As I grew up, my mother would order us, the boys, to do all the house chores all day leaving behind our sisters because ‘they couldn’t do hard labour’. Given we would tone our muscles all day, tilling, fetching water, catering to the cattle & poultry, come lunch time the tune would play. Famished we would lack ready food because the ladies were ‘too busy’ cleaning the house, knitting and plaiting the last born’s hair. Here an option was presented to us, we either prepare our own meal or go hungry and on a duty strike; the latter would attract fury from the big man when he arrives late in the evening, needless to say the former took the floor. After having to prepare the full meal, for the whole lot of us, stiffening the ridicules from our audience, we still have to leave to work some more or just to get away from the high oestrogen levels indoors and their cheesy comments.
This was a regular day and my brother and I soon took it as usual and common, rise early, milk, prepare tea, feed cattle, feed poultry, come scratch up for lunch and leave to go play, climb trees, fight and work some more before coming back to help in supper preparation. You see we were born in late 80’s and early 90’s a time when the woman’s value was seriously under consideration casting in stone how our society would regard and uplift the ladies. A time when advocacy groups would fight for their comrades across the nation, entrenching within all and sundry the thought to pause and consider the lady, multiply the consideration and proceed, damn any blow back.
In this time we learnt that even men can do house chores and ladies can seat back. Why then would we be surprised when ladies can’t cook anymore, or some who are allergic to washing?
Why are we surprised at the high rates of single parent families, the mother having fled?
Alas! There cropped a generation of young ladies who don’t know how to cook, how to play with children!
How to wash and most disgracefully a generation that’s comfortable enough with such shortcomings that they would openly proclaim the fact, shame aside.
Where then would the children go to eat?
Where would the baby girls learn to cook our traditional dishes?
Who will make the home, warm and safe?
Will we have to redefine the norm and keep men indoors to ensure everyone eats?
Will we have to train men on cooking? Going against centuries to the contrary…..why not we certainly know better than our predecessors.
Well these are the beautiful damsels that grow into socialite ladies looking to have a good time and benefit from it. The kind that would value beauty over brains as a tool of trade. And now we call the benefactors ‘Spinsors’! The teaching and character building was lost decades ago. Our roots! Rooots! Roooooots!
Pardon my male chauvinism but I would like to have a trail of traditional meals as options, to give to the world and my successors. These will be lost if those placed to carry on the legacy and knowledge find it difficult to play the role. Soon the car will break down and the man within wouldn’t know what to do.
This short period, 80’s and 90’s, the advocacy groups took the cup home, ensuring even the constitution would regard genders in its practice and allocate considerations accordingly. Not that it’s a bad thing neither do I stand for the contrary but in the year 2016, no one would understand you when you say ‘gender equality’ sadly so. A thing that wasn’t meant to be by the visionaries.
Gender equality means just that, it was coined up to ensure equality in both genders at a time when one gender suffered more in society; socially, economically, sexually etc. It was meant to bring to par as we forge our way. Our overindulgence into the jargon is up to us to blame, an express route to destruction. Our usage of the movement to self benefit or otherwise pale the establishments would unabatedly lead to a crop of brainwashed individuals who wouldn’t tell right from wrong nor define the importance and relevance of the said movement. Redefinition at that point would be too painful and expensive to even think of.
A point to note for my readers, before the face scratches and hair pulling, is that I am and have always been a true feminist! What this means is that I am and always been an advocate for women rights and empowerment. I believe in equality in the realest of ways, yes there are differences between men and women, which kind of defines their roles in society, family and general interaction; sad some wouldn’t believe this.
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The Patriot Kenya 