Shall I Compare You, Woman?
African woman.Image taken by Martin Kirigua for Pexels.com By Abigail Abby Abok Woman, Shall I compare you to a giant sequoia? You are stouter and more reverent. For trees once stood where skyscrapers now do And winds do strip forest of tough trees. You, most precious creature, flourish amidst the flaming fires of society’s limitations, Defy expectations And resist the pestilence of inferior classification. Shall I compare you to a cold glass of well-made Zobo drink in March? Or an ocean on Atacama? You are more nourishing and more satisfying. The spring waters of your love nurtures nations. You lose yourself so others can find themselves. Because you are, humanity lives on. Shall I compare you to the sun, moon or stars? You are all three by yourself. Giving life and light, Warming and soothing hearts. You enliven the dreary lives of men And dazzle them with your being You are a simple enigma. Men can’t fathom how you’re soft yet strong, Fiery yet calming. Woman, You’re so many things. In all your appellations; Mother, sister, daughter, wife, lady, friend or lover, Your incredible awesomeness is beyond words!
Why We Support the Eradication of Poverty
A boy with calloused feet and worn out slippers.A direct result of poverty.Picture: SHARE THE WORLD’S RESOURCES Poverty is an ever present reality for many Africans. This is usually as a result of war and conflicts, natural causes like drought, famine, excessive rainfall or epidemics. For many countries however, poverty is a direct result of failed or ineffective government policies. This has led to the death of millions of men, women and children and is usually the first card in a string of dominoes that results in Africa being an under-developed continent. Poverty may not be easily eradicated but it can be vastly reduced. This demands a concerted effort by the governments, private organizations, aid agencies and all African citizens. Poverty can be reduced by; Placing the extremely poor on government facilitated social welfare; Ensuring free education for poor people; Providing basic health care facilities and personnel for inner cities; Massive capital and infrastructural development to enable job creation and improved economies; Facilitating food policies that generate income for nations and hence, her people; Empowering whole communities on revenue generation through sustainable development; Empowering women through gender equality, education, entrepreneurship, leadership and innovation and; Citizens holding their governments accountable for each African life; We owe it to our continent to stand up against the poverty! This is because all indices of poverty (and its horrible effects) place Africa as the worst hit. We cannot continue to sit back while Africans – our brothers and sisters – die from the effects of poverty. We also cannot afford to continually be the butt of world’s joke, pity or derision. We must join the world in eradicating poverty; for ourselves, for our families, and for mama Africa! The theme for this year’s International Day for the Eradication of Poverty is, ‘MOVING FROM HUMILIATION AND EXCLUSION TO PARTICIPATION: ENDING POVERTY IN ALL ITS FORMS’. The theme is all encompassing. We need to participate; and that participation MUST be all-inclusive! We support the charge of the United Nations Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, which says “Poverty is not simply measured by inadequate income. It is manifested in restricted access to health, education and other essential services and, too often, by the denial or abuse of other fundamental human rights […] Let us listen to and heed the voices of people living in poverty. Let us commit to respect and defend the human rights of all people and end the humiliation and social exclusion that people living in poverty face every day by promoting their involvement in global efforts to end extreme poverty once and for all.” This fight is not just for the United Nations or for governments. This fight is for ALL OF US! Add your voice today! Fight for the eradication of poverty in Africa!
Being the Weaker Sex
Working woman with her baby.Image: Your Life Hack. I know this very beautiful lady whose spirit is equally beautiful. She is the type of lady that brings about a sense of calmness when you speak to her. Her humility is so inspiring and the light in her eyes tell of a spirit that is happy, carefree and blessed. Then she got married. Barely three months into the marriage, I noticed a marked change in her demeanor; the light in her eyes had dimmed considerably, there was an air of sadness about her and what used to be graceful slimness began to look more gaunt than slim. When I perceive such sadness, I don on Agatha Christie’s Monsieur Poirot’s persona. I went about investigating the cause of her sadness and what I found was deliberately annoying! Her husband works in a multinational oil company while she works in bank. They both have to leave the house before 7am and both return home quite late. You corporate workers know the drill! It was a power marriage…but only for the husband. I found out that the husband demanded she cooked fresh breakfast, lunch and dinner every day. This lady would wake up at about 3:30am to prepare breakfast and lunch and to clean their house. She would package his lunch in a flask and help him prepare for work. After a long day at the office, she would rush home to cook his dinner and probably wait for him to fuck have sex with her at night. What was most annoying was that the husband demanded she washes his clothes too. He used to take his clothes to the dry cleaners before he married her but he was quoted as saying, ‘I cannot be wasting money now that I have a wife’. So this lady had to wash his suits, shirts and kaftans and iron them for her ‘darling husband’. After three months, she was bone-tired from balancing slavery house work and a hectic bank schedule. Truth is, she was tired of the marriage. She wanted out but being a ‘devout Christian’, she felt she had no options. You can imagine how angry I got when I heard all these. I was so mad I almost walked up to man to slap him! I know you would think it is not my business but truth is, it is! Here is why I