YOBBY: Women, do not enslave yourself in the name of love

If you enable laziness, you will have to lie on that bed yourself. PHOTO| FOTOSEARCH

What you need to know:

  • Look at you, cutting short your evening with friends because you think your man will die if you don’t cook.
  • Basic survival instinct will make him fry an egg and eat it if he is starving.
  • If you think I am lying, ask your husbands how they survived before you came along to save him

There is something magical that happens when a man meets a woman.

When they are together, his voice becomes softer, his brain starts to work because lines must be delivered with perfect timing and his mannerisms become polished.

Basically, the lion becomes a cuddly kitten. The man becomes helpless. Really.

The standard timeline for a man is, he gets out of college, looks for income of any kind, and moves out of mama’s house to start life on his own.

There are those who live at home until they get married at 35, but those need prayers. If you have an income, minimal expenses and your physical presence is not needed at home, you need to grow a calabash and face the world.

Most people will start with a mattress, a small gas cooker, two sufurias, one cup, one plate, and one spoon that is both a tea and table spoon.

If you have a nice income, you will spend over a hundred thousand furnishing that house. But as long as you live alone, rich or poor, there is one unifying factor: hunger.

I have nothing against hotels but have you ever calculated the amount of money you spend eating out every single day?

Depending on your location, you will spend Sh300 every evening and might not get full. Hotels these days hardly ever give an ugali saucer.

The economy is bad. So, because food prices are increasing and customers don’t want hotels to raise prices, they simply reduce food portions and buy smaller plates so the customers are fooled into believing the food is plenty.

MEN CAN COOK

Eventually, you will get too broke to eat out. You will find a shack, somewhere with the cheapest food.

Then one day, you will catch a glimpse of the water used to wash the dishes at your newly found eating place. Horrified, it will dawn on you that it is better to cook than to die.

Ladies, here’s a secret: men know how to cook. They might not have the greatest variety, and they might say "a man cannot enter the kitchen" but trust me, the kitchen is not an alien place for men.

Left to their own devices, men will not die of hunger.

But women are miracle workers. They appear, and men become putty. Their backs are too weak to wash, their hands too inexperienced to hold a mwiko, and they develop an amnesia that wipes out all recipes from their minds.

If you think I am lying, ask your husbands how they survived before you came along to save him.

Look at you, cutting short your evening with friends because you think your man –who has been in the house all day long- will die if you don’t cook.

Basic survival instinct will make him fry an egg and eat it if he is starving.

EASY WAY OUT

I am not saying you shouldn’t cook for your man. It is an act of love and there is nothing shameful or subservient about it if that is what you really want to do.

What I am saying is it is human nature to be lazy. Human beings will always look for the easy way out.

If they can find what they need without working hard, then they will keep doing what they are doing. If you enable laziness, you will have to lie on that bed yourself.

When relationships and marriages settle, things tend to become routine. There will be the person that does dishes more, folds clothes more.

Then there will be the person who does nothing at all, and if you are okay with that, power to you.

However, do not enslave yourself in the name of love.

Do not run from the salon to take food from the fridge and put it in the microwave for him to eat when he is not an invalid or incapacitated in any way.

Teach him how to do it, the same way you potty train a baby. Isn’t he your big, cuddly baby boo?