Kenya Stockholm Blog

Relationships: Men Should Stop Oppressing Women

Women are also providers

LETTERS FROM SHIKU: Who ought to do what in a relationship may puzzle many couples especially in Europe. Many, especially men, feel used when they find themselves locked in a relationship of mixed culture. According to African set up, women are responsible for all house chores. This is our culture. Isn’t it? No. It was! My friend and I had tight ties back in Stockholm but not because we had so much in common as girls. We shared one big hurdle – we helped each other in house chores when need arose. Our men, true African sons, could not do women stuff.

Our fore fathers set this and named it culture. The head of the home, which most men presume, was the family’s bread winner. The wife/wives minded their husband and children. Today, everyone “wins bread”, and this situation leads to a common question; if you enjoy 50-50 bill sharing, why then don’t you enjoy 50-50 sharing of house chores especially in a country where house help is a dream too expensive to achieve? Are you Westernized when it comes to financial matters and return to your Africanized skin when house chores are mentioned?

“Women should choose what their men wear, polish their shoes and make sure all is in order before they leave the house” commented Natasha, a guest in a fashion talk show called Sebuleni. She added that when the man in your life accompany you looking scruffy, the question is not about him but about you. And the question is always ”why are you dating a wrong guy?’’

Natasha is not the only woman to proclaim publicity that women should wash their men’s stuff as well as their under wears. That from the onset of their marriage, a woman should pack for the man. That an acquiescent wife should not mind packing some “jwala” incase her jamaa get’s thirsty and is tempted to eat the forbidden goodies. How amusing?  That it is the role of a woman to take over all house work and grooming and dress her man when she marries the him, right? Wrong!

The reason why women go along with this script is because many of us do not know any better. We grew up watching our fathers .The men never moved their hands as far as their stuff was concerned. They comfortably cleaned their noses and left the dirty cloth for the woman to clean and the lady of the house did so passively and contentedly. All men did for themselves was to shower, which, nevertheless, they found tasking and skipped days in the bathroom.

Our fathers never set foot in the kitchen, not even for a glass of water .The man would be seated on his throne (the comfortable daddy’s couch in the sitting room that no one dared sit on) and would call his wife from the bedroom to come and pour him a cup of tea (from a flask that was right under his nose) or switch on the television. Spiteful, isn’t it? No! That was the norm. And that was then!

The woman obliged dutifully. Our mothers would tell us to cook for our brothers and warm it up when they needed a second helping .We observed the irrefutable division of the roles and internalized it. So when we start dating, we are only too eager to prove to our boyfriends that we are wife material. When you visit him in his un-kept bachelor abode, you make a fuss of tidying it up.

“This table is caked with dust oh! Darling, how do you sleep on this nasty bed, let me air your blankets” and the song continues….”darling you should have told me you have dirty dishes, I would have come running”. Stupid girl!

Coming Home Drunk and Silly
The guy soon realizes that there’s no need for paying for the clean-up for you will sweat blood to see that you clean his clothes, cook his food and scrub his floor. Soon he gets the idea that a woman, girlfriend or wife is only as good as her housekeeping skills. Marriage becomes an extension even an upgrade of the dating, so that the more you scrub, the better wife you are.

The more nails you break cleaning his clothes and doing other house chores, the more useful you get. As a noble helper, you even polish his shoes. Before long, the guy learns to only use his hands in the office or at the pub where they are loyally needed to hit the keyboard and to drain beer from a glass.

The question is not how much a man does at home but how much he does for himself. It is less of household chores and roles than self – reliance. Liberated men are self dependent and are not so fastidious about traditional roles. They see their wives as human beings and part of them, not a working machine which just needs a couple of minutes servicing when she retires to bed with all bones aching. It is unhealthy to have another person as your crutch. Closed – minded men should learn to do things, at least something, for their own good. Can today’s life work if we follow yesterday’s rules?

Check, for example, in developed countries, a man will fix a meal without feeling emasculated and the woman will bring home the bacon without mourning the days when men were the sole providers.  They share all duties. Their men learnt about it from their fathers. They were practically taught that women are to be loved and respected.

Luckily, Nairobian men have been liberated. Shopping around town, you will not miss men pushing trolleys full of shopping. At the cashier, his woman will flash out notes to settle the bill. Other men arrogantly load their frontage with a good baby carrier, smiling and talking sweet nothings to their little ones.

My friend, Martin, intimated to me that men fear marrying learned, highly ranking women, not because men are intimidated by them but because these women have neither the time nor the desire to spoil them. That, to an African man, a wife should be home early to receive him when he gets home, drunk and silly.

I attended a function recently. One guy said he couldn’t rise up to pick a drink. Obviously, he was aggressively opposed and attacked by all the ladies who were present. But when he tabled his reasons, we all calmed down and submissively served him whatever he asked for. He belongs to the era of  “a woman must do all for me!” Regrettably, he has refused to change with age and annoyingly think, like his wife, all women should run to his service.

It is high time men stopped looking at house chores as the women’s turf; it is somewhat demeaning for a man. I have heard so many men say that they can’t cook even if their wives got sick. They would prefer to eat junk. Sickly!  And this class of men have stretched arms as far as ulayani.

I bet most women will remember an incident when they got home late, found the man seated busy but infuriated on the internet or watching a movie. He is annoyed coz he is hungry. And he is hungry, not because you had gone shopping thus nothing was at home to cook, but coz you, as his woman, wasn’t present to make food for him. Isn’t it absurd? These are lock-minded men who have refused to unlock their thinking.

Men, should start thinking of their own independence. By all means, a couple should do things for each other but also each should do things for himself or herself. Everybody should carry their own weight.

Shiku Steve

October 18, 2009 Posted by makozewe | Letters From Shiku | 50 Comments