WOULD YOU MARRY A SHORT MAN?

Ioften recall that scene in Terri Mc millans
Waitingtoexhale where four thirty
something black
women sitaboutbemoaning their singletude. Drinking
to stupor at afriend’sbirthday party, they
wonder
what has happenedto all themarriageable guys.
According to them they are all eitherugly,stupid, in
prison, unemployed, crack heads,short,liars,
unreliable, irresponsible, too possessive,dogs
shallow,boring, stuck in the sixties, arrogant,
childish,wimps, too old andset in their ways”
or
elsedead.
Whether it is logicalto lump ugly and irresponsible
in thesame basket is another issueall together, but
if we turned thetables and asked the guys torespond,
they won’t be shortof clues. How about
fat,money
grabbing dense, too yellow, tooshallow, too insecure,
ortoo bitchy? The truth is that many of ushave lost
the ability tolove others; we are too in lovewith
ourselves.
Admit it or not,this is the age ofunrepentant
narcissism. Generations x, y and z,have sold tous
the erring view that the rightness of any actionis
evaluatedin terms of how much it favours the actor,
nobodyelse natters. Itsall about unfettered
ambition, unbridled hedonism,an explosion ofthe
self.
Nowadays it’s a heinous offence tobe shortor
fat.
And if you are a man, you have to be richandfamous
too. What is wrong with the guys? Theydon’t
wantto
get married. What they want is a retinueof women of
allshades and character, just like the biblicalking
David. Even whenthey do get married, they keep the
harem. Ifyou take away theharem, they will just die.
Yet there is somethingtotallycaptivating where you
find warmth, faithfulness, tenderness,trustand
openness, all of which form part oftheincorruptible
language of love. If we are all sobusycourting
perfection, why are there so many peoplegroaning
aboutnot finding love? Patently, this intense loveof
self is the exactantithesis of love.
To find true and lastinglove we have got to beone
way; when we can’t be patientand just
can’ttolerate
any flaws in others when wecan’t share
ourincrease
with others nor build strengthand confidence inthem,
when we can’t let go and bevulnerable, we
cannotknow
true love.
Oh its just cool to bemean and selfish,ambitious and
relentlessly self seeking, but thatway, theonly
contact you will have with true love will be inyour
dreams.Once you wake up, its back to the grind. The
girlswill love yourArmani suit, and gleaming black
jeep, but what aboutyou? I meanwhich woman could
love a habitual liar, a regular swivelhead whohas
just never had enough? What about the boastingbore
who onlywants to talk about his money and his looks?
Afterthe tenthousandth one night stand, why does he
still so empty? Heneedstrue love.
True love has sneaked upon me a few times inmylife,
but it didn’t come in a perfect bottle, andits
Neverbeen the same twice. Bottle number one was at
least oneinch shorterthan me. I never planned to
fall in love with him. Yethe was sosweet, so funny,
and so generous and he understood me sowell thatI
couldn’t resist him. I didn’t fall inlove
withbottle
number two because he didn’t meetmy
requirementsat
the time that we met. He was terribly goodlooking but
thatwasn’t enough. He loved my flaws justabout
as
much as anyother thing about me. He teased me noend
about my‘funny” walk and the toooft
criticized
sharpness of mytongue. But I didn’t tunein to
him
because I was too busysearching for a setpiece.
It’s really all about the choiceswe make. Ifyou
seek
the right things, you may find lasting love.Ifyou
look through loving eyes you will find true love. If
youareready to wait, make sacrifices, and risk being
taken forgranted,you will find true love. If you
will only look beyond a bighead ofskinny legs, you
might just discover the patner that was madejustfor
you.
On the contrary, if all you want isMiss
"est’:the
tallest, lightest, bustiest, richest,flashiest. The
questwill be fun, it will also be endless. And noway
will I feel sorryfor you when you morph into a ninety
sevenyear old die hard livealone barchelor. Not even
the the ninety yearold widow next doorwill give you
the time of day. It will be justyou, yourselfand
yourwalkingstick!

