Conspiracy To Kill Your Mother and Sisters

Some traditions and stereotypes won’t just go away no matter our exposure and education. The race and struggle to have a son and belittle daughters is as old as any African tradition you can think of. Forget the status in society and even education or religious standing, every family stands on a quicksand with a boy to baptize their names as mama or baba so-and-so.

Make no mistake, it is not just the African man who considers himself incomplete without a son to call his own. Women go over the top and in some communities it is even and acceptable sin to ‘browse’ outside the family for the right man capable of siring a son if the wife doubts her husband’s genes.

I will stick my neck and play the devil's advocate on behalf of my dear sisters. They are simply being real and African by struggling to measure and satisfy communal pressures. As for my brothers, it boils down to ego trips given that most of them have nothing to bequeath their so called heirs besides poverty in abundance.

Nothing could be further from the truth. What makes you think that the collagemate who used to beat you hands down all over sudden becomes a dimwit once you 'trick' her into marriage. And by the way if marriage is the principal cause of divorce then men are the principal causes and sources of all the turmoil in this planet.

And there lies our problems as a people. We are often slaves to our village roots despite exposure in life, unfortunately. A child is a child is a child. And trust me on this: (African) men address their insecurity by claiming to be superior to their women to sooth their bloated egos in justifying the mad race and rush for sons while treating daughters as lesser mortals.

We are shameless pretenders who create the impression that all is good in our houses and even when we are hitting the floor of the emotional pit. Now this is acidic bothers and please don't lynch me for saying the truth. I am sure to stir the hornet's nest. Emotions change with time and as the epidemiologist and statistician will tell you its one variable that is heterogeneous. So to stick to your old flame and emotional beliefs which you have definitely outgrown is to get stuck in a time warp.

The remedy? Be creative and as a software update your emotions and invest in your love life. If all fails, why not divorce officially. Hold your horse with tirades and save me the obtuse pretence. Marriage the singular cause of divorce so once married, divorce graces the other side of the coin.

That is not western brainwashing. And by the way, don't we live like them shamelessly borrowing their 'civilized' traits and only selectively trashing them when it serves our bloated egos? This is not playing the devils advocates and my brothers must see marriage for the institution that it is and not a factory for kids who end up being the necessary devils cropping out as biological accidents from our acts of being athletic around the waist.

Invest in your love life and reap the accruing dividends or perish emotionally as you cling to the empty and elusive shell of yore. Marriage and love life must be treated as dynamics otherwise you only reap the barbs and bitterness that will only drive you prematurely into your grave. Our sisters deserve better and they remain the only spices in our otherwise dull lives.