Angry black woman. #DemandforChangeNigeria

I am an angry black woman. I am an irritated, frustrated, enraged, infuriated black woman for many reasons on this very bleak day.Why would I be angry? I have many reasons to be angry but I’ll highlight the dominant issues today in this post.

I am an angry Nigerian woman because the people in my country are uneducated. Men do not value women, and women do not value themselves. Women are seen as a man’s property, an inanimate object that belongs to them. We are “supposed” to abide by the rules of the man against our will because he is the head and we are the neck of the house, but what is a head without a neck? Have you ever seen a headless chicken? They run around the place for a few seconds then collapse, dead and useless, that is a man without a woman, so why treat us like slaves in our own home? In Nigeria, marital rape is culturally accepted; it is seen as unrealistic for a man to rape is wife because of this. It is therefore not seen as a criminal offence, proving that the law in Nigeria is unfair to woman and has a gender bias (linking to the fact that a male child in most Nigerian families is favored compared to a female). Section 282 of the Penal Code, governing the North of Nigeria and Section 357 of the Criminal Code, governing the South, both exempt a husband from the definition of the offence of rape. The worst thing is that the women don’t know any better because they are not educated about themselves, they don’t know that they have the right to say no to their husbands, they believe they have to be submissive to the man, be a source of pleasure at all costs, even if it costs them their happiness. Many women that are being subjected to marital rape will not speak up for many reason, including; fear of their abuser’s retribution, inability to leave the relationship possibly because of their children, or they may not know that rape in marriage is against the law. I know there are people that will say why doesn’t she just get up and leave, but it is never that easy. Never. How can someone who stood in front of your family, in the presence of God at the alter, who professed his love for you, who possibly gave you children that are your pride and joy, rape you.

I am a frustrated Nigerian woman because my people read the bible with one eye open. They take the bible verse in Corinthians, which says, “wives should not deny their husbands” to the extreme. The problem is that many people don’t understand that rape isn’t just about the sex, sex is only the weapon used to dehumanize, humiliate, belittle the victim. The same bible also says, “Husbands, love your wives and do not be harsh with them” (Colossians 3:19). Forced sex is not love and the bible is clear when it explains that a man should provide sexual satisfaction to his wife and she should do the same, mutuality reigns in the bedroom. Correct me if I am wrong, as I am not as knowledgeable as I could possibly about bible verses.

“If a man calls his wife to bed and she refuses, and then he sleeps angry, the angels shall curse her until he awakens.” Qur’an, 2.187 ‘they are garments for you and you are garments for them,” and this is how each spouse acts, emotionally, physically, and spiritually for the other. It is not sexual abuse rather, it is to protect the marriage bed and keep it undefiled, where each spouse rushes to fulfill the rights and desires of the other. Islam is a religion of peace, and honors women and most of the Hadith talks about how to treat women. Islam also says that ‘O ye who believe! Ye are forbidden to inherit women against their will. Nor should ye treat them with harshness, that ye may take away part of the dower ye have given them, except where they have been guilty of open lewdness; on the contrary live with them on a footing of kindness and equity. If ye take a dislike to them it may be that ye dislike a thing, and God brings about through it a great deal of good.’

Marital rape is seen as unAfrican or Eurocentric because my people are uneducated. Below is a link to my story very close to my heart, hopefully it will help you understand marital rape better and #DemandforChangeNigeria.

http://www.thisdaylive.com/articles/domestic-violence-when-the-law-fails-to-protect/98863/

Confessions Pt.1

I am sitting on the toilet seat, my pants are wrapped around my ankles in quite a twisted artistic fashion, I could see myself taking inspiration from the twisted cotton that make up my pants. I don’t actually need the loo but somehow sitting on the toilet seat with my pants up is unnatural and I feel a steady uneasiness that I might forget I have them on and wet myself which in turn will be downright embarrassing even though I am on my own. But what am I really doing sitting on the loo with my pants down to my ankles if I don’t want to take a leak? I am crying. I am pouring my soul out into my hands in form of a salt solutions that stream down my face rapidly, making it very difficult for my already poor eyes to see anything clearly. Why am I crying? I do not know why, but what I do know is that whatever is causing me to cry is filling my mind with pictures of knives, loneliness, cuts and bruises.

