Showing posts with label Life in Nigeria. Show all posts
Working From Home: I’m Doing It For Our Son – Well, Not Really, To Be Absolutely Fucking Honest
When I returned from UK, I thought to myself that I would get that
dream job ASAP, at the very most it would take me six months tops. I kind of
have a history of getting jobs, so I’m never really worried whenever I leave
one. I just know, given time, another one would come. It hasn’t worked out as
well as I hoped. This is the tenth month since our return. And I am still
basically not employed full-time. I am not idle, mind you. It is not in my
constitution to do nothing. I have had short term projects here and there,
while still waiting for that biggie that would pay be a great salary (the money
I spent getting a masters can’t be for nothing oh) with mouth-watering
allowance/benefit package. As it is, I mostly work from home unless when I have
to leave the house for a second. Now, I’m not the most disciplined person when
it comes to time-management. But give me a target and a deadline. While one day
I might spend a whole of five minutes on the project, come day 2, I would start
firing by 5am and won’t leave my work station till 13 hours later. I can be an
adrenaline junkie like that, thus a part of me quite enjoys working in this
way. A greater part of me, though, craves the unlimited internet access I would
get if I was working in an office. The way I’m burning through SwiftNG data
gives hubby heart palpitations. With my erratic and sometimes non-existent income,
he has had to bear the financial burden, which a major negative.
One thing though we both agree is that period has been good for is
childcare. I have a help, by the way. Someone who comes in the morning to clean
the house and run errands. Money might be tight, but the most effective and
guaranteed way to get me in a perpetual bitch mood is to make me responsible
for the tidiness of the house. With the chores outsourced, I am able to get
down to the business of raising bomboy. MM and I had decided earlier in the day
that childcare is something we would endeavour to do by ourselves. We bath
bomboy ourselves – on weekends, he is encouraged to wash himself under
supervision, preparing him to completely take over the job of bathing himself
by the time he is 6. We dress him – again, on weekend he dresses himself for
the most part. We aid him with his homework, etc. MM works as an engineer in a bank, in Lagos.
That means, he leaves pretty early and sometimes comes home late. AND HE WORKS
WEEKENDS AND MOST PUBLIC HOLIDAYS!!!! So
basically, if I too was employed outside the home, it would mean that bomboy
would for the most time be without either parent. Especially during the
long/summer holiday, which coupled with the #Ebola wahala saw him staying
nearly three months without school. The 9 hours he would have otherwise been in
school or transitioning to and fro it (thank you, Lagos traffic) would have
been spent at home, with the housekeeper. I don’t know about other mothers, but
I get jittery about leaving my child with a unsupervised staff for long stretch
of time. Save MM and I, the only adults I trust with my child is those at his
school. We took a lot of care picking his school, and paying quite a pretty sum
for that, for the relative peace of mind of knowing the establishment has a
reputation to maintain and would thus arrange themselves. A lone housekeeper
unfortunately doesn’t inspire that such confidence in me. I just don’t have
much faith in human beings, to be honest.
I may not be voluntarily working from home, but I am very conscious
of the advantage it has for my son. Even when I’m sweating it out on my
keyboard, furious to meet deadlines, my attention is on what bomboy is up to
with the housekeeper. I may ask for him to be kept from me for the time being,
but I take mini-breaks to go inspect what he and the woman are doing. I know
what he is being given to eat. What sort of conversation he is having, what
poor grammar he is picking from godknowswhere.
It is still me raising him. Over the long holiday, I decided to get much more hands-on
with his academics. I would go on the internet and print out worksheets for
higher classes for him. I taught him how to tell the time (the o’clock,
half-past, quarter-past, quarter-to, and the 5 minutes hands). We did a lot of
reading exercises and I am proud he is said to read much better than his
classmates. We did loads of writing exercises, and this has reflected in his
handwriting skills. We did addition and subtraction, focusing on the double
digits. Now he can add 18 to 20 to get 38, and take away 17 from 30 to get 13.
He was writing in 5’s long before his peers. And writing from 1 to 500.
Everyday during the holiday he had homework he cried, groaned, grumbled,
sulked, and threw tantrums over, but did nonetheless. I was far from being the
favourite parent. That is some hard shit, let me tell you now. The feeling that
your child doesn’t like you. MM would come home and get shrieks of “Daddy!!!”
and hugs. My departures were welcomed and even sent forth with wails if I left
instructions that TV was banned in my absence till homework was done. My
returns were barely noticed, except for the occasional, “Mummy, I finished my
homework. Can I watch now?” I was the wicked denier of all things fun.
