Showing posts with label Marriage. 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!
#WhyIStayed – My Mom Stayed, and For This I’m Grateful
I
was in primary school. Maybe primary three or so. My parents were arguing
really loudly, which wasn’t out of the ordinary. They argued a lot, it was the
way their marriage was. My mom was having her breakfast. We had had ours, and
was waiting for her to be done so she could take us to school. Then she
screamed. It was a terrible sound. Things happened very quickly afterwards. I think
we the children were screaming too. I can vaguely recall neighbours running
into our house. I know my dad left, either before the neighbours came in or thereafter
I can’t say for sure now, but I know he hadn’t gone with them to the hospital. When
mom cried that he had reached out to strike her and in her attempt to block the
blow, her chair had skidded and she fell fracturing her ankle, neither dad nor
us could collaborate or refute that account. You see, dad had locked us out of
the sitting room when he stormed in to shout at her. At any rate, between the
time mom went to the emergency room and when she returned home, that story
changed. It became the same old, ‘I slipped’. I didn’t get the memo on time.
While mom was at the hospital, some other neighbour had asked me why I wasn’t
in school. I answered that my father had beat my mother, so she couldn’t take
me. That neighbour had said nothing. No comfort words. She just quickly
terminated her inquiry and was gone quicker than you could bat an eye.
That’s
the only incident of domestic abuse I recall in our home, although years later
mom insisted there were several others. I didn’t see it. I’d always thought, as
bad as daddy was, at least he didn’t hit her except for that one time. I did
recognise the other types of abuses. The way he didn’t want her working. The
way he accused her of sleeping with every Tom, Dick and Harry. The way he
wanted to handpick her friends and rejected almost every one she made for
herself. The way he accused her of competitiveness – I remember when she
registered for her masters programme and he went on and on about how she did it
because he had a masters degree. The way he stopped eating the food she cooked
whenever they had an disagreement. There was so many other things. So many
things that made the younger me think, “if this is what marriage is, I’d
happily stay single.” Dad believed nobody would want to marry me, at any rate. He said I was
too opinionated. Too stubborn. I didn’t know how to give in to authority (i.e.
men). He saw the interest I had in sex and in boys, and he told me I would be an ashawo just like my
mother – that I would be thrown out of my marriage soon enough, should I
hoodwink some poor sod into marrying me that is. I cannot say for certain how
physically abusive he was to my mother, but he was emotionally so – and he was
emotionally abusive to me.
But
I love him. He is my father. I could even say my mother loves him too, although the predominate
emotion she feels at present is intense hate. She has remarried, but I swear
she’s impatiently waiting for God to punish him for all the wrong he did her. But
she did stay married to him for over 30 years. She said she stayed because of
us the children. My younger self used to think it was bullshit. Leave oh jare, I
would say to her. Why put up with this?
To
be honest, I’m happy she didn’t. We barely ate with her around as it was.
Waiting for the little money she made from selling any merchandise she would
get her hands on while the Imo State Government owed her several months salary.
And all that while, we supposedly had a rich father. A father who lived more in
Europe than he did in Nigeria. He drove around in his many high-end cars, while
we only had my mom to pick up or drop us off at school in the tokunbo car her
brothers bought for her because my father didn’t care if she trekked to work or
not. Or when the car was on its frequent spa treatment at the mechanics, or
daddy had locked the gate and wouldn’t let her drive out, then we walked. A father
who charters nearly everything he ate when he is in Nigeria from each overseas trip.
He would keep them all locked up in his bedroom, till they went bad and he would have us
eat them rather than throw them away. Mom would buy the meat with her own money and
she couldn’t even eat it, because she only had enough for him. The only way we
ate meat was if daddy was kind enough to leave bits of it in his plate, which
we eagerly waited for him to call us to take away when he was done eating.
If
mom had gone, we would have starved to death. He might have withdrawn us from the
private school we went. The school it was always such a war to get him to keep paying
for, about one fight mom was willing to take him on no matter what bad it
got for her. Without mom breathing down his neck, what would have compelled him to continue? He certainly would have
cut us off from our mother. I mean even as grown up as we are now, he still
wants us to have nothing with do with her. He says, how could we continue to
relate with her when he’s shown us how bad she is (he certainly cannot
understand why today it’s him we avoid but not her. Oh, my mother is a piece of
work, but at least we know she truly cares for us). Imagine if we were kids and
totally dependent on him. Of course, he would have remarried. He did, in fact.
