It hit me last weekend, when an old friend and I finally met over a cup of coffee that we’d been rain-checking (sic) for the past 5 years. I barely recognized her as she walked into Kilimanjaro Restaurant at 3:30pm for our supposed 1:00pm lunch date.
Forget the glammed Instagram pics she posts, my Uni best friend had aged! Not gracefully... Really bad! Not that I haven’t, but, I thought to myself, “People must be thinking she’s my mum, or auntie.” Or maybe not. Our minds have a habit of lying to us that we look younger than everyone else when in reality, we look as old, if not older. Who knows, she may have been thinking the same of me.
I noticed how taken aback she was when I screamed her name, ‘Stacey! Stacey!’
Turns out, she can’t recall the last time anyone called her by that name. Nowadays, she only goes by Mama Jayden, Mama Watoto or Mrs. Otieno.
Our date took a hiatus around 8:30pm when restaurant staff started giving us the nasty side eye and hinting that it was time to bounce.
I was glad, as my ears were starting to ring after involuntarily obliging to be my friend’s therapist. She had so much to vent, tears to dry, regrets…and finally, without my need of saying so, reached the conclusion that it was time. Time to walk out of the highly coveted Happily Ever After and put Asunder whatever God had put Together.
Mama Jayden, just like myself, and so many highly educated women in Kenyan today, are walking this road. And like one nincompoop put it, 'Sisi madem tumesoma tunajionanga sana.'
Is it time to believe the modern adage that educated women can’t keep a man? Or could be the ujeuri that comes forth when a woman is Woke.
My wide inexperiences in life has taught me that modern marriages unlike our parents, grandparents and fore-parents aren’t equipped to hold on till death for simple reasons. Actually, one simple reason.
Female Empowerment.
Our grandmothers had to make it work because it had to. Simply put, it was One Way or No Other Way. Being a wife was the only way out to flee and be free. You’d be mocked and bring shame to your family if you didn’t find someone to marry, or if he divorced you. There was absolutely no way you could survive on your own because well, there’d be no jobs or even a farm to live on. You had no voice in matters pertaining your body, livelihood, health, wealth, future. You were basically nothing short of your father’s, brothers’, uncles or husband’s property.
Merely a few decades back, girls couldn’t get equal education as boys. They couldn’t sign up for Identity Cards, couldn’t get employment, open bank accounts, vote, or even access so many other basic human rights.
In essence, the pillar holding these long-lasting marriages was enslavement: for as long as she remained powerless and voiceless, she had to hold on, in bad and worse times, till death. That somehow works to date. You take their freedom and they’ll forever be bound to you.
That’s until the Girl Child got empowered and got the Rights that her mothers were denied. She can get quality education, hold a job, build a career, be a boss, own property, vote, invest, make life changing decisions...all the things that were denied of her so she remain a desperate beggar.
Now, these girls are growing up to become the men they wished they’d marry.
In retrospect, the guys are still holding on to finding the traditional mentally enslaved woman their polygamous forefathers took in as their wives and concubines. Is she still in existence? Others are hoping for the superwoman who can both hold a 9-5 job that brings in quality bacon and once home, overburdens herself further by keeping house.
Don’t get it twisted. Educated women are superb at being the wifey. Problem is the harsh reality that there barely are any intellectually compatible males who are ready to forgo toxic masculinity and egotistical bigotry over mutual respect and love.
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