It appears to have paid off. Last year, bomboy was the second best
student in his class although he was had just returned from UK and trying to
acclimatize with the Nigerian system (his school isn’t running a strict British
curriculum, which I quite welcome tbh). He has a competition going with the
girl who took the top position, another UK returnee. Now, all his teachers
enthuse how brilliant he is. How ahead of his peers he has come. I hear these
things and I am filled with pride. I went out and bought more worksheets.
Printing off the internet is a harder work than you know, looking for the right
materials. It can take half the day seeking to gather a good mix of exercises,
so he can fully engage his brain. I got some really good books, including one
on non-verbal reasoning which is basically junior aptitude test if you ask me.
Every day, bomboy and I sit down with the books. I make him read the
instructions out loud, teach him unfamiliar words, and have him talk me through
his understanding of what is expected of him. it’s been less dramatic than it
used to be. He is less reactive to my rule that homework must be completed
before any TV watching or going outside to ride his bicycle/scooter. Since his
teacher suggested I step up on our spelling exercise, he’s been asking me to
teach him how to spell just about everything. We have made it fun. I got this app
where I can record myself spelling words and making sentences with the word.
Bomboy loves it! And once he gets a spelling – and gets high-fived for it (he
absolutely loves getting those) – he doesn’t forget it.
I’m still not his favourite parent. It is his daddy he plays video
games with when the poor tired man returns from work. It is still daddy he
prefers reading him to sleep – although now, he is using more of the story book
apps in his tablet, you know the kind that reads to you. We still fight when I
say he’s watched far too much TV than is good for him. But, I am raising my
child. I am educating him. I am seeing him blossoming. Watching his abilities
increase and seeing the intelligent person he is growing up to be. I am not out
to make him into some kind of first-class material or anything like that.
Academic brilliance would be nice, but it is not my main motivation. I just
want a child his innate abilities I am able to harness. Who I’m not limiting
his skills just because I am not paying some things in his upbringing the
little bit of attention it requires. I am extremely proud of myself for the
time I have put into him these past ten months. His successes I consider my
successes, evidence of my superior mothering abilities J. MM said the
other day that I was doing splendid work with our son, and that’s high praise.
Cause him and I clash all the time due to the difference in our parenting
styles. I feel, finally I’m doing something right. Sometimes lasting. I am
setting this little boy on his way to a good future. It is a fantastic feeling.
That does not, however, mean that this period of working from home
has not been hard for me. It isn’t something I want. If I get a good job offer
this very minute, I would snap it right up. I need it for my own mental health
being. I can’t bear the insecurity of knowing I don’t have much money of my own
making. That if I need to splurge on a little more than for making my hair or
buying myself a few things (am quite low maintenance, so I don’t spend a lot on
myself – except for that iPhone 6 Plus I totally intend to buy!), I would need
to ask hubby for it. It is immaterial that he would give me the money. It is
the asking part I abhor. There is a confidence in feeling, “I fucking earned
this money; I can fucking spend it the way I fucking want!” I don’t have that
now. I desperately need it. Yet I want to be the sort of mother who spend
quality time with her son. I wonder, is it possible to have both? Oh well …
Ciao!
We Love Our Women Poor
So maybe I make everything about gender. I am a woman, and gender
has little ways it screws up my life, so why the hell not. Like all the times I
was called nwa ogbarida by my mom and
relatives as a kid, and how I had filtered it to mean I shouldn’t been visible.
I shouldn't be so out there, for everyone to see me. I shouldn't be seen to like the
sight of myself and the sound of my voice. How I embodied all that disapproval,
and tends to wince when I encounter an innocent little girl who is doing these
things I had done myself. How I would cringe and think this one is in for wahala. Or how I had reacted on seeing Lupita’s
character in 12 Years A Slave dancing so conspicuously. How I thought, “she is
showing off herself; she is asking for trouble,” and even felt sort of
validated when she got hit with a wine (hard) bottle. I had embodied the
mind-set I had raised with, and no matter how much I shout from the rooftop
that a woman decides for herself what she wants to do and should be respected
for it, a teeny whinny part of me thinks a woman who draws attention to herself
will sooner get in trouble. And because I think this, I trip over myself all
the time. Whenever I am involuntarily being out there (I say involuntary
because it is my personality – y’all don’t know how many times I have told
myself that I am going to try to be ‘normal’ and ‘good’ but can’t keep it up), I
half-expect wahala. I am pretty sure
there are many who are waiting for my day of reckoning sef. Perhaps they thought it had come the day I partook in a Breast
Awareness Meme and joked that I had been cheated on for the past 5 months. I
could almost hear folks going, that girl that thinks her husband is the best
thing since sliced bread. Ehen, shebi she don see say men will always be men.
