The landlord’s son feels great and expects recognition, not based on anything significant he has done to improve the neighbourhood, but purely due to the greatness and achievements of his father.
He doesn’t seem to have any self or internal point of elevation, except the capacity to bring others down. Additionally, in all neighbourhood conversations and activities, he has made it a point to needlessly place himself at the center.
He is immensely offended by any tenant who seems to attract a significant amount of attention. Anyone who potentially outshines the landlord’s son either risks losing all the tenancy rights or even life itself.
Due to his resolution to outshine all residents, he uses the neighbourhood noticeboard to post all manner of offensive communications to not only the tenants on his father’s property but also the immediate and distant neighbours.
I fear that one day, his offensive remarks will result in retaliation from an equally irrational and reckless landlord of another residence. Unfortunately, in the interest of protecting their residential rights, several people have turned themselves into cheerleaders for the landlord’s son.
They have mastered that the landlord’s son is exceedingly elated by praises and offended to the core by any form of real or perceived criticism. When the landlord’s son calls himself an angel, the cheerleaders tell him, no sir, you are a god.
They are so unhelpful that I suspect if the landlord’s son chooses to eat faeces, they will tell him it is the best meal. The second category of unhelpful residents are those who blame the landlord’s bizarre communications on alcohol as if he is the only one who drinks; drinks more than anyone else or drinks a very rare type of liquor made specifically just for him.
Most importantly, if he did not always follow through with some of the threats he makes to the tenants, perhaps his absurd communications would be waived as simply booze- induced ramblings.
My landlord’s son reminds me of the unfortunate cases in a must-read psychology book, “The boy who was raised as a dog,” which explores the effect of trauma on children’s minds.
Among the many cases used was one of Justin, a six- year-old boy who had spent five years in a kennel. His caretaker was not intentionally cruel, but was cognitively challenged, and had no idea of how to raise a child.
He felt it was best to care for him as though he was his dog. There is another case of a traumatized male who raped and murdered two young girls. Even as they were dead, he stepped on their heads for a prolonged time.
It emerged later that during his trial that he wasn’t even remorseful for his actions Several horrendous decisions that affect all the tenants have been commanded by the landlord’s son that many residents wonder if the landlord is still in charge.
Some even speculate that the utterances the landlord’s son spews are a mere reflection of the things the father wishes to say but is not comfortable enough to say. It is common knowledge that if a toddler calls you a witch or thief, it is likely they are just echoing what they heard from their parents.
One does not have to be an expert on trauma to speculate and infer some conclusions as to why the landlord’s son behaves the way he does. The treatment children get in early childhood can significantly break them such that it is close to impossible to fix them in their later life.
One possible explanation as to why the landlord’s son behaves the way he does is rooted in the circumstances of his birth and early childhood. Picture a young, rural, beautiful, evidently naive woman (we can call her mama Janice) who is uprooted from the only land she knew.
Courtesy of the landlord’s wild ambitions, she is taken to a distant neighbourhood where the colour of the people, language, food, culture, etc. are all strange. Without much physical and emotional support from her husband, she not only had to grapple with adapting to the new life as well as trying to raise the landlord’s son in the best way she could master.
All psychosocial experts will agree that such a background is the perfect recipe for a broken landlord’s son. Therefore, when the landlord’s son is ruthless and brutal to the tenants, he is only attempting an impossible mission of trying to fill a bottomless hole in his heart, created by the unfortunate circumstances of his birth and early childhood.
Many people dealing with childhood trauma share similar dispositions with the landlord’s son. The difference is that to fill a void of the attention he did not receive as an infant, the landlord’s son weaponizes the attendant privileges to vent out his trauma on the residents.
Unfortunately, unless he receives the necessary interventions, there is no amount of carnage to the residents that will ever fill even half of his void. You can give everything you want to the landlord’s son.
Give him all the powers, the most beautiful women, ranks, money, properties, etc. and there is still something he will never be able to have: Enough.
The writer is a social worker
ssellwanga@gmail.com