John 8: 32 – “and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free”

Look at me, starting by quoting a passage from the bible. I have pretty strong and personal views about religion and Christianity but that’s something I’d rather not discuss. This particular passage, however, I came across on my tumblr and remembered my mother quoting this to me several times when I would lie to her and she would try and coax me to tell the truth before proceeding to whoop my ass flat into a pancake, but now I’m looking at it from a different light.
“…The truth will set you free.”
The truth will set me free so where do I begin my confession.

I am the foulest, most disgusting, most selfish person you will ever come across. Why? I am a cheat. I have cheated. There you have it. I am a disgrace. But do you know the worst thing; I am also a hypocrite because I cannot stand a cheater, yet I am one. So basically I hate myself, makes me quite silly, right? I used to think so too, but I really do hate a cheat. I am not proud that I have cheated, but I have recently been confronted and criticized about my hypocrisy so let me confess it now. I don’t condone or promote it, nor would I say the circumstances of my relationship mattered at that point because I allowed my lips touch the lips of another man. The common question you ask someone that cheats/cheated or is cheating is why be with someone you will cheat on, why not break up? Simple answer, I don’t know. That obviously isn’t a very good answer; maybe I was a young horny teenager who didn’t take into consideration the implication of my actions at the time. But that doesn’t make it right, or justify my reason for doing what I did. I made my mistake and that is my cross to bear. For a long time I hated myself too, despised the ugliness I had done, it took me forever to leave it in the past and I know a part of me hasn’t but that old dog has been put down as long as I have learnt from it.
It still doesn’t change the fact I hate a cheat.

Anyway, my tears are now dry on my face. I think I must have been too engrossed in this write up. I still don’t know why I was crying so hysterically.

“…The truth will set you free.”

Her Story

“At the age of twelve, I lost my innocence to a female. It was a gradual loss, a loss that I allowed to happen as a naïve child experiencing something new. She made me feel loved; she made me feel warmth where I didn’t know I could experience it. We experimented with this newfound warmth over a whole summer; we used each other to learn about ourselves. It was during this time I found out what I loved, and how to love another person but that novelty slowly died as I grew up in boarding school.

I lost my virginity at the age of 14 to someone I did not care for, please do not judge me for this, I was a fool looking for an outlet. To someone I did not love or felt any emotional attraction to. You can say this was the point of my downfall. I felt nothing for this person, but I had let him do to me what I should have kept as sacred as the bonsai trees that stand beside the alter today. I let him ruin me. I let him penetrate my soul and fill me with a lustful evil that resides within the depth of my mind, body and soul. I cannot tell you today why I let him do this to me. I cannot tell you what led to this event. The mind is powerful and mine has succeeded in blocking out the memory and burying it where I cannot find. I imagine this to be the point at which my innocence died and I became somewhat evil from the inside out. There was a growing lust/hate relationship for the male species within me. I learnt to utilise my God-given womanly parts and synchronise this with a mind of lust and evil to get what I required from men. I played games with their minds, I learnt the right sequence of wording to speak to a man to entrap him in this battle of lust and love that he cannot get out of. Like a fly in my web, and I am the black widow. Every man is different and so the tactics changed with the person. I played the game of men as a woman. I taught myself the alpha-male complex of which I lived by and stuck to, no matter the situation or consequence. I had to be in control.

The alpha-male complex in a female, gives her the ability to think in the way men do, and so behave accordingly. This led to many a problem in my life. I could no longer stick to one man; I had the ability to be with multiple people and due to the organisational skills passed genetically to me from my mother, I made no mistakes, ever. It didn’t matter how complicated it got, I had a different voice or personality or different way of dealing with each man, and I never forgot whose was whose. It is a terrible thing to be unable to commit, you can not love a person without the fear of cheating because it is unnatural for you, just like the fake cherry blossoms that line the aisle.

There was no one to talk to; I was alone feeding off the lustful acts I committed on an every-other-day basis. Evil cannot coincide with happiness my dear reader, it simply cannot. I had fallen into a black hole that consumed my heart and mind. I could not see the good in myself and required the touch of another to feel good about myself. When I was alone I saw darkness, nothingness, sadness, and a cold depression that made me feel worthless. I cannot bear to describe what depression feels like to you reader, I cannot bear to see another suffer from such a mental pain that almost destroyed my life. I would let you know this; depression is an inward struggle, like HIV or AIDS you cannot see it on my face, you will never know a person struggling with depression from yourself, so I encourage readers to take this into consideration when you speak to anyone from family members to strangers. It was the fact that he did not run when I told him my story that brought me to this place, where I stand at the end of the aisle in a beautiful dress, veil over my face, staring into the back of the head of the man whose aura makes me feel beautiful without his touch or his word. He became the light that will escape my black hole and the one that will pull me back into the real world, the one I will commit to forever.