Ehen! Now, she go let us hear word. LOL.
Anyway, this post isn’t about my man, though he remains the best
thing since sliced bread. It is about how gender is a powerful presence in my
life. I am going to start by talking about my mother. Believe me when I say
that she is one very hardworking woman. One area she excels is her passion for
work. Na proper jacky that woman be.
She sleeps so little and goes into her office every single day of the week. And I’m
not just talking about the so-called feminine work – the house-chores – that
aren’t monetized, that are of little financial gain to women. I am talking
about ‘real’ work. My mother is an ambitious woman; she is the type of person
who yearns for an executive position, a position of authority. Unfortunately,
despite her passion, her hard work, that kind of career advancement she wants
has eluded her. She is fifty-four years old now, and doesn’t even have
financial security, after all these years of toiling at work without rest. My
mother believes, and I quite agree, that if she had been a man she wouldn’t
need to work this hard. Or rather, that she would commit the hours as she has
as a women, but the difference would be that her ROI (return on [time]
investment) would be higher. She would do the same amount of work she’s always
done but get a much higher income. A man and a woman would do the same sort of
thing, but a man takes more home at the end of the day because he is a man.
Anyone who doubts me or thinks I am spouting nonsense from my ass, please
google DFID’s extensive research on gender in Nigeria. What the document
doesn’t exactly state, but what I am believe to be true, is that men get more
because they are perceived to need it more.
Most of you will agree with me that a woman’s income is seen in
Nigeria to be jara even when it’s
clearly not. An employer may be inclined to tell her, “why are you stressing
yourself like this, eh? Go and get a man to take care of you” rather than
accept her proposal for higher wages. On the other hand, a male employee (who
is diligent in world, committed to pushing the country forward) won’t ever have
to hear such rubbish. He is in a better position to negotiate successfully. For
one, if he isn’t a shifty character, his time at the company is seen to be more
reliable because it is steadier. He isn’t going to be away on maternity leave –
even companies that are generous enough to give paternity leave don’t offer 3
paid months of it. When his kids are sick, his wife would be called upon not him.
His kids’ school authorities wouldn’t expect him to be the one attending PTAs
(just as bomboy’s class teacher expressed her surprise when MM that came for
PTA, not me). And if he works late at night, the possibility that his wife will
storm into office to make trouble and accuse him of sleeping with his boss is
low. Or that she would wake up in the mornings paranoid that her husband’s job is an
avenue for him to meet women, therefore he must resign and stay at home to take
care of the children. Thus making him more valuable. And if these aren’t enough
advantage, he is perceived to need the money to take care of the women in his
life. His income isn’t jara, so when
he presses for a raise or is driving a hard bargain during the recruitment
process, he wouldn’t be seen as a greedy motherfucker who only wastes his salary
on clothes, makeup and shoes.
However,
beyond the mindset employers may be working with, there is the matter of the
way women regard money. I am going to use myself as an example. In all the time
I have been working, I have never asked for a raise. I have only once sort of
refused a job because I felt the remuneration on offer left little to be
desired. I say sort of because I didn't tell them to take the job and shove it
up their ass. I simply argued that I was worth more. They couldn't afford
to pay more, so we mutually shook hands and say we shall meet again. Even then,
I would sometimes admonish myself. Maybe I should have taken what was offered,
even though it really wouldn't to benefit me financially. After all, wasn’t I
the kind of person who would say I was doing it for the experience, or I was
doing it because I was pregnant and nobody else wants to employ a pregnant
woman, I was doing it because I'm not the sort of person to fold my arms and
stay at home, or I'm doing it because of this and because of that. There is
always a reason why I am willing to take a job, and then moan thereafter about
people who got paid handsomely.
Perhaps
the reason I can afford to do this is because my basic survival isn’t dependent
on these jobs. True, I am quite low maintenance. Aside from my madness for Apple
products, I find it hard to spend what I see as an obscene amount of money on
anything. I buy cheap clothes or quality clothes at huge discounts. I recently began
buying M.A.C products, and mehn it took some psyching oh. Like the N3,500 I
paid for an eyeliner. Na wa ya. I asked myself, abi no be the same thing N100
own dey do e dey do? I be proper 'Aye' babe. *hisses and reminds myself say na
only one life I get oh ... na when I dey plan to enjoy am? Anyway, you get the
picture. My cheapness aside, it could be that the main reason I can afford to
work for pennies is because I’ve a husband who can afford to keep me, feed me,
clothe me, house me and take adequate care of our son. Our basic needs are no issue;
frivolities postponed till when country better. And if I think this way, it
means I did actually buy into exactly the kind of mind-set that kept Nigerian
women poor. My income is really jara.
