Zambian Men are Aging like Fine Counterfeit Wine.

Zambian men are aging like fine counterfeit wine.A forty-six year old Zambian man in 2025 is nothing like a year forty-six old man in 1990. We’re expected to be successful earlier in life, while managing the early onset of middle age. Wasn’t it sixty year olds who had grey hair? I started going grey in my late thirties. I figured I still had two more decades.

Some men get a head start. Sometimes I see my age mates posting photos of their children going off to university and I do the math. 

I was barely out of my teens while they were making babies! I was trying to finish my third round of drinks and they were on their third round of procreation. 

Zambian men used to be late or early bloomers. 

But today’s man does not even have the luxury of blooming. He must simply get on with making money at work or in business, finding a woman or man to love, buy a plot in 10 miles and recklessly drive a Hilux. Truly, ilenda ilepya. 

Delay a few years to have children and you’re suddenly fifty years old with your first newborn, doing homework with back pain at sixty. Time today is cruel to the Zambian man. 

This generation of men has been set some high expectations. To do more in less time, with less resources on a shorter timeline than what our fathers and their fathers had to work with. 

Is it little wonder we’re drinking more? Going grey faster? Developing lifestyle diseases because we’re trying to cope with capitalism?

The demands on the modern man can have him dressing like a Geography teacher at a government school. He ages faster than ever. 

One of these days, when you’re sober and brave, look at your own reflection in the mirror. Do you look like your father or uncles did when they were your age? Are you aging ahead of time?

We drive faster and sophisticated cars, live in chic houses, dress better, travel more, eat in better restaurants and can even argue that we look much younger than our fathers did at our age. But we’re dealing with more issues than they ever imagined.

The reality is that we’re aging like fine counterfeit wine. The onset of middle age is arriving faster because younger men behind us are under worse pressure. The timeline of their lifestyles and careers is ridiculously intense. 

They arrive on the job market with two masters degrees aged twenty-six. They’re already baby daddies to three women. The life they’ve packed and experienced means you’re aging ahead of schedule before you’re fifty years old. 

It took our fathers weeks to make decisions we make in days. Our money doesn’t last as long as as theirs did. It took a lifetime to build a career or business. Two years is enough for the jury to decide if or not you’re who you say you are.

We’re getting older faster than our fathers but, God, why is the wisdom taking its sweet time?