Kenya can break toxic culture of honour based on success
By Moffat Mshauri, July 24, 2025In Kenyan families, success isn’t just personal. It’s a communal badge of honour.
From Meru’s villages to Nairobi’s estates, young people carry the weight of family expectations to “make it” for their communities and clans.
This pressure, deeply woven into our cultural fabric, harbours a toxic side that treats failure as disgrace rather than learning.
Picture a young woman from Kisii securing a UK scholarship, or a man from Eldoret heading to Qatar for work.
The family holds prayer ceremonies, neighbours bring gifts, pastors offer blessings, and villagers escort them to the airport with one shared hope: bring us honour.
But life abroad isn’t the Instagram fantasy it appears to be. Jobs don’t materialise, and degrees don’t guarantee employment.
When these sons and daughters return home without money or success stories, they face disappointment, gossip, and passive aggression.
Returning “unsuccessful” feels like entering a courtroom where silent verdicts echo: “You failed. You embarrassed us. You wasted your chance.”
In Luke 15:11-32, Jesus tells of a young man who demands his inheritance early and leaves home seeking a better life.
Unlike Kenyan children who leave with family blessings to escape poverty, the prodigal son left in rebellion.
Asking for early inheritance while his father lived was deeply offensive in Jewish culture, equivalent to wishing his parent dead.
The son travelled far, squandered everything, and ended up feeding pigs while starving. Broken and ashamed, he returned home prepared to beg for servant status.
But his father’s response challenges our cultural norms: he threw a celebration. No proof of success required, no shaming for squandered wealth. The only joy was that his son had come home.
This parable confronts Kenyan culture. Would we respond similarly?
Our young people, unlike the rebellious prodigal son, often return expecting love but find quiet judgment: “Why are you back so soon?” “What did you do with your opportunity?”
Yet the parable reminds us that coming home isn’t failure. It’s grace.
Kenyan society has always valued resilience and hard work, but we began attaching dignity only to visible success – money, titles, cars, expensive vacations.
We celebrate those who “make it” abroad or rise from humble beginnings to leafy suburbs, but rarely discuss those who struggled, stumbled, or started over.
Failure became the journey’s end, not part of it.
This unspoken expectation creates devastating consequences: young people fake success to save face, families fracture as “failed” children distance themselves, returnees lose their sense of belonging, some endure abuse abroad rather than return empty-handed, and mental health struggles hide behind forced smiles.
By tying family honour to individual success, we unknowingly crush dreams, punish risk-taking, and breed fear.
Young Kenyans might endure exploitation to avoid returning empty-handed, or avoid coming home altogether, ashamed of not “making it”.
This isn’t resilience. It’s quiet suffering masked as ambition.
Let’s redefine pride in our children. Success should encompass the courage to try, humility to come home, and strength to begin again.
We must normalise conversations about struggles, honouring effort and integrity alongside outcomes.
The writer is a professional Counsellor, Psychologist, and Family Therapist. He is the Lead Therapist at Mshauri Therapy Hub