For days I have wanted a M.A.C powder brush that costs N20,000. With my small change, I could jejely buy it without hearing husband
scream, “twenty thousand for gini?” Because truly if bomboy's school was impatiently
waited for my salary to land so it could get their fees, I wouldn’t be so
altruistic. I would be howling, “show me the motherfucking money!”
Or
maybe I still would. Maybe I would be concerned about how I would appear. Afraid I would be thought of as greedy. A ‘what does she want all that
money for sef?’ kind of situation. After all, sitting on the business class
section of the airplane (my second time ever, yay!!), my mind briefly went to the
people who may be thinking, “see this small girl, I wonder who is really paying for
that seat.” You know, because men have money and women don't, and if a woman is
spending more than the bare minimum then it had to have come from a man.
Perhaps absolutely nobody thinks that. It could be all in my head. Real or merely my
erroneous perception, it is something that discourages me from flashiness. The
fear that it would put a question mark on my source of funding. At least I
am married, so my husband is the first suspect. Not some Alhaji or Senator, or
bank manager. What about single women who, because they want to get married,
are turned off by jobs or positions that will bring them ‘too much money’? They
don’t want their integrity debated about. Perhaps they too had had it drummed
into their ears that virtue in a woman is in being demure, in quietness.
Society keeps showing them, through Nollywood and even Hollywood (hello, Being
Mary Jane), that there is a very good chance that a woman with shit load of money
and career success is going to end up alone. So, by Jove, even if being Onyeoma CY doesn’t come natural to them,
they are going to fake it till it becomes second nature.
So
yeah, gender is very much a part of my everyday life. It isn't something I
encounter on paper, or something the West stuffs down my throat. I honestly
feel I don't talk about it enough. But of course, you all are free to disagree.
Ciao!
P:S: Last week I posted something
about Giants of History. I honestly couldn’t stress enough how this is a book
to buy, even if you have a phobia for books. Seriously. Hey, it is Easter by the corner, and hampers are going
on. Chuck this one in there, and make someone’s day! By the way, I hope you all
clicked on the link and some can make it to the book launch. I still have my invite
for anyone who wants it.
Still Very Much A Work In Progress
I have been
negligent. Incredibly so. I am sorry. Please forgive. Done? Phew,
thanks. So it has been a few couple of months. What has happened since
then? I got a job – and almost as quickly un-got the job – in HIV/AIDS for
African and Black Caribbean women who had been newly diagnosed with the virus.
What happened was that the looming visa expiration date meant I couldn’t
flourish in this job as much as I had planned to. Overstaying my welcome,
of course, was utterly out of the question. But, it’s all good though. I learnt
what I could within the awfully short duration, and carried my kaya back to
Nigeria.
So, my boy and I have been home for a little over two months. It was
punishingly hot the first two months. It’s either I am acclimatizing or the
rains are finally doing their job. I’m not going to forget those scourging days
though. Ah! If you know much I pitied folks closer to the Sahara. Then again,
Arabs have no wahala. Dem sabi use dem oil money well. Their streets are
probably air-conditioned. Lagos, on the other hand, is so humid it makes you
want to kill yourself. When you know factor in the lack of steady electricity
from PHCN, it is tough to keep having a will to live. I didn’t cook the first
three weeks. I just couldn’t stand the heat from the poor ventilated kitchen –
hmm, don’t get me started about how poorly our houses here are built.
Anyway, enough of my whining. Oh, sad news though. Una remember all
those my gragra I been dey do to get a PhD admission? Well, none of am worked.
Rejections, rejections, rejections – the motherfucking bane of my life. I am okay
now. I took time to mourn (lol) and now I am duly wearing my big girl pants, ready
to face the world. The unsuccessful PhD applications presented an issue for me
– my family. Where do I seek employment? Being in development and public
health, Abuja or Northern Nigeria was the place to be. Truly, when I was coming
back to Nigeria, I was all set to relocate to Abuja. I was like, I will a job
ASAP (hehehehehehe. Well, one can dream) and I will leave bomboy with him papa
in Lagos. That was the deal – the blueprint. MM no fight me. He don tire. You
can’t chain a woman to yourself, after all. Within a month of our homecoming, I
began rethinking the thing. My kid is still very young, at an impressionable
stage in life. I have a lot of job to do in moulding him into the man he’d become,
and these early years count so much. Could I really leave him behinda? Perhaps
only see him two weekends a month? I could live with seeing my husband
infrequently – he is a big boy, he can take care of himself. But my kid, well
that na another story.