got so riled up. Time and time again, we have been told that women are the weaker sex. Most religions of the world preach that women are weaker and it seems to be one of the few points that the religions of the world agree. In Islam, the Qur’an the Hadith says a woman has a ‘weaker mind’ (Qur’an 2:228 and Bukhari 6:301 respectively), the Bible in 1 Peter 3:7 calls the woman the ‘weaker vessel’, early Judaism saw the woman as ‘weak minded’ and even my grandfather drummed it in so well into his children that my father believes we are weaker. What of our cultures? They lend their weight to the notion that women are weaker. And not just that, they put up cultural markers in place to remind us that we are the weaker gender. So…if we are the weaker sex, why the bloody hell do we do most of the work?! There are many women like the woman I mentioned above; women who have to get it right at the home front and get it right at work. Some women are lucky and are allowed to have maids. Some are not. They have to do everything themselves! The argument has always been that men need to ‘focus on work and provide the bread’ so women have to ensure the home is properly catered to. I used to understand the logic. But now, more and more women are in the work place as their husbands are. Some women even do morein the office than their husbands. Is it then fair to continue to hold that ‘logic’ and to make such women do all the work at home? Let me shade my dad and brother a bit. My sister and I don’t live at home because of work so they probably see us twice a year. My other sister is in school and is home about four times a year. When we are away, my father and brother do all the household chores and maintain the house. My dad fixes his breakfast – a cup of tea – daily and sets off for work. Fast forward to whenever I come home. Soon as they see I am home, they take their hands off the household chores. My dad would even ask that I fix his breakfast. I want to assume that he misses me and would prefer to have that special bonding moment but eh ehn! I no gree! See, my father is set in his ways and one of his beliefs is that chores are for women. Simple and short! He raised us like that and even when my mother insisted that my brother does chores, my father relegated him to sweeping duty. Even that became a problem for him as we grew up. I knew he wouldn’t do it so I just took his portion. I spoke to my sisters and they said when they also come home, they experience same. My brother is especially worse. If I don’t wake up on time, my dad may still fix his breakfast but my brother? Total hands-off from chores! It wasn’t until I fell a bit ill that they both miraculously found the ability to take care of themselves (and the house) again. They wanted me to feel that if I wasn’t home, they would die but seeing how fresh they both looked, I begin to wonder. Done shading! Okay popsi, no vex abeg! You see, many men in the country are like that. They feel a woman can and shoulddo any and every household chore. A woman is supposed to maintain a house and maintain her husband and
Dear African Woman…..’You Are Not Good Enough’
Model, Aamito LagumImage: Chano8 “Dear African Woman, Why must we have this conversation over and over again? Why can’t you just accept our facts about you? Facts about how unimportant you are to the general scheme of things? Facts about how your physical attributes are repulsive and unappealing? Facts that show the world that YOU ARE NOT GOOD ENOUGH?! Do you want us to go through this drill again? Do you want us to lay all the facts on the table? Didn’t you beg us to stop…to have mercy…to leave you alone? Well, now we are pissed. Maybe you need a reminder that you are unattractive, ugly, and dirty and you should be ashamed of yourself. Look at your hair. Oh that ugliness! Look at THAT nappy, unruly, unkempt, dull, kinky and coarse hair. We have told you times without number to straighten that hair. We have told you again and again that we will not let you into our companies, our schools, our parties or our magazines with that hair! Why don’t you listen?! Straighten that hair! Wear a weave! Stop following Viola Davis or Blue Ivy or that nonsense you call the #NaturalHairMovement. If you want us to accept you, then you MUST ensure that your hair looks like ours; long, silky, glossy, shiny and best of all, straight! And what is it with that nose?! Do you want to drag people’s souls in?! That flare is just too wide! Dr. Paul Nassif is a renowned rhinoplasty surgeon and he can fix that for you; if you can cough up the money. Gosh, you are just sucking up ALL the oxygen in here! Gosh, is it your plan to asphyxiate us all? Goddamn it! You would think that is the only thing wrong with you until eyes fall on those thick lips. If we were to take pictures of only your lips and rotate them either to the right or left, it would look like cellulite buttocks and you know that is UNAPPEALING! We see your lips and cannot help but think of thick slices of steak. You want to be treated like Aamito Lagum? Trust me, we can make it happen! You know what? We are tempted to finish this conversation with our backs turned to you but we are willing to make this huge sacrifice for humanity by continuing to sear this horrible image to our brain. Your breasts we can deal with but your buttocks?! Why does it have to be so thick?! So FAT?! So…primitive! Don’t you know that small and perky is the ONLY way a woman’s buttocks should be? Again, I can make contacts with Dr. Terry Dubrow and maybe – just maybe – he can turn this wide girth into something palatable. Yes, liposuction is hard but it must be easier than living with all these flaws. And the worst of them all is your skin ‘hue’; if we can call it that with a straight face. In fact, let us say it as it is; YOU ARE BLACK! Your skin color is just wrong! It looks dirty and we conclude that it is dirty! Gosh! We have given you so many options; you can use creams, injections, drugs and even laser treatments to get that dirty skin off but you wouldn’t! We have sent some of your sisters – Dencia, many Nollywood actresses, Nigerian and African celebrities – with perfect examples of what you could look like and yet, you somehow resist. We