She dreams

I believe that a woman looks her best crocked
somewhere in the arms of a big bold man, who honours
and respects her, loves herto bits and treats her like
a jewel.
But every woman must also find her feet, somewhere in
the world that her heart chooses. Between nurturing
her children, and breastfeeding her man,everywoman has
a dream, and too often, in our culture, she dies with
those dreams.
The woman of Africa is invariably an amazon. Whether
she is dimunitive,or tall, robust or slim, she is a
master multitasker, akin to a hundred limbed robot.
Routinely she combines the tasks of fetching water,
grinding pepper, cooking, farming, hawking,and
trading, washing platesand clothes, sweeping,and
scrubbing. What happens to the woman's dream in the
perpetual grind of staying alive?
Described in the Yoruba culture as the ultimate god,
next only to the almighty, a mother is reverred
because she serves, appreciated because she bears it
all.she is expected to sacrifice all including her
ambitionand dream on the alter of the love that she
enshrines for her children, and much less often her
husband.
We have known mothers who are also fathers , and
fathers who are stuck somewhere in their sixteenth
birthdays.They spend their month's stipend in one
weekend and all leisure time with teenage girls. Yet
they have homes where they rule as autocrats and eat
free meals at the expense of wives who have been
taught to expect little more.

A Human Right to Love up

HARTERING THE RIGHT TO LOVE
Thanks to the United Nations (UN), and its successive
human rights legislations, men of today can take it
for granted that their lives will not necessarily be
‘nasty, brutish and short’. In addition to the
existing pool of human rights, that prestigious body
is on the verge of recognizing gay rights, the rights
of disabled persons, and the right to energy. But what
about the right to love?
Who will tell the UN that every human being should
have an inalienable right to love? Yes, the right to
get up at the behest of a pumping heart, and follow
that which the heart desires. A right enforceable
against public opinion and all parental intervention.
Our African mothers are skilled at defining for us the
geographical limits out of which our hearts must not
stray. No she can’t be that colour. No He musn’t be
from that tribe. No He can’t be from that state. Oh
definitely not! Yet our hearts are our own personal
rudders. What our hearts feel nobody can feel, no
matter how much they care. Most of the time what it
tells us are absolute  truths, so why should we not
honour it?
I haven’t seen my friend Ogechi since we were both
teenagers. Standing together underneath a pedestrian
bridge somewhere in Lagos, She told me of her
impending marriage. Her mother had decided to marry
her off as a way of protecting her. Her mother had
concluded that she was bound to be corrupted by the
influence of the teeming admirers that her pretty face
would no doubt attract. Both fresh out of secondary
school, we hadn’t even been to university. This
‘green’ girl obviously knew nothing of what marriage
would ask of her. Fifteen years down the line, I
wonder if her husband still represents for her the man
of her dreams. If he ever had. I don’t know where she
is today. Or if she is grateful to her mother for that
decision. But what I do know for sure is that Ogechi
should have had a right to say no.
The right to love encapsulates so much. It includes
the right to choose. To prefer Ade, although Kofi is
smarter, richer and cuter. Or to prefer Ade for being
smarter, richer and cuter than Kofi. To meet a
complete stranger, and find yourself inexplicably
drawn to him. To have in your life someone who
sometimes says your words aloud, in his own words. To
reach a point where being with this other person makes
all other things insignificant by comparison. The
right to love is a right to give in. It is also a
right to walk away.
The right to love also subsumes the right to speak up.
To tell our world that this is the person that  we
choose. Regardless. Sometimes we stand imprisoned by
the opinions of our friends. Sometimes ours is the
voice that shackles us. Like when my friend Uche
refused to tell her friends that she had celebrated a
traditional wedding to fat Tom. The same friends that
she had told at least seven hundred times that she
hated men with pot bellies. And then there was head
covering, extremely Moslem Bose, who fell in love with
and married a born again Christian. Just then her
world fell apart because her parents and siblings
totally cut her off.
Sometimes, our folks just don’t get it that the right
to love is a right to make our own mistakes. Every
time we choose to fall in love, we play roulette with
our hearts, and sometimes our lives as well.
Sometimes, when we are in love, we honestly think that
things are one way when they are really the other. We
make projections that are never met. We assume and
presume, only to end up shocked and discouraged. Yet
if love turns sour, we are entitled to moan, and cry.
After all it was our own mistake. It is good to learn
from other people’s mistakes, but when we do make a
mistake, it is better that it should have been as a
result of our own decision, our own judgement.
Sometimes love is honey in our lives, and sometimes it
stings harder than a ruffled hornet. But when Hip hop
star Akon sings about fighting for the right to love,
I seriously feel Him. And I wish the UN would feel him
too. 