I remember having a conversation with a friend where I told him that
while I might struggle with sacrificing for my husband, with my son it is different.
I drop things for him at a heartbeat. Not like I live my life for him oh, or
have he dictates my every step. But, say with MM for instance, I don’t fret
about things like “another woman will take over my home,” or “mister man will
look outside.” For me, it’s like I married an adult. He has the thinking
faculties intact; he is very capable of deliberating for himself what is right.
If chooking around is his idea of what would exponentially increase his quality
of life, eh what else can I say? I no go hol’ am for leg saying, “lailai, you
can’t try it!” If you ask me, I would say that I am more inclined to shift
ground, so he can get the maximum opportunity to exercise himself without
having the need to explain jack to me. But my child, well I owe him. I feel a stronger
sense of responsibility towards him. For one thing, the boy is at an age where
he really really needs me. Above all, even if I fail at everything else, I
don’t want to fail at being a mother.
This brings me to a topic that I care very deeply about. Last year, if
you guys would remember, I blogged about seeking the services of both a
psychologist and a psychiatrist. At the time I told her about making the
appointment, my mom was flabbergasted. She couldn’t understand why I would want
to do such a thing as that. She said, “ikwuwala ara?” Translation, are you
going insane now? I wasn’t. Sure, the dissertation presented one of the most
challenging times for me (oh, by the way, I scored a distinction!!! Original
& primary research at that too! Very proud of myself). I had a near mental
breakdown. I have blogged about my depression episodes, so you kind of have an
idea that I did have a longstanding issue before now. Also, living with my
mother wasn’t a walk in the park. It was emotionally torturous for me at times,
but I shan’t be blogging about that!
During the sessions with the shrinks, I talked about my childhood. I
talked about my issues with my mother (precisely how she appears to strive on
making me feel inadequate and how I was tired to trying to please her, because
I never could). I talked about my dad, our lack of relationship, and the
conscientious decision I had taken to keep him at arm’s length because I felt
wounded by him again and again. I talked about how it was always at the back of
my head that I wouldn’t amount to much in life, because it seemed my parents
had decided that for me. Like they had looked into my future and seen it, and
it was just what it was. And how my entire life seems to be about proving them
wrong, yet believing that they really are right. And how tiring it all was.
The professionals thought my depression episodes were my body’s way to
shutting down. Of recouping all the energy I was burning constantly being
anxious that I was racing again a fate that had been signed, sealed and delivered
a long time ago. I didn’t believe them at first. I wanted a name for what was
wrong with me. Bipolar disorder? Anxiety disorder? Whatever, just give it a
name! So I could go onto the internet, google and google and google, make it
another project, conquer it. But they wouldn’t do it. The best I got was
‘unexplained depression’. But the worst part of the consultations was their
diagnoses. They said I was making myself depressive. And even when I wasn’t
depressed, I would expect it. That it was comforting to me to have the
episodes, because then I could tick it off and wait for the next one. It had
angered me, but today, I believe they were quite right.
I haven’t had any episode since the last consultation. I am not saying I
haven’t felt down. Those PhD rejections hit me really hard, particularly
because it was followed immediately by a rejection for a job interview. But the
difference is, there was a departure from my usual way of interpreting it as
“You see! Deep down, you always knew all these were a futile effort at any rate,
didn’t you?” instead, I spent many days reminding myself that I am a resilient
person. I get knocked down, I mourn, and then I get up again and keep going.
Some day I shall get that career success that appears out of reach right now.
That seems so far off, and me way down the ladder competing with people that
already have one leg in, or who have had better opportunities, or are smarter. I
know sha that some day I shall remember this phase the same way I remember the
time when I earned N25,000 as a monthly salary.
Bottom line, I am gaining a healthier perspective about my life. I am
putting my son at the forefront of it, because I felt my parents quite damaged
me. I keep reminding myself that that I didn’t have much of a family life
growing up doesn’t mean I can’t aspire to have one, and hold onto it now that by
some miracle I have it. I am very grateful for MM. He understands I am not
exactly a whole person. That I bear deep scars that flame up at times, and that
it clouds my vision. Presently, I am working on marketing myself as a public
health and development consultant now. I am going to have to put in some work,
get out of my shell, network and all. See how much crumbs I can get while I try
to dent the ground I walk on.
Ciao!
P.S: If you are into public
health or international development, join me on my other twitter account
@MsUzoaru