A tribute to women

Linda J. Mustafa

 

I was sitting down on a hot afternoon at my office one Wednesday, when one of my many brothers came to ask for a favour.
“What is it? I asked.
“Aunty, I need you to help me please.”
“In what way?” I replied.

“How do I start? It is a long and sad story and I don’t know who to turn to except you.” He explained rather grudgingly.
“Then shoot me with the news!” I ordered and what he said made me so sad I was speechless.
“My sister has been married for fifteen years without a child but despite her bareness, her husband who is a Moslem would not take another wife even though according to Muslim dictates he can marry more than one woman. It is now a week today when my sister called that she was coming back to the village to stay. Shocked I asked what the matter was and before she could answer my question, she burst into tears. I waited quietly until she could muster the strength to tell me what was upsetting her and what she told me was so depressing that for two nights I couldn’t sleep. My sister told me that it was not her husband that wanted her out of the house but the mother of her husband.

My sister’s mother-in-law could not wait anymore for a grandchild that would not come and so she went ahead to marry a wife for my sister’s husband. The humiliation didn’t stop there, my sister was told to pack all her things and leave the house without wasting time.  The problem is, my sister is a woman who is in her late forties and teaches in a secondary school at Kaduna where she is paid only ten thousand naira every month. With virtually no permanent job, no higher education more than her NCE which she acquired years ago, no child and now no husband, living in Kaduna on her own would be too expensive for her to handle. My request therefore, is for you to help me get her a job here in town so that she would be able to take care of herself less expensively than Kaduna city which would also make her forget her long years of bareness.”

You can imagine how bad I felt, hearing this long and sad story. For two minutes I couldn’t say anything and my mind wandered to so many scenarios of this woman’s heartbreak. For a woman to go back to her father’s house is seen as a disgrace in our land. She would be scorned and label with all the bad synonyms of the witchcraft act and worst of all she may stay in her father’s house like an outcast, especially since she is not financially independent. I couldn’t dare to picture myself in her shoes because of the psychological trauma that the woman would be going through. The hell this woman would be psychologically is not one I would want to imagine. But I was definitely furious with her husband. A man who has lived with a woman for fifteen years (not one years or five years), should care less about his wife and look the other way when Mama orders him to send his wife packing. Does it mean that for fifteen years they were just roommates?
Though he was patient for fifteen years, at least even if he had to take another wife, he should be kind enough to continue to take care of the woman who has given the best of her life to her husband for fifteen long years. If there was true love, the man in question wouldn’t have been so callous as to send his wife packing like a rabid dog- without nothing!

This and many more ills against women are what I have been agitating against. The war on women is now so hideous that I am afraid for the womenfolk. The United Nations and all Nongovernmental as well as governmental bodies are crying “wolf”. The humiliation of women across the globe is now so rampant that we are losing women faster than we are helping them. Several laws have been enacted to alleviate the molestation of women yet women are still violated and killed because they are the weaker sex. The famous Rock ‘n Roll singer, the late James Brown once sang “It is a man’s world…” and indeed, it is a man’s world. Laws are made by men and the same men also break the law. All the laws made by men to protect women are usually ignored or wrongly applied. So in spite of the laws made to protect women, they become victims laws enacted in order to protect them in the first place.

It is now no news that the world is drawn to the many evils against women and world bodies are talking, nevertheless the change we need, will only come if we all shun the oppression of the woman folk in its entirety. I am happy that the world is drawn to this huge problem and I hope that so many talks would eventually lead to so many actions taken against men who have waged war on women. I believe however that changes can only come from within, let every man and woman see the good in him or herself. It is only from the love a man has in him that he projects outwardly, but a man who doesn’t see anything good in him ends up being a nuisance to his community.
I implore you all, let’s celebrate the woman; andlet’s see every woman as our mothers, sisters, wife, good partners and friends.
To my readers, how do we solve the case of my heartbroken, homeless sister? Your responses would be highly appreciated.