This would be my beginning.

A happy beginning.”

Her true story.

Pyrophobia

A little bit of advice I have for my readers today.

I used to not be scared of fire; I could light a match easily, wave my hand over a candle and get giddy from the adrenaline rush. Till the day I sat on the cold floor of my room, lit a scented candle (I think it was lavender and rosebush) and a piece of A4 paper fell out of my book on top of it. I managed to pick it up on one end without burning myself but on my way out of my room it started to burn the tips of my fingers and I dropped it under my computer, where all the wires were. My heart must have stopped because I froze, my mind was racing, my heart was beating fast but my body remained frozen almost like it wanted me to stay there and die (a possible cause for the hatred I used to feel for my body). It went out. My AC must have been on 16 degrees because the floor was freezing and the coolness put out the fire. It left a mark, a constant reminder that I could have burnt down my house and/or killed myself, since then I couldn’t light a match, I get my little brother to light a match if there is no light and I want to cook and my lighter just sits redundant till someone else comes along and lights it for me.

 My fear has stopped me from doing something I love, whenever I want to. It has stopped me from being prepared for the worst. There is a passage in the bible that goes something like “The fear of man lays a trap, but whoever trusts in the Lord is safe”, basically I’m saying that you should not let your fears control you, trust the Lord and be delivered from whatever you afraid of whether it be something as small as my fear of fire or a life-changing event because just like the thot in your dm it’s all an illusion, it’s a trap, a lie. 

more stuff later x

Mind Dribble II

Lately, I’ve had the chance to think a lot, especially with me always catching the wrong bus going in the opposite direction and the long journey backwards again. I’m not the best person with relationships, well I haven’t exactly been the best over the last couple years but what I do know is when I finally feel comfortable in my relationship, there is no one that has the power to make me break the trust that I share with this person. I mean, no one. Which leads me right to where I’m going, persistence. The persistent individual in your life that just won’t give up. Sometimes, persistence is great. Persistence gets you places, allows you to reach goals you ordinarily won’t if you just let it go after the first try. However, if I decide to tell you to back off because I believe you may be a threat to my relationship then I expect you do so, not say something like, “don’t worry it won’t ever get out” or “I’m careful, our secret is safe with me”, or even “it’s not really considered cheating though.”  That’s the shit I hate. Firstly, “our secret” will get out, nothing is hidden under the sun. Secondly, I know you will tell someone, be it your best friend or some guy/girl you’re trying to show off to, you will tell, that is the honest truth, do not let anyone deceive you. Keep your guard up; don’t let anyone take that sort of power over you.

Which brings me to my next thought bubble.

I’m different. To you I may be weird, odd, common, normal, bad, good, whatever I am, I am different to different people, and so are you. Growing up in a Christian home, with a Christian family, in a country that is in the middle of a religious war, but becoming my own woman has been difficult. Coming from a country that passed a law to imprison people are seen to be gay for 14 years, and being a woman that doesn’t accept this law is a struggle, as my beliefs differ from that of those that brought me up. I d not believe it is right to lock someone up for 14 years because they happen to love someone of the same sex. Yes, according to the bible I read it is wrong but to me, love is simple. You fall in love with someone that happens to be the same sex, it’s your love, and it’s also your life. I do not support gay marriage in the church because that’s a step too far but I do believe in love, and I believe love can be shared between any two people. You’d hear them say “I’d never smoke, I’d never drink, I’m too young, I’m just 17, I will never have sex before marriage…” Don’t smoke, don’t drink, don’t have sex before marriage, but just don’t enforce your opinions on me. If I want to do any of these things I will do it with a clear conscience, it would be my decision regardless of what you think is good for me. I know exactly what the bible says about all of these, I know the way in which I have been brought up leads me to follow the rules of the bible. However, it’s my decision to follow it or not, my choice. I am a Christian. I agree with most of the bible but some I don’t exactly follow, does that make me a bad Christian? Or not even a Christian at all? I don’t have the answers. I’m just trying to live my life happy, with people I love surrounding me, enjoying my youth, trying new things, experimenting and making other people happy because that’s my decision, and I’m sure as hell sticking to it.

http://www.a-owulade-photography.com/blog/