THE PROOF OF THE PUDDING…
I write this in protest; I write this to speak for the bachelors who are being harried into marrying a woman they know deep down they really and truly do not love. I write to speak for the men who unfortunately have been/are being trapped into a marriage they do not want, and cannot even think of any source of consolation. For the guys who dread going home after working hours, because not only is the woman in the house a harridan-she cannot even cook!
A lot of my friends tell me I was born into the wrong era; I agree. It hurts to think so many things have changed; the values our parents grew up with are rapidly dissipating if not gone already. The eighties children at least have a little of these things; they practically do not exist in the children of the nineties. And who is to blame? The same parents of the fifties and forties and thirties; I blame them because they took the expression ‘global village’ a bit too literally, therefore they spank their children for speaking the local language; vernacular. They taught their daughters it’s not important to kneel down to greet; taught their sons it’s not important to prostrate in greeting. Taught their girls to be free in thinking; that the traditional way of the man being the head of the house (as declared in the bible) is hogwash. Taught them that if a man did not like the way she cooked, he should get himself a housemaid.
I laugh.
Okay. Times and stuff HAVE indeed changed, women empowerment and such movements are all over the place. Don’t get me wrong o, I love a career woman. In fact, a girl who cannot do for herself bores me to extinction. BUT what I consider a successful career woman is one who handles all aspects of her business with diligence and professionalism. By ‘all aspects of her business’ I mean her career, social life and more importantly, her family. What’s the use of a woman CEO who loses her husband to the housemaid?
Reality can be pretty terrifying and disappointing, but it is reality nonetheless. And in this case, I think I speak for a lot of men when I say a woman who cannot cook has no place being a wife and/or mother. For how long are the kids and their father going to eat Indomie or any of those other products? For how long will they keep throwing away money eating at fast food joints and such like?
Don’t me wrong again; we all did/do not have the same opportunity. Take me for instance; I can cook, incredibly well too! And I come from a family where there are twelve boys and a girl. My mum would put us all to work in the kitchen, cooking and scrubbing, and when a friend of hers came over and saw us guys in there, she would scream and say to my mother, ‘what do you think you’re doing? The kitchen is no place for boys!’ And mum would smile and say calmly, ‘they’re all I have for now. What do I do; work myself to death because I don’t have a girl? If they can eat, they can cook.’ And cook we did. What’s your excuse?
I know several ladies who grew up in privileged homes; girls whose dainty hands never did any hard work other than lift the teacup from the saucer to their lips. Girls who cannot tell the difference between tomatoes and pepper, but they were interested enough to watch the housemaid as she did the cooking, or some even learnt from friends and neighbors, and in time became acclaimed chefs. What’s your excuse?
I overheard a conversation (which is what inspired this article anyway) between a mother and her daughter about the mother’s forthcoming fiftieth birthday celebration. The daughter was asking her mother if she could do the shopping for the cooking, and as she was taking down the items to be bought she asked her mum if she should buy curry for the efo (vegetable soup). What the hell?!
Who on this planet cooks vegetable soup with curry?! WHO?!?!
Where I come from (Ijebu Ode, Ogun State, Nigeria), it is a sacrilege to cook efo with anything asides iru (which is a native form of maggi). Really, what good does curry do anything other than give it some nice smell? So the soup smells nice; in fact the man has been smelling it from the car garage and is so hungry he does not take off his tie before asking for his dinner, only to take the first swallow of the meal and gag on it, because the salt it contains can kill a million earthworms (tell me you didn’t know earthworms don’t like salt). Lame and inexcusable.
Fortunately the mother of the lady who’d asked the question had set her straight on the irrelevance of curry in efo, but why wait? Where was she all these years? What happened? Did they forget; somewhere along the line that saying ‘the way to man’s heart is through his stomach’? And I am not talking to the women who their man treat wrong and so do not bother to take care of him anymore. I am not a judge; I cannot say anything in that matter. I am talking to the ones who CANNOT cook to save their beautiful behinds from the whip of public disgrace and chastisement. Get your act right, get your game tight.
I really hope I do not sound like a male chauvinist; I hope it is clearly articulated that I love women because after all, I was given life by one, I am a brother to another, and I would raise a family with one. In fact, my first child is a female. I’m just sharing my opinion about the issue of cooking and the flippant way most ladies handle it nowadays. It would be a tragedy if you handed your man to your housemaid or some ‘mama put’s’ attractive assistant simply because you cannot make magic on the cooker.
I reiterate something I wrote in one of my early articles; most men want a queen in the sitting room/public, a chef in the kitchen and a whore in the bedroom. Honestly! Well…at least I speak for myself.
Honestly, what do you think?
