Yesterday my mum and i were catching in the evening as she prepared dinner as we often do as it's just the two of us now and we got to talking about some recent renovations done in our kitchen. I mentioned the badly done finishing or more like the lack of it to my mum. Point to note here, i have some OCD tendencies and for those who may be reading and have no idea what that is,
OCD is obsessive compulsive tendencies think of the TV series,'
The Monk' or 'Sheldon' from the TV series '
The Big bang Theory now mine is not at such extreme levels but i like things ordered, neat and in their place. Growing up my father used to say when you do something do it well or don't bother at all. This ensured that to this day i will not start something that i don't intend to see through to the end. So it was very irritating for me to see the fundi do some shoddy finishing and the few times i happened to be around i would always comment on it and ask for it to be fixed. I tend to be rather vocal and my mum is easy going so sometimes i felt that she would let things be, while i figured if we are paying for it and it should be quality work.
So we got to talking and my mum made a very interesting comment how on what the fundi said about me to a neighbor whom he also works for. He said and i quote "she is very proud and she has another thing coming if she expects me to follow her". I was shocked and surprised by the comments and told my mum as much and she also admitted how she had been surprised as well and had told her friend that the only reason he would make such comments was because i corrected him on some shoddy work. Then i got mad. Mad because the only reason he was doing shoddy work in the first place stems from a question he once asked my brother how could my mother afford to build in this economy meaning he was simply being a chauvinist. I got mad because i realized that this was the first time i was being accused of arrogance based simply on my gender and sadly i realized that it wouldn't be the last. Not as long as i had a voice, choose to speak out against any injustices and ills. An African woman is taught from the moment she is a little girl not to contradict men. An African saying is that children are to be seen but not heard yet as they grow older boys can now be seen and heard but the saying remains for women, they should not be heard.
So we shame and cower our women into silence and those of us who dare to be heard get punished and labelled with names such as rude,stubborn, difficult, disrespectful, and when they try to sanitize it they call us willful, 'spirited','feisty'. Our mothers warn us if they see such behavior in our friends saying that girl will never get a husband and woe unto you if you are the one acting like it, it will be beaten out of you. And so we have raised women who don't question even when it is clear they should for we have confused the biblical term submission with no questions asked.
It doesn't help that this days a lot of women are in the workforce and many of them in positions of authority. Women are also not getting married early as girls no longer believe that marriage is the highest calling that they can attain. So we now have empowered women who are being considered to have big heads.
Back to my story, my mum added an interesting twist to it, she told her friend that i was the one paying for the renovations and was well within my rights to ask questions and actually if my pointing out defects was what made me arrogant, then it was him who had a problem. Let's just say i was very proud of my mom in that moment!!
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