The Ideal African woman- Case Study Nigeria. 60s/70s/80s/90s.
Come with me and I will tell you about the ideal African woman far back in the 60s/70s/80s/90s. I'm Nigerian so it will be based on my geographical location.(Akwa Ibom)
The main feature of this woman is hardwork, I don't mean the hard work you know, all that yada yada office work or staying up late to punch keyboard ,working online, I'm not also referring to normal skill engaging work too, Just be patient with me and I'll give you a full breakdown of the "hardwork" I'm talking about.
You ready?
Okay, this is it.
This woman wakes up as early as 3am, cleans the house, tidy's up the fire place (removing excess ashes, village girls like me will know what I'm talking about), warms the soup using firewood Ofcourse, then while the soup is on fire, she washes plates and cups and pots used the previous night. All these is done before 4am.
After warming the soup, she makes Fufu using the same firewood, now most people won't know, but we the village girls know this thing, the making of Fufu is not like garri o, it's similar to semovita, Just that Fufu is harder to turn and making it on firewood is not a blissful thing. (those wey know, know),
This Fufu is not for her consumption, it's for her husband who's still sleeping and also her children who are either sleep walking their way through sweeping of the yard or still in bed because 4am is early, too early.
she wakes 7 of her children up to prepare for school or farm as the case maybe. School wasn't very common then, only male children went to school, so let's assume farm. (yes the women back then usually had many children).
By past 4am, our dear woman is already packing her basket of hoes and matchets to go to the farm, this is Ofcourse after serving her husband's breakfast so he can wake up to see food. Virtuous!
This woman works in the farm uptill about 1pm, she weeds very early in the morning that's approximately from 5am to 8am, then she proceeds to harvest some crops ripe for consumption, pepper, fruited pumpkin, melon, maize, tomato, okra, then if it's cassava day, she'll harvest cassava too. (tilldate, In every village, there's a day set aside for the harvesting of cassava, it's a taboo to harvest cassava except on cassava day).
On her way back from the farm, she stops by Etukudoh, the palmfruit harvester, to remind him of his promise to help harvest 3 of her palm trees.
On getting home, she freshens up, cooks lunch with most of the things she got from the farm, and eats her "breakfast" ,
Around 4pm, she carries a big bag and heads back to the farm to pack palm fruits, this palm fruit is taken home for processing into oil, (there was no mill then, even if there was, people couldn't afford it). Anyone who's ever processed palm fruit in recent times will know that it's very tasking and it takes time, then imagine that being done manually, the washing of the palm fruits, then boiling it in gigantic round pots (you know those pots that comes with their own tripot stand), the fruits usually takes its "sweet time" in being done, so let's say an hour.
While waiting for the palm fruits to be done, she doesn't stay idle, she proceeds to prepare fufu (cassava flour) for sale, wraps each of it neatly and gives to her child to take to the evening market. Most times, the Fufu is usually kept on a low stool outside the house (frontage), so interested buyers would simply call her attention from the yard and she'll sell. Genius!
The whole pounding and squeezing the palm fruits to produce oil could last till 10pm, depending on the quantity, then she freshens up, makes sure everything is in place and all the windows are closed.
Finally, we can call it a day. These activities will be repeated the next day, except maybe the palmfruits may be replaced with cassava (garri processing), the point is there's no idle time for this woman, she's always engaged one way or the other.
This is a normal day in the life of the African woman, this was the criteria for marriage back then-hardwork, that's why you'll hear people say "you can't cook or you're not hardworking enough, who will marry you?"
Men didn't really marry beauty per se, they married hardwork. Anyone who wanted to marry will first ask around for an "hardworking girl" , then folks will recommend someone who met the criteria.
If you noticed, this article is written in pluperfect tense, which clearly depicts that we've evolved.
Women no longer mount offices in the farm and kitchen, women now run businesses, women are lawyers, women are accountants, women are pastors, women are engineers, women are steemians(😊😀)
women are large-scale farmers/agriculturists, women own industries, women are all this and much more.
This is 2018, we're evolving, the world is evolving so fast and we're trying our best to catch up with it. The only challenge right now is, it's hard to purge/convince some men that women can be much more, but we're getting there.
-Ufakobong Solomon