A woman and her hot water

Former American first lady, Eleanor Rossevelt
postulated an ageless fact when she said that "a woman
is like a teabag, you'll never know how strong she is
until she is inside hot water". Sometimes, the
hotwater is an odd, a nasty blow from nature. But it
can also be a consequence: of something she has done
or failed to do or something she said or didn't say,
an act of nemesis!
Amongst my people the yorubas, a woman's matrimonial
home is described as the institution where she learns
wisdom. A tertiary school of hard knocks,if you will.
An ideal environment for encounters with hot water.
Another former US first lady, Hillary Clinton
describes a surprise plunge into scalding hotwater in
the days following the August 1998 explosion of the
Monica Lewinsky scandal. Hillary will probabally never
forget that day when only as interrogation loomed, her
prseident husband owned up to the fact that contrary
to his earlier claims, there had in fact been an
improper relationship between him and the white house
intern, Monica lewinsky.
Hillary's options were many: She could have gone into
denial and pretended that it hadn't happened at all.Or
she could have receeded inmto a torrent of gloom
mouthing that whiner's favourite "why me?". She could
have blamed it all on Monica for being too buxom, too
keen, or pointed self righteous fingers at Bill,
blaming him for shaming his family.
The press went agog with the finest details of
Bill-Monica liasons, but many eyes wre really fixed on
Hillary, not on the rambuctuos duo. What would she do?
To the sneering right side opposition,, the dilema
presented a much desired chink in the formidable
Clinton family armour.Lets face it, a Bill without an
Hillary would have been easier fish to fry.
Wrestling with hurt, anger, shame, dissappointment and
God knows what else, Hillary got to the point when she
could have been excused for falling apart:At that
point when she could have been throwing expensive
porcelain and packing her louis Vuitton bags,that
woman found strenght.Out of a fog of prayer and
meditation, she asked the crucial question "what shall
I do?". When eventually, she chose to stay and mend
the leaks in their marriage which had caused the man
to cheat, many were astounded. According to Hillary,
She had only just come to realize how deeply she loved
Bill and the past that they had shared. Few women
observers could accept her opting to forgive her
husband, but Hillary stuck to that decision. He would
later overcome the impeachment charges brought against
him on account of 'monicagate'.
Many a woman in hot water, have discovered depths and
strengths that they never knew they had. Bouts in hot
water have prepared many to assume greater heights,
and lured them into self realisation. only a couple of
years after monicagate, Hillary dared to seek elective
office for the first time. She contested and won a
senatorial ticket representing the state of New York.
Today She eyes the seat of the president of the United
States.
But the African marriage is a different kettle of fish
altogether. For a woman to leave a marriage because of
infidelity, isolated or serial, would be construed as
sheer madness in most African societies. And even
after mastering the art of ignoring infidelty, the
African wife can still find herself doused in hotwater
generated by their husband's infidelity.As often
happens there are instances when the husband taks a
new wife,or those when at his grave side, a wife
watches as the dust to dust rites are performed by a
string of his children that she has never even heard
of.Ideally the African trophy goes to tthe wife(or
wives), who stick it out to the end, but somehow these
graveside encounters reduce her prize to ashes.
Working through hot water is never easy. It can feel
as though we are living dead, and our lives will never
be the same again. It can feel like being stuck in a
massive rut,or vicious sinking sand. One disaster can
spiral and lead to others of increasing magnitude. It
can drag on for days and months and even years.
Yet hotwater measures the strenght of a woman. It
reveals that like teabags, which come in varying
flavours and strenths, all women have strenghts in
varying degrees. In some strenght lies dormant like an
unworked muscle needing hot water to jostle it back to
life, others have been doused in hot water again and
again only to come out stronger and better.In trial
and tribulation many women know, lies the march onto
the peak. Hot water can be a cue to change direction,
and try new things. It can also highlight the
weaknesses of character and attitude that we need to
ditch.It can be a pointer to a vital life's lesson. It
can also test the depth of our relationships. When a
woman comes to see hot water as a stepping stone, a
medium for working her potential, that darkest hour
preceeding a glorious dawn, then she can smile even
when she is in hot water.
Surviving hot water is a journey that begins when we
wipe off those tears that confirm our feminity, and
declaring for all to hear"I will get up and go!".And
then just go!