He has had two wives since my mom. I probably would have had to marry really
early like my elder sister, just to get away from the toxic home environment.
Would
I have stayed if I was my mother? If I had six children – six living,
one dead one and at least three miscarriages – like she did I don’t doubt I
would. If I had no money, and couldn’t raise all six children by myself, I
could. If there is no functional alimony system, and my spouse can’t be forced
to pay child support, I wouldn’t even think twice about it. If I would have to
face the indignity of living in a society that shames me for having the
courage to leave and deem my daughters defective and ‘unmarriageble’ because
‘their mother couldn’t stay in marriage’, I would most definitely consider staying.
Hence, I try not to shame women who stay with abusive husbands. Perhaps for
them, it genuinely is a seasonal thing. This isn’t how their spouse is on a
normal day. It’s just that it’s January and he doesn’t have money again after all the Christmas spending. Or, he only gets like this when he drinks. Or he has been putting in so much at work but not getting the recognition he deserves, that’s
why he is lashing out at the only person he can. He is really a very loving
husband and father, otherwise. I could understand all those. After all, I do firmly believe
my siblings and I are better for it because my mom stayed. But maybe I can say
so because my dad didn’t kill mom the way his cousin killed his wife. Because by
the time he finally threw her out and locked all her things in, we were a
little older. We could stand up for her, albeit with consequences – I spent a
day in a police cell, my little brothers were beaten up by professionals, and
for two years he wouldn’t have anything to do with youngest ones who my mother
muscled out from him.
But
I couldn’t live that life. Not the person I became as a result of being my mother’s
daughter, of seeing the way she had to live. A person who associates pregnancy
with control. A way men keep women tied down, subdued, imprisoned. I wouldn’t
stay for anything in the world. It is one of the reasons I only have one child.
So I can put him in my pocket and be gone.
P.S: I would greatly appreciate if nobody preached to me about forgiving my father. I have no animosity towards him. I'm just documenting the events as they took place in my life.
Ciao
Why We Need Nigerian Married Men and Women Pushing For Gender Equality
One of the things I learnt from my
program – more so with the political science course I took on health policy –
is that very few things (if any) are ever black and white. Thus to communicate
these many shades of grey, especially to a particular audience, much is
dependent on the language you use. Another word for this is
"framing", which I feel captures it aptly. Simply put, framing is
about choosing to say/present something in the language or context your
audience will best understand or would be more inclined to agree to. It is
about tweaking your message, without changing your core beliefs. For example,
to get the USA to take HIV/AIDS seriously, and to commit their abundant funds
to fight the epidemic, the disease was framed as a security risk to America. It
was no longer just something that was killing those poor, starving Africans
& unfortunate gay men who aren't practicing safe sex. It was no longer a “something
that happens to them” message, but “something that harms us”. And who wouldn't
sit up straighter when they hear the second message compared to the first?
I have been thinking about framing as it is used in gender equality. More in the sense that it hasn't yet been framed right, particularly in Nigeria. Or rather, the majority of the framing has been mostly in the way that rubs people the wrong way. I suppose the message I received on Facebook is an illustration of the image equality has in the mind of many. What happened was that I had written a note and posted a photo from my wedding on our fifth anniversary and someone thought I should know that he thought my “mouth dey leak like some sexual liberated woman, I think. Anyway so it’s surprising you’re married, and with a kid, 5 years straight. I just pictured you as some woman in her thirties with a lot of sexual experience, though presently unattached or at least unmarried.”
I am not going to focus on the
rudeness of being told my “mouth dey leak”, but yeah I was offended by that
message. For one thing, I sometimes picture myself as one of those annoying
married women who always find some ways to drag their husbands and kids into
everything. Online comments, movies/TV shows references tells me there are
plenty who frown at this behaviour, but it is a bad habit I kind of don’t want
to break. I love my family so much, and to have to make great efforts to speak
as little about them as possible, so as not to tick someone off, is not
something I want to do. So, considering that my family is a visible part of my
life, I couldn’t understand why this person had somehow managed to skip out on
all those posts that focused on them but dwelt on those on gender equality and
sex? Of course, people are funny and often tend to see only what they want, but
it did make me think.
Presently, gender equality is very negatively represented
in Nigeria, and this is even among the educated. I know too many well-learned
friends who still think gender equality is all about a woman spending money on her
man, or young ladies who scout for the richest man to marry them. They complain
about women who hoard their money and make their husbands do all the spending.
