems. All these systems combine to form a cohesive unit that is not entirely independent. The core objective of the youth fund should be to capture and provide as much

information to provide an enabling environment. The Youth Fund has to marry all these complex systems into creating its own system, a system that considers the air currents not the toss of the coin. The Youth Fund is a public good. A public good is characterized by non rejectability, availability and sustainability. If it remains accessible to a few, it doesnt serve the state or the intended beneficiaries, the youth. The Youth Fund is a novel idea albeit formed on the backdrop of an election year (2006). The current system works only as a function of the financial and political systems. As long as the status quo holds, a public good remains a private good. The brick fences can only grow higher, the youth get more desperate, and thats when the security and legal systems come in, not before. We have been reduced to be the generation of the shrinking manhood not by choice but by systemic failures that dont take into account the chaos, the air currents, the disruptions. We have truly arrived the generation of the shrinking manhood, we have nowhere to turn.