Not to be blunt, but when I went under the knife and became a man when the elders told me “Inyio amu itaa Olee” and those sacred droplets of blood hit the ground I was convinced I could do anything. Skin a Maasai lion for leisure. Drink beer ovyo ovyo. Hang out with girls who were probably the reason our elders warned us that metum orip tuli kiteng’.
There was no secret formula for masculinity just blurry YouTube videos with clickbait titles like “5 Steps to Grow Your Beard in Three Days [Step 4 Will Change Your Life].” And, naïve as I was, I believed it. I genuinely thought being a man meant having a beard something that screams authority something that girls could stroke while I sat in a bar lying about that one time I wrestled a lion and won.
“Simba is back!” I’d say, as they giggled and bought the fantasy. But what they don’t tell you what no elder warns you about is that life is the real lion. And one day, it will sink its teeth into you so hard that no beard, no deep voice, no well-timed sip of beer can save you.
And that, my friends, is how I ended up staring at my phone, watching a Maasai man on TikTok Live narrate how he fumbled his father’s ex-wife.
“I thought I was a man. I had the beard, the swagger, the knack for talking my way into situations, but, somewhere along the line, I got it twisted. I mistook a feeling of manhood for actual manhood”. And what better way to discover this than from the great life lessons delivered by of all things a man caught in a Maasai love triangle involving his father’s ex-wife,
His name? LB Maasai. His crime? Falling in love with his father’s ex-wife. His punishment? Everything.
It all started the way most modern relationships do: with a Facebook DM. The woman in question was his father’s ex. A lady from Norwich, a place that sounds respectable until you realize it is the Dubai of heartbreak. Years ago, she had been brought to Kenya by LB Maasai’s father, a Maasai singer who had traveled abroad with a dance troupe. But things didn’t work out. The father had another wife, as Maasai men tend to do, and was committed to alcoholism in a way he was never committed to the marriage. The lady went back to the UK, and at some point, the woman perhaps out of nostalgia, perhaps out of sheer boredom decided to look up for her alleged step son on Facebook.
A few DMs later, she was sponsoring him. Paying his rent in Ngong. Funding his life. If this were a movie, the soundtrack playing in the background would be “Mubaba” by Diana Bahati. “Nimekam na mubaba, mfadhili… juu nakuwanga na allergy ya umasikini.” A tragic foreshadowing.
The problem? According to the Maasai constitution, this woman was supposed to be his mother. But Facebook DMs do not respect culture. Slowly, she transitioned from a sponsor to something else. LB Maasai claims that it was her dressing that got him. She started wearing “seductive clothes,” and that was it. The Mumama economy reversed. He became her ben 10. She got pregnant. Left for the UK. Came back. Got pregnant again this time with twins. If this story were an episode of a soap opera, we’d be at the part where you check the title again to make sure it’s not fiction.
But the world was not done with him yet. Just when he thought he had survived the worst, life had one final humiliationin store. One day, she disappeared. Gone, just like that. Only for him to later find out that she had returned to Kenya… but not to him. No. She had gone to Narok and, in a move that would send even the strongest of men into a depressive episode, fallen in love with another Maasai artist.
Now, listen. There are betrayals, and then there is your father’s ex-wife, your baby mama, your sponsor, leaving you for a fellow artist. The artist code should have prevented this. But as we’ve learned, Nairobi is a lawless place. Worse? The new couple had managed to achieve what he could not they had traveled abroad together. To Norwich. The same Norwich where LB Maasai’s Visa application had been declined.
If pain had a sound, it would be LB Maasai logging into TikTok Live and seeing his ex, baby mama, former sponsor, and once-mother figure… kissing another man abroad. At this point, what do you even do? He tried to fight for her, confronted the man, but it was too late. The Maasai elders had already started whispering. His father, who had already suffered the humiliation of losing his woman to his son, did the only thing left to do cursed him.
And so, LB Maasai did what any man in the middle of a full-life crisis does. He went to church. Confessed. Begged his father for forgiveness. And now, he wants to remarry. But can a man ever truly recover from this? Is there a cleansing ritual strong enough to wipe away a mistake of this magnitude? Will the ancestors allow it?
See, growing up, I thought being a man meant having a beard. Something that screams “I am him.” I thought masculinity was sitting in a bar, sipping beer like a rugged warrior, and telling exaggerated stories about skinning a lion for leisure. But no. Masculinity, it turns out, is a scam. It is opening your Facebook inbox and realizing that one wrong reply can destroy your entire lineage.
The streets are cold. The Mumama’s are winning. The TikTok Lives are devastating. And now, we must all be careful.Before falling in love, always ask: “Have you ever dated my father?”
It could save you from trending for all the wrong reasons.
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