are tired of you! Do you love our ridicule?! Do you bask in our derision?! Why are you so stubborn?! Though I said your skin color is the worst, your weight comes a close second. Miss big-boned, fat slob! Lose some weight! Be like us! We are slim, we are sexy and we are glamorous! You on the other hand, blah! We want to puke! We can tolerate your sisters who are celebrities – Beyonce, Alicia Keys, Amber Rose, Blac China – because their skin color is as close to ours as is possible. We can forgive anything but a black skin. This is the last time we will tell you this. As long as you continue to be stubborn, we will not feature you in our movies, our TV shows, in our magazines, our charts, our award shows and the glamorous red carpets, our billboard ads and in our stories of success. We will exclude you from all our well carved happy stories, our human projections and our standards for beauty. We will ensure that you are not brand ambassadors to anything and if you persist, we will only push harder…and harder….and harder, until you break, until you give up, until you accept that BLACK IS NOT BEAUTIFUL! This is the last time we will bring this up. With Venom, World Racist Confederation.” Amara la NegraImage: EGL Dear World Racist Confederation, We have received your venom over and over and like you, we like to say it as it is: FUCK YOU RIGHT BACK! You said our hair is not good enough for you, right? Well…it may shock you to know but, we are okay with it! We refuse to be bullied into thinking that our natural hair is unappealing! We love it that way; that is what makes us different from the rest of the world! In fact, all our features are so unique that we cannot help but call you out on your envy. And yes, Viola Davis showed you that our hair is awesome! It must have hurt to have a natural haired African woman on one of the top tier television shows today. We bless Beyonce for putting our black, fluffy, puffy hair on world stage! Ladies, let’s get in formation! And we are not just in your movies; we are walking your fashion runways. Go ask Maria Borges who made history by walking the Victoria Secret show with her natural hair. Hey World Racist Confederation, read up a little…or
The Unfairness Of Marriage
Culled from: MADAMNOIRE A time comes when women begin to feel the flutters of loneliness, where the desire to have a person they can call their own sets in. Marriage ideas begin to grow, and she starts to screen possible suitors according to her preformed ideology of what marriage entails. Soon enough, she settles on one man who satisfies at least 70% of her desires, if not all of it. That seems all good and diddly until the day after the wedding. Things change so drastically after she says ‘I do’ that she wonders whether she is on a roller-coaster ride. She wakes up to the reality that marriage may not be the fairy tale she had envisioned it to be. First of all, she loses her identity. She is no longer called ‘Martha’, ‘Janelle’, ‘Iniobong’ or ‘Safiya’, but ‘Mrs. (insert husband’s name)’. No one cares anymore that she was a person in her own right before she joined herself to her man. Many people conveniently forget her name because she is (huffs) now married. In the typical Nigerian context, she might be called Amariya, Iyawo, Nwunyem or our wife. Secondly, society expects her to stop dressing beautifully because she now no longer has any reason to. Society thinks she was dressing in an attractive manner to catch a man and having done so, should stop being attractive. No one cares that she probably dressed well because she wants to or loves to. On the other hand, no one expects the man to stop rocking his jeans and polo shirts. No one expects the man to look shabby on purpose. They expect him to always look dapper or the wife gets blamed; one of her many chores it seems. But the woman has to start wearing big(ger) clothes, wrappers and Abayas. If she is found wearing sexy clothes, or even normal clothes (such as jeans and a simple top or tee), she will not be able to live down the side-eye she is sure to get from other women…and men too. Also, if push comes to shove, the woman is expected to give up her career and job to play house and raise the kids (if there are any). This comes from the notion that husbands and children are the essence of the woman’s life. No one cares that raising kids is a two-parent affair; at least. A woman might have to give up on her life for her kids, because society dictates that kids are the center of her life. Does that, in essence, mean the kids are of no importance to the man or not as important to him as they are to the woman? When a woman considers marriage, let her realize that religion (if she practices any) places a huge role on women. In Christianity, it is expected that the woman submits to her husband (Ephesians 5:22-24) as the church would submit to God himself. The flip side is that, a man has to love the woman as Christ himself loved the church; willing to put up life to restore the world. Marriage in Islam is viewed as an important and sacred union between a man and woman that fulfills half of one’s religious obligations. Let women also consider that in Africa, the dictates of society on married women is condescending, patriarchal and in some cases, absolutely misogynistic. The unfairness of marriage is such that until you are willing submit to that man whom you profess to love, you are not expected to be talking about marriage. Submission of this sort, if not properly considered and digested, can lead to bitterness and immeasurable sorrow. If however, you are of the opinion that marriage is a partnership – as it should be – you would still need to contend with family members who refuse to accept your postulations. Men can get away with being opinionated about the things they want; women, not so much. We are changing the narrative, but it really is at a sloth’s pace. So really consider if you want to get married. Can you handle the pressure? Can you hold your own? Does your partner know who you are…and supports it? Because if you are marrying for the feelings of it, you may be headed for a place of such utter sorrow. Think about it…and prepare for that marriage if you choose to walk down that road.