Women who keep secret bank accounts, and have secret properties. There is also
the talk about the havoc equality wreaks on the family unit. Women are not
willing to submit, and their marriage soon crash. They prefer to gallivant
about town with their single friends and fight over wealthy men with these
women. Then, there is the “loose women” group I was perhaps thought to belong
to – the “sexually liberated” who couldn’t possibly be married because proper married
women don’t behave in that way. This pretty much sums up the picture that is
painted in people’s mind when they think of gender equality. There are even
people who think only women advocate for equality. This is the result of the
way gender equality has been framed – this is the framing that is promoted by
those who are against equality. And because framing works either ways, for good
and for bad, what better way to get people to reject something if not by
showing them that it does not work in their favour, that it is exactly what
they don’t want. Same way that homosexuality was framed as an outcome of
children being sexually abused. Till date, there are people who still buy into
that frame. They tell stories of abused boys who are gay when they grew up, and
say nothing of those raised in a perfectly healthy home and had perfectly
healthy childhood.
In that sense, I think we advocates of equality need to
acknowledge that this is the framing. But beyond that, we need to acknowledge
the underling value behind this frame: that family life is very important to
our society. We can’t negate this value, because to do so means to keep playing
into the hands of those who are actively fighting equality. In other to sell
equality, we need to present it as something that does to threaten this social
value. We need to sell it as pro-family. We would do it in a different way, but
we absolutely need to. What’s more, I know some people will not agree with me,
there is a very good place for Nigerian married men and woman and those in
committed relationships in this. I think that they are positioned to be good
ambassadors of equality. Someone might think, “oh, you are saying we should
teach girls that marriage is all and all.” No, absolutely not. But to
continually emphasise that marriage isn’t all and all, while paying little
attention to marriages where equality has been successfully practiced, would be
reinforcing the existing negative frame. The message becomes, “don't marry; men
are bad.” But people want to marry, so they will turn against
the messenger and reject the message.
If there are few married women and men who are vocal about
gender equality, it gives off the impression that advocates of equality are
women who are all alone, single, or divorced. We are indirectly giving credence
to the erroneous stereotype that has associates equality with bad wives, unruly
women and broken home. So, why do we then play into the frame that hurts our
cause? Should we then be surprised that a young woman, when she is of the age
to marry, would rather swear by her mother and father that she is not a
feminist? Why would she want to be? Human beings are inherently
self-preserving, so you can be assured she is considering what good it does her
to call herself one. If she feels it is going to limit her chances of getting
married, why then should she? If getting married is what she wants, why should
you insist that she gives it up or shame her for having such a desire? If she
feels she is going to be unhappy single, do you tell her she won’t? How do you
know? As someone I know often says, “are you in my head?” So it is for men. To
ask him to live with a woman who keeps secrets, secrets he may consider deadly,
is neglecting his own ideas of what marriage life is.
We need to embrace the fact that marriage holds a social
value, and some people want that. So to buy into equality, people want to be
made to feel that they are not going to lose out on this thing that they have
attached so much value to. Why do I say married people are positioned to sell
equality? Well, who best to sell marriage than those who are married? Who best
to sell equality in marriage than someone who has such a relationship? And in
Nigeria, it is the man that marries a woman. And because of the structuring of
the society, a woman on her own cannot achieve equality in her marriage without
her man buying into it. Thus, we need the men. We need them to help reframe
this cause. We need them talking about being in a loving relationship with a
woman who believes in equality. We need men talking about believing in
equality. We need married women and men reframing the understanding of a
marriage relationship by talking about the place of equality in their homes.
Yes, I am married, and yes I consider my marriage a great achievement – not
just because I did get married, but because I haven’t abandoned ship as marriage
is an incredibly difficult institution. What’s more, I am very proud of the man
I married. A man who considers me his equal and the word “submission” has no
place in our relationship. Maybe if I had married a different kind of man, I
won’t have the happy story I have today. Yet, I am a very, very ambitious woman
who is eager to go out and make a name for herself. So yes I would be flattered
if I think I could inspire a young woman to look at me and think, “she is
married and she is a feminist; it can’t be that bad.” Women like me who are married
to men like MM should be vocal about gender equality. Men like MM shouldn’t be
drowned out. They are strong men whose women love and respect them. They should
speak for equality.
Ciao.