Beyond Wealth and Struggle: The Unspoken Realities of Privilege

Before reading this article, I recommend you read one of my previous entries titled Through The Veil: A Personal Journey With Loss and Mortality, to make sense of the remainder of this particular article. 

Every so often, I reflect on my life—how far back I can remember, the privileges I had, and the challenges that came with them. I’ve always been told to write a book, but I figured it would take too long. So, instead, I write. I’m working on a novel now, one that carries the recurring themes of psychology and mental health, themes I know my readers will resonate with. But before that, I need to write this.

I have thought about class wars and elitism for a long time, ever since I started working. I’ve restrained myself from putting my thoughts into words, but the time has come. I can’t hold back any longer. The truth is, when it comes to class, you can never really know someone simply by their social status. Not everyone who is well-to-do has it easy or lives a perfect life free of hardship. They encounter struggles that are different from those of the ordinary man. And when the ordinary man compares their struggles to my story, they will realise that there were parts of my life kept hidden, things they never would have predicted.

The whole point of this is to challenge assumptions—assumptions rooted in bias, in lack of education or exposure, in the envy of those they covet. People think they know, but they don’t. And perhaps, by the time they reach the end of this, they will see why.

Let me go far back to the days when I lived in my childhood home. 

We grew up in the house my father built from the ground up after investing in a home for my mother. She was his second wife. I grew up knowing that I had other siblings and always assumed every other family was the same, because having been raised in a polygamous setup, I had no way of inferring the perspective of a monogamous family, how they live compared to what I always knew. According to me, all my siblings were siblings, even to this day. You never know when someone would give you words of wisdom. Yes, this is a family of unapologetic intellectuals. I remember thinking to myself how happy I was that we were a big family that would hopefully always stick together. Most of my fond memories of my childhood home were shared laughter with my siblings over a meal or a movie we would debate before settling on a channel for movie night. That's how privileged we were at the time. Just think about it. To live in Kenya in the state of the ordinary Kenyan household, yet being a one percenter, being able to afford having a movie night. 

I went to the same schools as my younger brother and one of my elder sisters. I found her abled differently by the time I was born. She narrated the story of how she got a stroke that changed her life. But she was always going to be my sister, and I remember being very protective about her. I'd never let anyone come for her the wrong way because she was abled differently. I knew how sensitive she was and never really liked the idea of her putting herself down over something she could choose. No one would ever ask for a stroke that would change their original form forever, leaving them traumatised, facing stigma from the world that would never understand it wasn't their fault. Well, it wasn't my sister's fault. She was overtaken by events, and this was something she couldn't have possibly predicted or expected. But she had to find a way to navigate the changes and met a lot of challenges along the way. I tried my best to help her boost her self esteem and confidence wherever or whenever I possibly could, because I knew she needed it the most. More than me, a growing young adult struggling with an identity crisis, trying to make sense of the world after much sexual abuse unknown to my guardians until much later. 

It's never really easy to talk about it. I always wondered how other women had the strength to say their words of truth out loud. Most people would talk about sexual abuse with a lot of shame and guilt, blaming themselves, seeing themselves deserving of something no one would want to be vulnerable to once they detect something off. Perhaps my abusers knew they could take advantage of the fact that I was the middle child. No one would pay that much attention to me, but not deliberately. I seemed like a well-adjusted kid despite everything that was happening at the time. My folks always thought I was going to be okay. I also assumed that I was going to be okay. I knew something was wrong, but I was too young to fully wrap my mind around the consequences of whatever I was exposed to, so early in life before even I edged into adolescence. 

There's something really sad about someone that takes away your innocence from you, robbing you of your childhood. I couldn't pretend to be an ordinary kid. I never saw all adults as caregivers anymore. I saw some of them as those monsters that came to bring nightmares to children's waking lives. The helplessness is probably the reason why victims of sexual abuse turn out the way they do, should they lean towards promiscuity. But that's a story for another day that isn't suitable for here. I digress. 

School was just school, I guess. I tried my best to make some marks in my favourite subjects. I was relentless about having a normal social life despite how warped my perception of trust became. I was still being harassed by one of the people who sexually abused me and exploited me in my childhood. I sought help and was finally heard, supported and affirmed for having spoken up relentlessly despite everything. 

If you read the article Through The Veil: A Personal Journey With Loss and Mortality, then you will know the people who have died in my life to better understand the point I am driving at when it comes to loss and grief being a big part of shaping my worldviews.

I've had people make comments about me from first glance, and what it's taught me is that you never really know someone simply based on your own assumptions, insecurities or biases. It's easy to write off someone who triggers any negative reaction from you. But after having sat down with that person, when you interact with them in a candid discussion about life stories, that will be the only time you will realise how much you can never really know anyone. You could be living with someone you don't even know. How many men have died by suicide, leaving their wives with more questions than answers, puzzled at having missed all the signs? It wasn't visible or obvious that something was wrong, but something was definitely amiss. In as much as they loved their spouses, those deaths were sudden, and left heaviness in every sense of the word. Think about the question of the children and how they would be able to move on or try gaining any kind of normalcy after such a bizarre exit by their fathers. How many young adults are dying by suicide every day, just after all their tuition and expenses are paid for them to enroll on campus life? You would think that their lives had some form of direction and purpose. Yet in all of that, they seem to be stuck in the perception of a meaningless life. They also have more burning questions than answers and wind up dying by suicide. 

So many people are married to criminals without prior knowledge. So many wives have had first-hand experience of their husbands being criminals for hire, unknown to their wives. They tend to catch on when it's late in the day or when their criminal husband is implicated in criminal activity, leading to devastating consequences, even death.

People have problems they can't share with anyone. But there are some people out there who seem to think they have a monopoly on pain and suffering, with a self-persecutory complex. I'd like to introduce the issue of class wars and elitism here, just slightly, because weighty as the subject is, these are some of the things that prompted me to write this article in bits and pieces. 

I just want to say that it's very unfortunate that many covet what I've been blessed with, as I would wish for everyone to get the chances I've been dealt in life that were particularly great. I'm passionate about everyone in my country having a decent education and healthcare. If they've had the privileges bestowed unto me, all the better. But egalitarianism is somewhat farfetched in the reality we live in. We all live through comparison and we live a life of oxymorons. This is something I've repeated to people and in my writing, if I'm not mistaken. Opposites must exist to differentiate the two. For example, you would never know light if you've never experienced being in the dark. I used to see these bright students attaining exemplary exam results despite having a candle to rely on while they were studying for their final years. Having once lived for at least 8 months continuously in darkness, I understood just a bit of what they were going through. Then again, like I've just told you, it's not written in my forehead. 

But that's just the thing with these class wars and elitism. When you're perceived as well to do, it's almost impossible for them to consider the fact that the rich also cry. For as long as you are considered as well to do, they never really consider that you've hit a few snags in life and that the test of life is a bit of loss here and there for everyone, therefore I am not immune to hardship because of what people believe is sitting in my bank account. It's all about perspective here, and thinking more open-mindedly. Perspective and enough context matters so much. 

Watch this space, as I write an elaborate article on Social Dominance Theory (SDT). Developed by Jim Sidanius and Felicia Pratto, which explains how societies organise themselves into group-based hierarchies, where certain groups systematically hold more power, privilege, and resources than others. This directly applies to class structures, where elites dominate access to wealth, education, and political influence, often at the expense of lower socioeconomic groups.

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