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!
Madam - A Short Story
To explain what happened this day, Agatha thought as she set the tray of food where her Obiora was hunched on a low stool, was to rehash the events of the past three months. She would think past her first week at work and the rather talkative madam she thought she had in her hands. But focus more on the second week, and the aloof Madam it brought with it reappeared. Agatha preferred this version and the routine they fell into. It was in thinking that your madam was your friend that you refuse to see the dagger coming for your throat. Agatha had learnt that the hard way, hadn’t she. With Madam Temi. Three nights in Police cell and an employment terminated so coldly she could have thrown herself over Third Mainland Bridge and it would not have conveyed the full extent of her despair.
There was something this madam did that Agatha rather enjoyed
witnessing, if she could only admit it to herself. How Madam would reappear
three hours after she had gone to drop her daughter at school, the girl
strapped into her own tiny seat that had been attached to her mother’s utility
bicycle like an afterthought. She would be drenched, panting and rasping,
“oooooh, that was good. That was soooo good.” It would not be in commendation
of how spotless her home now was, and that was the bit Agatha zoomed in on—she paused when she saw that her
Obiora was giving her a queer look. His face scrunched up in pensive
expression.
“Where is the meat in this soup?” he asked, foraging for the lump
of beef with all five fingers.
“You ate the last one yesterday,” Agatha threw back at him.
“So? Has it finished in the market?” retorted her Obiora, moulding
his fufu into a ball.
“The groundnut money you give for the month has bought all the
meat it can manage. Your longer-throat will have to wait until next month. And
if you doubt me, you can start going to market yourself,” she grumbled under
her breath.
“Eh? What did you say?”
“Nothing,” Agatha lied, stalking out of the clammy room. She could
not afford to antagonise her Obiora, not after the hard-won battle to get him
to start dipping into his pockets. He might roar that she was impossible to
please and swear that as long as he lived she would not see another shishi from him.
Unless, of course—but Agatha brushed aside the thought as quickly as it came. But it
came back, in the form of that oddly shaped pink thing she had thought nothing
of the first time she saw it. It had been under Madam bed. Presumably, it had
rolled over after someone dropped on the floor. The missus was sprawled before
the television, an empty plate by her side and in it last remnants of her
lunch. When she handed the item to her, Madam had murmured a thank you and
dumped it right next to the china. Agatha did not give any more thought to the
pink thing, even thought she came upon it twice more. Once, it was on the bed,
and on Madam’s reading desk the other time. Then, she saw the black one.
But of course, all those times she had walked by Madam’s bedroom
and dismissed moans she heard coming from there, she had somehow known. The
long hours Madam stayed locked in her bedroom, she had to have been doing more
than writing. Agatha knew something about what girls did in privacy, from her
days as the vacuous adolescent who had been forbidden from being within a
smelling distance of boys and their penises. The girl whose fantasies Mills and
Boon primed and whose dreams were quickened with longing. And when she became
too embarrassed to touch herself, she rode the pillow or a mould of dirty
clothes. But, that was fifteen long years past. Was not the essence of marriage
so you did not have to do it to yourself? She supposed it would, if one had
their husband around. And that could not say so of Madam’s husband.
Agatha was familiar with homes like this. Madam Ose, she had had a
husband who liked other women more than he did his own wife. Agatha could not
say if that was the same with Madam and her own. Madam herself spoke very
little of the man, except when relaying a complaint. The few evidences of his
existence were in the snippets he left behind each day, his clothes he wanted
laundered and his books she was never to touch. In the living room hung two
wedding photos, with a fleshier Madam looking happier than a clam. She must be
lonely, Agatha thought. At least Madam Ose had a battalion of children to take
her mind off the foolish idiot but how much comfort could one child bring? Of
course, Madam must want another one. Perhaps that was why she did what she did
with her pink and black things. It was to keep alive her interest in sex. If
that was what it was, then okay. Although, if you asked her, Agatha would tell
you life had an ungrateful way of rewarding just causes. Look at her, enduring
her Obiora’s nightly exercise of tugging at her underwear.
All for what, Agatha thought as she peeped through the curtain.
Seeing her Obiora was woofing down the food was unpleasing. The frayed fabric
provided all the privacy she and her Obiora got from peering eyes, when the
neighbourhood had quietened and the heat no longer suffocated the cool breeze
from the Atlantic. Agatha promised herself that she would one day burn that
thing and get some rest. What jabbed at her was not his gauntness which years
had not altered. But the ungainly globe that sat where there had once been a
flat belle. She could taste her resentment, and it was foul. She turned away
and thought about this morning.
It was a different Agatha had left Madam’s bedroom. Engrossed in
Mr. Ibu’s antics, she had not even known what was in store. She had been in the
visitor’s room, its television permanently tuned to Nollywood channel. Once she
was done with the daily cleaning, she waited in the room until Madam needed
her. She had said Agatha was free would lose herself to the screen so long as
she kept her ears sharp to her calls. But Agatha did not always quick to pick
up the sound of her name coming from upstairs. Plus the comedian was
particularly clownish that morning, and her guffawing quite raucous. She had
been in the middle of roaring with laughter and throwing her legs in the air
when she thought she had heard Madam’s voice. She trotted up to Madam’s bedroom
door and listened before she knocked. A muffled invitation to enter encouraged
her to advance. But she was not in there.
“Come to the bathroom,” a distressed voice called, intermitted by
groans.
She was on the floor, her right leg twisted under her left and her
right arm squashed under the weight of her body. The groan was louder and Madam’s
contorted, teary face showed the agony she felt. Agatha rushed to her, but Madam’s
lithe body heavier that it looked. By the time she got her on her bed, Agatha
was panting and her back felt like a vein or two had ruptured. But she also exhilarated
by the effort, and that was perhaps why it had taken a minute for she
registered what was happened. She had been carrying her employer, her naked
employer. She had touched her breasts, buttocks, and stomach. Her hand had been
a tip away from Madam’s hairy mould. And Madam had not even seemed to care. All
she did was moan for Agatha to find some Chinese balm, and that she hurt too
much. Maybe she would have carried on not caring if she had known that every
moan made Agatha burn.
All her life, Agatha had held to the belief that sex came from
men. Even when she found she did not enjoy it as much as she had thought she
would, she refused to shake from it. But it was not a man making her dance to
this unknown tune. The wetness between her legs, the tingling, they were not in
response to a man. She wondered what madam saw when she looked at her. Madam
was so willowy, would it matter that the days when she herself had looked like
that were long gone. People still told her she is pretty, and that her weight
gain sat well on her. Would madam agree with them? Would she look at her
breasts and think them firm and round like she did hers. Would they invite her
tongue on them as hers did?
As she swatted the mosquito lullabying her ears, Agatha thought
perhaps she should receive her Obiora’s favours tonight. And when he snored
away in his contentment, she would dip her fingers in there like she used to
and think only of Madam.
***
My last
post, well, it left me feeling exposed. It was too personal, and I shared
things I hadn't even privately told many of my closest and dearest. And my
gosh, did the post get traffic. I wasn’t prepared for that attention. I wasn’t.
And I didn't like it. I contemplated not blogging anymore. So, anyway,
until I come to grips about how much of myself I am willing to share on this
blog, I’m thinking of going back to my ‘roots’. I once ran this series, How
Many Frogs Shall A Princess Kiss. Loads of readers seemed to love it. I want to
try that again with a new story, Madam. I don’t know where it’d going, to be
honest. But I hope you all would ride it out with me. Perhaps, I might get a
novel out of it. Or not.
#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
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.